Under a new pilot program called InSight, Allstate will offer specialized computer games to 100,000 customers in Pennsylvania aged 50 to 75. The games' developer, San Francisco-based Posit Science, will track the total number of hours these drivers play.

Then the group's accident rates will be compared to a control group of people who do not play the games.

The article goes on to explain the subjects won’t be playing a driving game, but rather one “designed to reverse age-related cognitive decline and improve visual alertness.”

For example, a game called "Jewel Diver" has players keep track of underwater jewels that pop up on the screen for a moment before they are hidden under fish swimming around. When the fish stop moving, players click on the fish hiding the jewel. It's like Three Card Monte but without the cheating. Over time, the game gets more complicated as more fish appear on the screen.

It seems drivers with the fewest accidents are aged 50-60, but somewhere after 60 accident rates start to climb again. Allstate thinks using brain training video games might fight cognitive decline in older drivers, thus the experiment.

References:
Drivers may get insurance breaks for playing computer games. (2008, October 1). Retrieved October 9, 2001 from: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/10/01/older.drivers.videogames.ap/

For the last gosh-don't-recall-how-many-months I've been working as a Project Collaborator for a project envisioned by the other half (more than half) of the Jenkins Chair here at Duke, Tim Lenoir.  For those of you who don't know Tim, he's been a leading historian of science for decades now, helping found the History and Philosophy of Science program at Stanford.  Tim is notable in part for changing areas of expertise multiple times over his career, and most recently he's shifted into new media studies.  This is the shift that brought him here to Duke and I can't say enough how incredible of an opportunity it is to work for him.  We seem to serve a pivotal function for Duke as people who bring together innovation with interdisciplnarianism.

What does that mean? Well, like the things we study, there are no easy simple narratives to cover it.  But I can speak through examples.  And the Virtual Peace Project is one such example.

Tim, in his latest intellectual foray, has developed an uncanny and unparalleled understanding of the role of simulation in society.  He has studies the path, no, wide swath of simulation in the history of personal computing, and he developed a course teaching contemporary video game criticism in relation to the historical context of simulation development.

It's not enough to just attempt to study these things in some antiquated objective sense, however.  You've got to get your hands on these things, do these things, make these things, get some context. And the Virtual Peace project is exactly that. A way for us to understand and a way for us to actually do something, something really fantastic.

The Virtual Peace project is an initiative funded by the MacArthur Foundation and HASTAC through their DML grant program. Tim's vision was to appropriate the first-person shooter (FPS) interface for immersive collaborative learning.  In particular, Virtual Peace simulates an environment in which multiple agencies coordinate and negotiate relief efforts for the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras and Nicaragua.  The simulation, built on the Unreal game engine in collaboration with Virtual Heroes, allows for 16 people to play different roles as representatives of various agencies all trying to maximize the collective outcome of the relief effort.  It's sort of like Second Life crossed with America's Army, everyone armed not with guns but with private agendas and a common goal of humanitarian relief. The simulation is designed to take about an hour, perfect for classroom use. And with review components instructors have detailed means for evaluating the efforts and performance of each player.

I can't say enough how cool this thing is.  Each player has a set of gestures he or she may deploy in front of another player.  The simulation has some new gaming innovations including proximity-based sound attenuation and full-screen full-session multi-POV video capture.  And the instructor can choose form a palette of "curveballs" to make the simulation run interesting.  Those changes to the scenario are communicated to each player through a PDA his or her avatar has. I was pushing for heads-up display but that's not quite realistic yet I guess. ;)

The project pairs the simulation with a course-oriented website.  While a significant amount of web content is visible to the public, most of the web site is intended as a sort of simulation preparation and role-assignment course site.  We custom-built an authentication and authorization package that is simple and lightweight and user-friendly, a system that allows instructors to assign each student a role in the simulation, track the assignments, distribute hidden documents to people with specific roles, and allow everyone to see everything, including an after-action review, after the simulation run.

Last evening, Wednesday October 08, 2008, the Virtual Peace game simulation enjoyed its first live classroom run at the new Link facility in Perkins Library at Duke University.  A class of Rotary Fellows affiliated with the Duke-UNC Rotary Center were the first players in the simulation and there was much excitement in the air.

Next up:

I never miss a beat here it seems, for now I am already onto my next project, something that has been my main project since starting here: reading research and patent corpora mediated through text mining methods.  Yes that's right, in an age where we struggle to get people to read at all (imagine what it's like to be a poet in 2008) we're moving forward with a new form of reading: reading everything at once, reading across the dimensions of text. I bet you're wondering what I mean.  Well, I just can't tell you what I mean, at least, not yet.

At the end of October I'll be presenting with Tim in Berlin for the "Writing Genomics: Historiographical Challenges for New Historical Developments" workshop at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. We'll be presenting on some results related to our work with the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at UCSB.  Basically we'll be showing some of our methods for analyzing large document collections (scientific research literature, patents) as applied to the areas of bio/geno/nano/parma both in China and the US. We'll demonstrate two main areas of interest: our semiotic maps of idea flows over time I've developed in working with Tim and Vincent Dorie, and the spike in the Chinese nano scientific literature at the intersection of bio/geno/nano/parma.  This will be perfect for a historiography workshop. The stated purpose of the workshop:

Although a growing corpus of case-studies focusing on different aspects of genomics is now available, the historical narratives continue to be dominated by the “actors” perspective or, in studies of science policy and socio-economical analysis, by stories lacking the fine-grained empirical content demanded by contemporary standards in the history of science.[...] Today, we are at the point in which having comprehensive narratives of the origin and development of this field would be not only possible, but very useful. For scholars in the humanities, this situation is simultaneously a source of difficulties and an opportunity to find new ways of approaching, in an empirically sound manner, the complexities and subtleties of this field.

