Whats important in a game? Your own personal oppinion and why,

Hybernate

Hiya, people!

I wanna test you people. I am working on a school project, regarding "Edutainment" and i am currently doing some research... So i now call unto my gamers! and of course my non gamers - reference the following to books or movies or just try to imagine why you don't game.

The project we are working on, is mainly aimed for the danish public school in around 3rd-6th grade, teaching them math in a dynamic/interactive universe.

In my research up until now, i have been reading a few conclusions... And i wanna hear your input.

What do you think the most important aspect of a game is? and why?


The Narrative - storyline, as in the actual story and how it affects your character?

The Gameplay - How the game works, and maybe it follows you natural way of thought.

The consequences of your actions - The effect your choices have on the storyline? Not really a sandbox approach, but a storyline that evolves on your choice, thus not becoming too linear and framed.


You can of course go further than whats posted above, its mainly to get you people started.
I would appreciate a nuanced and descriptive comment on what you might think is important to you!
Remember, there is no judging here, this is purely subjective - hence we wanna see if there are any common denominators between cultures, ages and whatever.
So please feel free to post any personal information, allowed by yourself and the rules of this site.

Evigilant

The most important aspect?

How fun it is. If it's not fun, it's a shitty game.

Unknown

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redx

There are a lot of really fun games that have basically no narrative. Many multiplayer centric FPSes, racing and other sims, fighting and sports games for instance. I honestly don't think narrative is a requirement at all for a good game, but an interesting one certainly adds a lot, but it's really far from being most important though.

There's a lot of games I like that are not much other than game play. Good control, some depth. If you had to point to one aspect, which I think is kinda dumb, game play would be most important.

I can take or leave the whole deal where my actions mean much to the environment. If it is well implemented, it's good. If it is poorly implemented, the game breaks. Broken games are not that much fun.

Clown Shoes

Gameplay has to be one of the biggies. A good narrative is pointless if the mechanics of the game are so annoying/frustrating that you don't want to keep playing. Also, I can easily overlook narrative flaws if the gameplay is fun enough. Ultimately, I think the important thing is that the gameplay and narrative are developed together rather than one of them being an afterthought that gets rushed to meet a deadline.

For the age range you're aiming at, fun is going to be the most important thing as they won't just be comparing it to their normal maths lessons but also the games they play at home. That fun might come from the narrative or the gameplay, but it has to be there to keep them engaged. Can you give us any more details about the game?

Is it to be played by individual kids or small groups/classes?

Is it intended to teach them specific maths skills or just generally get them interested in maths?

SanderJK

I am personally of the Sid Meier school of thought about games: A game should offer you interesting decisions, and show you the consequences of those decisions. A choice where one is obviously right and one is wrong wastes time, as does a choice that ends up having no influence later on.

For a math game this may not be so easy, but one option is the leaderboard that has become popular in many games lately, that show you high scores / level, best times, highest percentage etcet, to push people to become better, and beat people they know. (For me personally this really worked in SpaceChem, where I got really annoyed if I solved a stage and found out that I had the most cycles of my steamfriends). The downside to this is of course that the lesser talented students may be put off by seeing really high scores they feel they can never beat. (Much like what I feel when I see global high scores in games).

The problem with a storydriven game is that it's hard to make a story that appeals to everyone. In the wide world this is not much of a problem, since the market is huge and there are more games than you can play out there, and probably always things that appeal to you. But when focusing on a small welldefined group that may be 'forced' (in class?) to use your product having a lot of focus on story may cause people to tune out.

To appeal to a wide audience, I would also try to design a game where you can't get stuck. Get a high score, or a low score, but keep on trucking.

Note: I could perhaps PM you the contact info of a friend of mine who is about 2 months away from his PhD on educational gaming and actually had a project with math a year or so ago, iirc for kids around aged 10. I think it had to do with multiplying fractions.

Clown Shoes

SanderJK wrote: »

The downside to this is of course that the lesser talented students may be put off by seeing really high scores they feel they can never beat. (Much like what I feel when I see global high scores in games).

One way to address this could be giving scores for improvement rather than absolute scores.

KalTorak

spacekungfuman wrote: »

The most important aspect is how many numbers there are to crunch and optimize, of course. If you aren't cracking out excel to model your stats, are you really playing a game at all?

This is the PE view of how to measure how fun a game is, isn't it?

(j/k :P)

Yogo

I'm going to make an assumption based on my own experiences in the Danish school system.

Narratives don't matter.

What do I mean by this? Well, Narrative (or rather just a basic story) will certainly attract the attention of the children, but its overall impact will fly right over their heads. They simply do not grasp the narrative like teenagers/adults do. To them, everything is boiled down to how 'fun' the game play is and it is all they notice.

We had basic math and language programs when I was in elementary school. While both were interesting for each of their own purposes, the narrative offered in the language programs were of less interest than the math programs. Math programs simply offered you more options than the language programs. The nuances of a good narrative are (sadly) lost upon most children until they become older.

I'll have to ask though. Why ask this question to adults when you are trying create educational programs for children? Would it not be better to ask them what they prefer (while they may not be able to articulate it as nuanced as we can).

Caveman Paws

I want Skryim that plays like Assassins creed.

Gameplay/sandbox world/lots of options items wise/pretty graphics. In that order.

Tube

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