Serious Games…One example of great design
I love games. I love to play games; I love to come up with games for others to play…and I have created several. What I have not yet done is to design more than a rudimentary online game…but I’m really eager to do so. One of the most fun things at last November’s DevLearn 2008 conference (sponsored by E-Learning Guild) was its focus on games. It inspired me and made me oh-so-anxious for the client who will come to me and say, “I want a learning game!”
I also took back a message from “The Serious Game Zone” (hosted by Dr. Alicia Sanchez who is a research scientist with a LOT of knowledge about games). Motivation is everything in a game…if the learner isn’t engaged, they will not play. Period. So…a game can have great instructional intent but if it is not fun, learners will not play. In a serious game, the “game” part of it is as critical as the “serious (aka learning)” part of it.
I spent time today playing one of the games I saw at Devlearn – and I am really impressed by its instructional design and its “fun” design. “Moneytopia” is a game that is designed to teach teens and twenty-somethings (though just about everyone in America could benefit, I believe) about handling and investing money…and living within their means. I kept wanting to play…and increase my financial portfolio. To do that, I HAD to complete the short learning pieces (housed within my financial statment) centered on financial management because that was a key way that I grew my money. And…I couldn’t shortcut out of them because if I did then I missed the money-making opportunities embedded within them. And…on the instructional side…all of the learning activities they had me do were absolutely relevant to the content. I didn’t feel like they were dumbing anything down – and each learning presentation was really short (two or three minutes).
Check out this game for yourselves. Allow yourself at least 15-20 minutes to play it to really get the flavor of the game and the instructional design that went into it. Let me know how you’d rate it on a “fun” scale and on an “learning” scale. I can immediately think of all sorts of ways to mimic the design for other applications – and I feel confident that the design of it is not too sophisticated for a lot of good instructional designers to imitate. It appears to be a Flash-based game design, which means it is within the grasp of many of us.
Click the image to check out the game for yourself. Again, let me know what you think!
Moneytopia is a role-playing game that teaches you how to manage money.
http://moneytopia.knowledgedirectweb.com/game/moneytopia.html
Tags: DevLearn, games, learning games, Moneytopia, serious games