I can't express enough how exited I am about this. The end of easy narratives and the opportunity for intradisciplinary work (nod to Oury and Guattari) is just fantastic.  So, to be working on two innovations, platforms of innovation really, in just one week.  I told you my job here was pretty cool. Busy, hectic, breakneck, but also creative and multimodal.

Larger Screens
Screens for the DSi are slightly bigger than the older DS. I’ve joked about the GBA and DS being designed for young people, as folks over 20 often complain about the size of the displays. But larger screens set in thinner cases will help players see more of the action. For the sake of education, larger screens means more text on the screen, either in quantity or quality (size of font). Admittedly the increase is small (3.25 inches up from 3.0 inches), but the increase will most certainly be worth it. Especially for old(er) people.

Cameras Outside and In
The DSi will have two cameras built in: one facing out and one facing in toward the player. I see this as benefiting ARGs, where players use devices to electronically enhance surrounding reality for the sake of the game. We’ve seen increased ARG use in lessons at historical sites thanks to the potent new crop of cell phones lately, but with two cameras added to the mix on the DSi, possibilities suddenly blossom. Students armed with Nintendo’s device could easily take pictures of objects on scavenger hunts, for instance, and share them with other teams. Pictures of players from the inward pointing camera provide proof of presence, and one imagines an easier way for teachers to remotely track students roaming about a site.

Built-in Web Browsing
Web support brings the DSi into Sony PSP territory. The nice thing is the price of the DSi is expected to fall somewhere south of $200. Imagine handing a fifth grader the equivalent power of an iPhone for a fraction of the cost and with no long-term contract. Downloading games might provide developers an inexpensive means of distribution for educational titles which may not otherwise be carried in traditional gaming venues.

SD Memory Card Support
Portable memory is a key issue for educators, as it eases dissemination of lessons and collection of data. SD memory cards are the de facto standard for portable data on a lot of devices, and many laptops and desktops have SD ports built in. A backwards compatible GBA slot is eliminated in this newest model, perhaps helping to keep the case slim. But with the SD slot, might the possibilities for home-made programming help up-and-coming educational game makers, ala the R4 Revolution, aka Majicon?

MP3 Support - sort of
The music-playing capabilities of the DSi will help with audio books, and flash cards that read words back to students. It's not true MP3 support; users will have to use the AAC format. At least, that's the current specs. But, folks adroit at gaming and such will have few problems converting MP3s to AAC.

Alas, American players will probably have to wait until fourth quarter, 2009 to buy one. But for players, and educators, it looks to be worth the wait.

Quick, Are videogames good or bad?

That's an impossible question. Good or bad for what? What  specific games are we talking about? More importantly, what are they substituting for, given time is a limited resource?  Contributor Jeremy Adam Smith, managing director of Greater Good magazine, offers an in-depth review on the trade-offs videogames present in: Playing the Blame Game.

News Round-Up

Math Innovation in UK Schools: a recent (and unpublished) study seems to support the potential role for "Serious Games" in education. Learning and Teaching Scotland reports significant improvements in pupils' concentration and behavior, on top of math skills, after using Nintendo Brain Training game.

Alzheimer's Australia endorses Posit Science programs: this announcement brings to surface a genuine public health dilemma - do you, as an association, promote programs before they have been shown to have long-term effects on Alzheimer's progression and prevalence, or do you wait until you have "perfect" research, and then perhaps lose 10-20-30 years or useful contribution to thousands/ millions of brain's Cognitive Reserves? In our judgment, it may well be worth offering options today, as long as they are accompanied by independent measurement of the cognitive benefits.

More September News: September has brought a wealth of additional worldwide media coverage on cognitive health and brain fitness topics, including the role of schools in nurturing student's executive functions, the importance of baseline neuropsychological testing in sports, the need for gerontology as a discipline to incorporate brain research, how walking can enhance brain function, and the value of brain fitness programs for long-term care operators.

Resources for Brain Fitness Navigation

Wellness Coaching for Brain Health and Fitness: will Wellness Coaches expand their role and become "Brain coaches"? We have partnered with Sutter Health Partners, the pioneering coaching group of a major health system, to train their wellness coaches on the implications of emerging brain research for their work: focus on the 4 pillars of brain health -balanced nutrition, physical exercise, stress management and mental exercise.

Evaluation Checklist for Organizations: many healthcare and education organizations are already making purchase decisions which involve evaluating different programs that make "brain training" or "cognitive health" claims. Here we present our 10-Question SharpBrains Checklist to help organizations make informed decisions.

Evaluation Checklist for Consumers: if you are an individual interested in programs for yourself and/ or a loved one, you can use this checklist. The starting point is to recognize that no program is a "magic pill" or "general solution", but a tool to be used in the appropriate context.

Learning to Lead, and To Think

Roundtable on Human Resources and Leadership: several bloggers discuss latest news around leadership, social intelligence, applications of brain research, and more.

Helping Young and Old Fish Learn How To Think: David Foster Wallace gave a masterful commencement speech on Life and Work to the 2005 graduating  class at Kenyon College.  Worth reading, with full attention.

Brain Teasers

Seven Brain teasers for Job Interviews: A recent CNN article explains why a growing number of technnology and consulting companies use brain teasers and logic puzzles of a type called “guesstimations” during job interviews. What are they looking for? Good executive functions. Here you have a few typical questions.

where are the new Carmen Sandiego games?With the technology of today they could make an awsomely fun and educational game. With Blu ray you don't have to just look at pictures , you can see video of the place and interact with the surroundings and have the cartoon overlays run around the city. It would be great! And all in High Def!

Several thousand more visitors came over once the post made the front page of Propeller.com. I even got 50 Diggs, a personal record. Many other sites picked up the story, including Aeropause and The Gadgets Page. And for a couple days, Educational Games Research made the top 100 Wordpress blogs. Briefly it was mentioned on the homepage of Wordpress.com, bringing in more visitors.

Several bloggers linked to the post, including Karl Kapp and Interesting Pile. Benny over at 4 color rebellion had some nice words for the list (“one of the best (if not THE best) gaming top 10 lists I’ve ever read”). Thorien at Epic Coalition had a flashback to his phone phreaking days. A commenter over at The Geek Show Podcast contributed some nice words:

Mavis taught me to type. Oregon Trail taught me to leave as early as possible and be as rich as possible. Math Blaster taught me that number punching means blowing cr*p up. I learned most of my American History, Geography, World History, and deductive skills through the chasing of that elusive Carmen Sandiego.

I really did like these educational games growing up. It's really sad to see that there aren't a lot of these kinds of games anymore.

phaesty over at Propeller.com had some additional nice comments:

Seeing the screen shots for NumberMunchers and the classic Oregon Trail just made me screech "OMG! I remember that!" in my office. I'd forgotten about NumberMunchers. Gosh, I loved those old educational games I used to pay in the MacLab at my elementary school. Nostalgia overload.

Lots of commenters injected some levity into the discussion. One over at Kotaku said:

It's all fun and games until Carmen Sandiego munched some numbers and died from dysentery.

Another over at Propeller.com said:

The 5th grader in me always got a little bit of joy when the school bully died from Dysentery .

Feelings were mixed over the inclusion of Zork and Windows Solitaire. Some commenters felt one or the other should not have been included, while others expressed enthusiasm with the last two choices. Several games I failed to mention were brought up, as to be expected with any top 10 list. The best and those consistently clamored for, mainly M.U.L.E. and Rocky’s Boots, I added to an honorable mention category. Others were good educational games for their time, but never gained the popularity or influence of those in the top 10. A few were not worthy of consideration. For instance, Custer’s Revenge would fit better in The Top 5 Most Offensive Video Games, at least if anyone still played it.

Finally, errors and clarifications were caught by the multitude of readers, and thanks to the power of blogs I was able to quickly correct mistakes. Thus, the time I noted MECC stood for the Michigan Educational Computing Consortium instead of the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium was quickly noted, especially by residents of Minnesota. (In my defense, I’d recently watched the Wolverines play football, so the State of Michigan was on my mind.)

All told, it was a fun and exciting month for this little ol’ blogger. Who knew old educational games could garner so much attention?

]]> http://davidmcdivitt.wordpress.com/?p=220 Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:59:57 +0000 davidmcdivitt http://davidmcdivitt.pl.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/inquizitor-2/ Right now my classes are starting Ancient Greece in world history.  One thing we have been working on is designing a quiz for the InQuizitor.  Having students write questions is always a difficult task.  I normally find that the questions that kids write are way to simple but we tried anyway.  We now have constructed a 40 question quiz over ancient Greece.  Most questions are ok....I did do some editing but I essentially wanted the quiz to be theirs.  Tomorrow we will play The InQuizitor and our ancient Greece quiz. 

Once we have done that our plan is to share the quiz with our 6th grade world civilization teacher.  She is going to cover ancient Greece in a couple of weeks.  I certainly hope the quiz is good enough for her kids to use and is beneficial to her class.

Wie Traces of Hope wil spelen, moet zich eerst registreren op de site en vervolgens wachten tot Joseph hen contacteert met nieuws over zijn situatie. Het spel is vervolgens opgebouwd volgens het principe van de schattenjacht, waarbij spelers ook worden aangesproken op hun speurderstalenten. De spelontwerpers hebben her en der op het internet, op verschillende websites aanwijzingen, tips en oplossingen geplaatst. Op die manier willen ze zoveel mogelijk de grenzen tussen het spel en de echte wereld vertroebelen.

Traces of Hope werd aangemaakt in opdracht van het British Red Cross en is een mooie aanwinst op het gebied van serious games.

Work for hire might work for professional services where you can charge out, for example, your auditors for $200 an hour because, although some projects will be more challenging than others, a firm will pretty much know what a typical audit engagement will entail. Looking closer to home, a traditional eLearning company will most likely work from a total cost/learner hour or n (development hours)/hour of learning basis and, barring major errors of judgement, be pretty much accurate.

From my experience to date over six years working in this space and spanning 40+ projects ranging from between $5,000 and $500,000, the work for hire model is undesirable for serious games developers and for a multitude of reasons:

[1] Clients are not capable of creating a specification

I have yet to see a specification, RFI or RFP document that clearly articulates the full extent of the client’s requirements in a way that covers organisational goals, instructional objectives,  content/curricula definitions, learning evaluation strategies, business impact/ROI approach, creative brief, technical guidelines and ,, somewhat fundamentally, the game/simulation vision. Some of these will be adequately covered – usually where that aspect is related in some way to what the issuing organisation actually does as its business – but I have never seen a comprehensive document upon which one could base an accurate price.

This is a problem as invariably the developer is required to provide a fixed price based only on the initial RFP information. It takes a brave developer to stand their ground on this issue and even if they do they will very probably lose the contract.

Now I don’t expect that your average insurance, automotive, banking or retail multinational should be able to create a proper serious games specification. Why should they? It isn’t their area of expertise. What I am surprised about is that even now, in 2008, why only a tiny few organisations employ a consultant at the scoping and procurement stage to help them define their true requirements. I would stand up in a court of law and testify that if they did do this they would save money, time and stress and significantly de-risk the project.

So what we end up with is a client that has taken a leap of faith, internal sponsors who have put their reputations (or careers) at risk, the involvement of a wider group of reluctant stakeholders and a developer who now faces delivering upon a project with no defined start point, specification or defined set of deliverables. What they do have is a defined (fixed) project deadline and contract price.

This situation is akin to a builder agreeing to design and build an ‘office’ without knowing where it will be built, using what materials and whether it is to house 10 or 1,000 office workers. Now I probably paint an exaggerated picture here, but I’ll bet that it is an analogy that resonates well with many a developer.

[2] Clients are usually very large. Developers are always minnows

This may not be a situation which is unique to the serious games space but the chances are that, when measured by revenue, balance sheet or head count, most clients will be at least several dozen times bigger than the developer. Often it will be a developer with an annual turnover of less than $2million working for a global multinational firm with revenues in excess of $1 billion. Big does not mean bad but it does mean that on the one hand you have a young, innovative firm with strong technological and creative leanings with a flat management structure and a dynamic ‘can do’ attitude. On the other hand you have a large, slow-moving goliath packed with 9 to 5 ‘staffers’, a risk-averse culture, big company politics, rigid administrative procedures and little or no understanding of what it takes to deliver a successful serious games project.

This clash of cultures can often make for personality clashes and client-vendor communication breakdown if not acutely-well managed. It is also worth noting that if things turn really ugly that the client’s lawyers are bigger than the developers! Managing expectations at both a macro and micro level is crucial. It is also a frustrating diversion when efforts are needed elsewhere.

[3] Design (scoping) comes after agreeing a fixed-price

The developer has agreed a price. The initial scoping, needs assessment and design have been undertaken. Now, however, the client’s project team have had a chance to get up to speed and they want to get creative. They have been shown some prior examples and possibly some prototypes. They have dusted down the SNES and PS1 from the attic and got all excited about the idea of contributing ideas to the game project. They have a much better idea of what is possible and want to get their hands dirty. Everybody gets a buzz out of getting creative and picturing what could be…. but the developer is working on a fixed price and time is tick tick ticking.

The biggest danger here is project creep. The client won’t recognise this as chargeable changes as you are still in the design phase….so no comparison point exists from which to measure change and besides, they engaged with the developer in order to benefit from a creative company to help them flesh out the ideas. “What’s the rush?” they are thinking. Meanwhile, the developer is asking, “where has my margin gone?” and, “how are we going to deliver on time now?”

I have rarely seen a project where the design phase is completed on time. For small discreet mini or casual games-based projects this is less of a problem. For large serious games or immersive learning simulations it is rather more of a challenge.

[4] There are always changes to a signed off design…but rarely extra payment

I spent nearly seven years working in the construction industry for a mechanical and electrical building services engineering firm. We worked rigidly from very detailed specifications, technical designs and Bills of Quantities. If the client’s team (e.g. the architect or design engineer) made a change of any kind then there was a well-understood process of quantifying the time, cost and other implications. The client’s team then, assuming they accepted the costs, issued a formal change request and the contractor (my employer) billed them for the work.

For the serious games developer it is not so easy. Firstly the client nearly always struggles to envisage what the finished application will look like and how it will function until they see it and try it. When they get the early prototypes, alpha and beta releases it gives them the opportunity to ‘suggest’ numerous improvements on the basis that only at this point are they able to appreciate the implications of the written design document.  It is highly unlikely that the developer’s tender bid included an explicit cost for ‘client mind changes’. An iterative approach to software development can be an excellent way of getting a perfect end result from a technical standpoint but it does not make for an easily quantifiable development schedule or controlled costs. Seeing as time deadlines and budgets are the two factors about which they client will most likely fixate upon, it is easy to see how this approach can easily lead to project failure for the developer, the client or both.

Harping back to the ‘clients are large, developers are small’ point, it is very hard for the under-pressure developer to fight to be paid for each and every change irrespective of how legitimate the basis. Refusing to carry out the change will most likely be viewed by the client as deliberate intransigence or even belligerence on the part of the developer and probably a withheld milestone payment.

Most developers, engage don a work for hire model, will seek a gross margin of between 40% and 60% in order to achieve genuine net margins. A project that involves numerous and frequent changes can quite easily go from sound profitability to a loss-making situation for the developer.

It is also fair to say that the client’s project team will nearly always fail to realise the level of impact for what, to them, appear to be very minor changes. A recent client of ours, for example, repeatedly asked us to make changes to some of the in-game characters. These characters featured in many pre-rendered animations.  To the client these seemed to be a quick job for an artist of, I guess, an hour or so. The reality was several weeks of artist time and a cost to the company of a few thousand dollars.

[5] The source code issue

For a developer targeting the learning and development sector this can be a major challenge. Clients for traditional eLearning are used to getting and owning the source code and IP to the finished product. This is not unwarranted as invariably, with eLearning, the end product and the source code are one and the same being made up of HTML, images and static content. JavaScript code to create a drag and drop ‘course interaction’ is hardly likely to form part of a developer’s core intellectual property and enterprise value.

For a serious games developer however, this demand is nearly always untenable. It is rare that a project will not involve some level of prior IP in the form of application code or source assets. These assets are the lifeblood of a serious games developer. They reflect significant R&D, prior capital investment, commercial risk and specialist know-how. Handing that over to a client is akin to commercial suicide yet developers will very often face a major battle on this issue.

The ironic fact is that the source code is practically worthless to the client as they are very unlikely to possess the technical ability to do anything with it. Even a competent 3^rd party developer will face a massive challenge in making sense of the code and the originating developer is hardly likely to help them in that endeavour.

In reality, the client probably only demands the source code because it wants to protect it’s development in the eventuality of the developer going bust. That eventuality can easily be handled by a source code escrow agreement. Philosophically however, the ‘work for hire’ model puts the client in a frame of mind where they feel that obtaining the source code is a normal request.

[6] The ongoing ‘input’ of the well-meaning amateur

This is (usually) a minor threat – and not unique to the WFH model – but when that ‘well-meaning amateur’ is a key member of the client’s team then their desire to input into the technical, creative and instructional design process can easily create problems for the developer.

At best it is a distraction for the developer’s project manager. At worst it ends up causing project delays (which will be seen by outsiders as the developer’s fault) and eating into that profit margin.

[7] The 20:80 rule

This is a reverse of the commonly referenced Pareto’s Rule. Whereas traditional web content or eLearning development is fundamentally linear – meaning clients get to see progress early and consistently – serious games development is all back-ended. A significant proportion of the project timeline is eaten up by design and preparation. Underlying software engineering invariably takes time before it yields demonstrable releases. All of this makes clients nervous as they are being asked to approve milestone payments yet cannot yet play anything.

Serious games projects will almost (always?) be based on milestone payments. Not being able to show anything tangible (in the client’s eyes) makes getting paid in accordance to actual costs incurred, very challenging.

[8] Its hard to create and leverage IP

For a developer to make the transition from a WFH services provider to being an IP holder in it’s own right, significant capital will be required. It is challenging to raise that capital on commercially acceptable terms in good times. The collapse of the private equity markets and the extreme cautiousness of commercial banks (especially towards small companies and start ups) in recent times makes it practically impossible.

It is not in a client’s interest to help the developer achieve this by way of a WFH contract as it complicates the contracting process (the legals get far more complex) and besides if the developers starts to own it’s core IP it can potentially lock the client in (never appealing to the client) and possibly even take the same IP to competitors of the client.

The flip side is that a healthy and sustainable serious games industry would give clients major benefits e.g. stability, innovation and cost reduction through reusability but those are benefits that come from long term thinking and clients, understandably, are driven by the requirements of current projects not possible future ones.

[9] N.D.A. hell

“Seeing is believing,” or so the saying goes. Serious games are a medium that is hard to convey the value of…until you see them and try them. Sales people need to be able to show stuff off in order to generate new leads and close new deals.

Clients do not like that for the understandable reasons that their project is most probably linked to a desired increase in competitive advantage in one way or another. Naturally they do not want their competitors to hear about this.

When it is the client that is funding the project through a WFH model then the developer is always locked into a frustrating Catch 22 situation where their future growth and sustainability depends on sales but it is hard to generate new sales when you cannot demonstrate (or even talk about) your prior experience and project successes.

[10] A fixed gross margin…that shrinks

‘Work for hire’ is very probably going to be on a fixed price basis. The developer will target a gross profit margin that they seek to achieve. Depending on a number of factors (use of prior IP, eagerness of the developer to win the project, direct and overhead cost basis etc) this is likely to be in the 40-60% range.

Whether this works operationally depends a lot on the capital base of the developer (do they have private equity investment and an aggressive growth strategy for example?) their approach to operational resourcing (a fixed-cost internal team or a burstable model based on variable cost contractors and freelancers?) and their underlying overhead cost base. It also depends upon scale. The overhead cost base should be fairly static. The developer will need to achieve a critical volume of profitable projects in order for the gross margin to flow through to cover (and hopefully exceed) the overhead costs.

Delays to projects starting, design creep, post-design feature creep and other factors will occur and will therefore eat into this gross margin. The danger is that this makes it very hard to cover the overhead base at times and the finance director and company owners will find this very uncomfortable.

[11] Projects fall into fiscal quarters

Big companies think in quarters. Invariably the required project timeline will be either three months or, if the developer is lucky, six months. We often think in terms of the 40:40:20 rule. That is 40% of the project time for design, 40% for core development and 20% for final QA and integration. Given the peculiar hybrid of skills, experience and content that goes into a serious game project and thus, the wide number of people involved in it on the client side (who all have day jobs) it is very hard to create and agree a robust design in anything less than two months.

Starting development for a three month project in month three is project suicide. Starting development on a large project without a robust, signed-off design is also project suicide. Inevitably this leads to a project delay of anything up to 50%. Whilst internal client stakeholders will feel the heat from their superiors, it is hard for the developer to overcome the perception that they are the cause of a ‘slippage’.

Invariably what this pressure leads to is an iteratively created design and for a substantial proportion of the design and development activities being run in parallel. The likelihood of achieving this without frequent design and/or development changes, delays to the process (whilst the developer awaits client sign off, content or clarification on a design aspect) are going to occur no matter how much effort the developer puts micro managing the project.

So, clearly I am not a strong advocate of a work for hire business model for the serious games space. The question is what are the alternatives and is it even possible for the development community to adopt these?

Answers on a stamped, addressed postcard please!

CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS

Proposal Submission Deadline: November 30, 2008 Interdisciplinary Models and Tools for Serious Games: Emerging Concepts and Future Directions A book edited by Richard Van Eck University of North Dakota, USA

Introduction The study of serious games has grown from a few lone voices in the wilderness to a growing academic, industry, and popular recognition of the potential these tools hold for learning. Mirroring this burgeoning acceptance is the evolution of technology and tools to the point that it is becoming possible for anyone to develop and use games in real world settings. The study of serious games is on the cusp of becoming a discipline rather than a collection of ideas.

Unfortunately, the rush to pursue this promising learning technology has led to a fractionalized approach that is ill prepared to meet this challenge. The reasons for this are many and varied, but among them is the assumption that this new field requires new theories, models, and approaches. In reality, games are a new technology, not a new way to teach, and much of the theory needed already exists in multiple disciplines. Indeed, the serious games field is being defined from many different disciplinary perspectives. The problem is that even when existing theories and models within a particular discipline are brought to serious games, other disciplines collectively remain unaware of these new perspectives, thereby missing critical opportunities for synergy.

Furthermore, as theories and terminology from different disciplines enter the serious games lexicon, what is often overlooked is that there are subtle differences in meaning. Situated learning, for instance, means something different to a social constructivist than it does to a cognitive psychologist, an instructional designer, or a linguist. Likewise, while many agree that "motivation" is a key aspect of serious games, is this Bandura’s motivation and self-efficacy, or Keller's ARCS model for motivation from instructional design? Are we discussing Malone’s theory of intrinsic motivation for games or Deci & Ryan’s theories of intrinsic motivation from exercise science? While all are compatible perspectives in many ways, it stands to reason that the research and philosophy from which each is derived has something unique to contribute to the overall understanding of motivation in games.

Each field thus ignores what is similar amongst these disciplines, leading to the perception that narrative theory is more fractionalized and dense than it is, as well as what is different, therefore missing opportunities to develop rich, complex theories and models that advance the field. And now that interest in game-based learning has spread to disciplines for which the words video game would have been anathema 5 or 10 years ago (e.g., medicine, health and exercise, business), even more disciplines will seek to reinvent the wheel. It is therefore imperative that we pause to examine the rich diversity of disciplinary perspectives that have been collectively brought to serious games and begin to, if not consolidate, at least acknowledge the many perspectives from which the serious games canon is being developed.

The first step in doing so is to outline the basic contributions and approaches to this field from various disciplines. This volume will help to identify the ways that different disciplines are approaching the same ideas with slightly different tools and models, and it will begin to identify what theories and models will emerge specifically to the serious games field.

Objective of the Book This book will be organized into six sections, each comprising chapters written by authors from a variety of disciplines and, to a lesser extent from multidisciplinary perspectives. The first four sections of the book are designed to provide a structure that sets the context for the field (History & Origins), outline the approaches being used to define the field (Theories & Models), describe the current research that is (ideally) informed by those theories and models (Current Research), and describe how current tools and technology are instantiating (ideally) theories, models, and current research findings (Tools & Technology). A particular emphasis of this volume will be on reacting to and integrating the multiple approaches and perspectives being taken toward serious games through techniques such as coauthored chapters and new chapters or short essays generated in response to others in the volume, which will appear in the Integrated Perspectives section. Finally, the book will conclude with a section on where all of this seems to be leading this emerging discipline (Next Steps for the Field), again authored in collaborative as well as independent ways.

Target Audience The target audience for this book will be composed of professionals and researchers working in the field of serious games in various disciplines, including, but not limited to, education, instructional design, psychology, discourse, semiotics, narrative, information science, game design, gender, accessibility, artificial intelligence, and drama. It is hoped that this book will provide insight and inspiration for those working and conducting research in serious games as well as for those just coming into the field.

In general, topics should conceptually fit within one or more of the six sections of the book (History & Origins, Theories & Models, Current Research, Tools & Technology, Integrated Perspectives, Next Steps for the Field) although this list may evolve as submissions are received. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to, the following as they relate specifically to games, learning, design, and research:

-Theories and models (e.g., engagement, flow, cognitive disequilibrium) -Narrative psychology -Artificial intelligence -Avatars and agents -Cognitive load -Motivation -Scaffolding, ZPD, help-seeking -Learner control -Ontologies and taxonomies -Accessibility, equality, and inclusiveness -Individual differences (gender, age, culture, cognitive style, etc.) -Instructional design -Communication theory -Authoring tools -Platforms

Although such lists tend to imply a limited number of topics and may seem to suggest that proposals should address one and only one of these areas, submissions that capture the complexity and diversity of this emerging discipline are the primary goal, so please feel free to submit chapters that address topics not listed here. Authors are also encouraged, to the extent possible, to bring in multiple perspectives (because you have or are willing to study them or because you can seek out coauthors who themselves have slightly different perspectives), so feel free to also propose chapters that do this in whatever way seems most appropriate.

Submission Procedure Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before November 30, 2008, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by December 30, 2008, about the status of their proposals and will be sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by March 31, 2009. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the Information Science Reference (formerly Idea Group Reference) and Medical Information Science Reference imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com

.

Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded electronically (Word document) or by mail to:

Dr. Richard Van Eck
Instructional Design & Technology
Education 204
231 Centennial Drive, Stop 7189
University of North Dakota
Grand Forks, ND 58202-7189
USA
Tel.: 701.777.3574
Fax: 701.777.3246
E-mail: richard.vaneck at und dotedu

--

Richard N. Van Eck
Associate Professor, Graduate Director Instructional Design & Technology
Board Member, North American Simulations & Games Association
http://idt.und.edu
Department of Teaching & Learning Education Room 101
231 Centennial Dr Stop 7189
Grand Forks, ND 58202-7189
701.777.3574

Derek Robertson, LTS's national adviser for emerging technologies and learning, said: “It shows teachers needn't be afraid to use technology in the classroom.”

Lorna Neilson, a teacher at Hillhead Primary School in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, took part in the study.

She said the game had now become part of her daily classroom routine.

She said: “It's had a really positive effect. The children settle much more quickly, they concentrate better and are more motivated.

“I have a Nintendo DS at home and I was already a fan, but it’s been a great tool in the classroom. I think it's something we should see used in more schools.”

References:
Irvine, C. (2008, September 26). Playing Nintendo's Brain Trainer ‘can improve childrens’ maths skills.’ Daily Telegraph. [Online.] Retrieved September 29, 2008 from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3084265/
Playing-Nintendos-Brain-Trainer-can-improve-childrens-maths-skills.html

Also, I have blogged here about student travel and the benefits of exposing students to the cultures of the world.  I have submitted the necessary paperwork to  our Board of Education for the approval of our next trip overseas. (it will be our 7th trip) I am confident that the approval will be forthcoming and I will take a new batch of kids to see the wonder of Europe.  These expereinces are beyond anything I can do in the classroom and are activites that I can not replicate.

Just wanted to post an update.  When football is over hopefully I can become a bit more regular with my postings.

It is 2015. A category 5 hurricane ravaged Miami in 2012 and millions of Bangladeshi environmental refugees poured into India after a cyclone, so UN Secretary General John Podesta (that's him and Drew Jones to the left) convened the top two developed country emitters (US and EU) and developing country emitters (India and China) for 2.5 days to achieve progress on "managing the unavoidable and avoiding the unmanageable." 

Each delegation of 10 was played by about half Chinese, Indian, US, EU nationals and half US colleagues. 

The director of the event, Sharon Burke of CNAS, wrote to me this afternoon to articulate the event's purpose. She wrote, "To us, there were layers of purpose: the most general was that we wanted to
define climate change as a national security challenge; second, to give all the diverse, assembled players a common frame of reference (i.e., to educate them about climate change & national security). Those are low
bar goals, easy to jump over.  But the game was not really about achieving an agreement -- that was a goal within the context of the game, and while the results are relevant, this is one of those exercises where process is everything. The goal is really to see how people behave and whether you can make real world, useful observations about today from that."

Our team of SI contractor Lori Siegel, Ventana Systems' Tom Fiddaman and I used our "Pangaea" simulator to help delegates understand what climate results their commitments would create. 

As we had hoped, our "Pangaea" simulation model worked well, helping the parties understand and commit to (as much as possible) mitigation targets.

In particular, our and John Podesta's presentations of Pangaea simulation runs helped assure two results:

1. Broad acceptance that use of "climate intensity" targets are poor methods of achieving true emissions reductions.

2. Understanding that "day one" results were roughly halfway to Podesta's goal and the Copenhagen aspirational target, thus increasing commitment to work with China to achieve bigger commitments. 

A blogger for the journal Nature has covered the event.  So did CNAS and Tom Fiddaman. 

Here's what it looked like: On the first morning, Sec General Podesta presented a slide deck we built for him using Pangaea model runs, setting the challenge.  Later, the US team, for example, would ask its rapporteur to send an instant message to the Control Team, asking for our modeling team to visit.  I hustled to the room where the team, headed by Pew's Eileen Claussen and Senator Tom Daschle, would ask the question -- eg, if China and India met its Copenhagen targets, how much would the US and EU have to reduce emissions by 2025 in order to "turn the corner" on global emissions?  IE, see emissions fall? Back in the control room, Lori Siegel, Tom Fiddaman and I would adjust the model, create graphs, and report back first to the US team and then to everyone in the morning in a short plenary presentation and handouts. (Answer ~50%) Secretary Podesta would re-emphasize the points in personal meetings with countries. Then a call from China about costs of emissions reductions beyond 20%, and Fiddaman was off to their room. And later, from the Secretary General -- if all parties followed their commitments, how much would emissions fall? What would CO2 concentration be in 2100? Are we on track?  

Along the way, the ABC documentary team was taping everything, gathering material for the show they will air in January on "The Earth in 2100". 

Our big contribution: providing fast, clear, scientifically grounded feedback about how potential actions would impact climate results to improve the mental models of decision-makers and hasten action.

Another time, after the country leads asserted that "the magnitude of each country's contribution to global cleanup should be related to historic emissions, current emissions, projected future emissions....", the Pew team asked us to assemble these data in table and graph form and talk the delegates through the results to make sure they understand it all.

In the game, the Indian delegation surprisingly led the emissions reduction charge - committing to decrease emissions to 30% below 2005 levels between 2015 and 2025. The Chinese seemed to be in the most difficult position -- wanting ~7% per year GDP growth to provide jobs and housing for the urbanizing population, tempted to burn their coal to do so, and struggling to find a way to collaborate globally to mitigate climate change.      

If you're looking to incorporate some social media or other functions of the web into your serious game, this series looks like a must!  It runs for 12 hours today, starting at 9am until 9pm Eastern.  It will take a few minutes to sign up and get in on the WebEx seminar.   Check out the schedule here.  We're especially curious about this one:

6 PM (Joe Brennan)
Digital Storytelling Resources in DE streaming

Let us know what you think!

Found this blog entry useful? Click here to e-mail it to someone!

LONDON, UK – September 23rd, 2008: In a press release that will have Fleet Street journalists salivating in a fit of headline-writing orgasms, London-based virtually serious game developer, Doh! Studios, announced that it is working on a 3D ‘serious game’ aimed at reducing knife crime.

The game, tentatively called ‘Ded Missed’, will allow players to control a habitual violent offender, called ‘Killer Kenny’ through the streets of London’s East End. In a very clever twist, the apparent in-game objectives and the social purpose of the game are quite different.

Killer Kenny gains reward points for the number of innocent people who he maims or kills with a variety of household items including a kitchen knife, wooden spoon, iron, trouser press and, bizarrely, a copy of the Yellow Pages. The violence is profoundly vivid and will no doubt earn the game an 18+ rating, however the developer claims that their goal is actually to set out to try to reduce knife crime.

As Jeremiah Healey-Smythe, CEO of Doh! Studios explained: “Knife crime is on the increase. You only have to talk to the bloke in the pub to know this. We thought it would be a great idea to make a videogame based around knife (and other) based violence in an effort to show kids how bad it is.”

When pressed to justify this claim by one of the assembled media, Healey-Smythe explained further: “Yes we don’t deny that we sought to make an intrinsically satisfying game where excessive violent behavior towards innocent members of the public is the basis for success – through the ‘bloodometer’ - but the point we would like to emphasize is that by doing so, the ‘serious games’ element of our design philosophy comes in to play. We fully expect players to be morally and psychologically affected by the game to the extent that they will shun the carrying of knives.”

Ded Missed is set for release in August 2012 and The Sauce cannot wait to get our hands on working code and to max out the ‘Bloodometer’. In the meantime we won’t be carrying a knife around…not that we ever did!

Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) Press debuts the publication of "Beyond Fun: Serious Games and Media" this month. The book features the work of more than 15 international contributors examining how games and media can impact learning.

Topics include cheating and violence in video games, the use of games in classrooms, and how media tools such as simulations and blogs can foster learning and a new digital, procedural literacy. Instead of completely separate individual articles, the contributors to "Beyond Fun: Serious Games and Media" have orchestrated the articles together, reading and writing as a whole so that concepts across the articles resonate with each other.

"We're excited to release 'Beyond Fun'," says Drew Davidson, ETC Press Editor and Director of ETC in Pittsburgh, "it has evocative articles written by leading practitioners in the fields of education, learning, games and media."

"Beyond Fun" is the second book published by ETC Press, following the initial release of "stories in between: narratives & mediums @ play" which explores the interplay between stories and media. "Stories in between" focuses around the transmedia experience of "Myst" as it moves across media from games to books to comics and more.

The ETC Press is an academic and open-source publishing imprint that distributes its work in print, electronic and digital form. Inviting readers to contribute to and create versions of each publication, ETC Press fosters a community of collaborative authorship and dialogue across media. ETC Press represents an experiment and an evolution in publishing, bridging virtual and physical media to redefine the future of publication.

For more information, please visit: http://etc.cmu.edu/etcpress

The book looks very interesting. Here’s the write-up from the ETC Press site:

This book focuses on strategies for applying games, simulations and interactive experiences in learning contexts. The contributors orchestrated this collection together, reading and writing as a whole so that concepts resonate across articles. Throughout, the promises and problems of implementing games and media in learning experiences are explored. The articles have been authored by Clark Aldrich, Ian Bogost, Mia Consalvo, William Crosbie, Drew Davidson, Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Melinda Jackson, Donna Leishman, Michael Mateas, Marc Prensky, Scott Rettberg, Kurt Squire, David Thomas, Siobhan Thomas, Jill Walker Rettberg, and Jenny Weight.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License

The articles in the book are from two special issues of On The Horizon, published in 2004 and 2005. The book is a free download through Lulu.com, and is freely distributable for non-commercial purposes, which means professors and teachers can host the electronic version on their own servers and let students use it for free. A printed version is available for $24.95.

Over half of the posts evidenced systems based reasoning, one in ten evidenced model-based reasoning, and 65% displayed an evaluative epistemology in which
knowledge is treated as an open-ended process of evaluation and argument.

Steinkuehler and Duncan suggest that scientific habits of mind, developing proper skills of inquiry and increasing students’ scientific literacy, are not effectively developed in traditional school environments. On the other hand, virtual worlds and online games like World of Warcraft do engage students and encourage them to use the scientific method, or at least certain elements of it, along with teamwork and persistence to solve problems.

Hanson notes a recent interview in Wired between Dr. Steinkuehler and Clive Thompson, in which she describes her epiphany regarding the potential of MMORPGs for instilling scientific habits of mind. It occurred during 12 hour stints in Lineage, playing mostly with young boys scattered across the four corners. She and the boys would construct a theoretical model on defeating a raid boss, try it and see what worked; modify accordingly and try again. She realized she was witnessing the scientific method put to work within an online gaming environment, often without the participants realizing it. Thompson states it thusly:

This led Steinkuehler to a fascinating and provocative conclusion: Videogames are becoming the new hotbed of scientific thinking for kids today.

Click on over to Tom Hanson's summary. I think you'll find that his OpenEducation.net is well worth visiting.

While still new and in beta, the Learning Games Network site is excellent, and promises to be a font of information concerning educational video games for years to come. I’ve added them to my blogroll. Group discussion about The Ecology of Games will take place on their website. Andy has details on how to participate here.

Several interesting findings came out of the research, including one that seems obvious but now has hard data backing it up: almost all children in the US play video games. Lenhart’s team broke down the data by gender, genre, game title, console, and more, ferreting out many interesting items. Here is a paragraph on gender:

The stereotype that only boys play video games is far from true in 2008, as girls constitute a large (if not equal) percentage of total gamers: 99% of boys play games, as do 94% of girls. While almost all girls as well as almost all boys play video games, boys typically play games with greater frequency and duration than girls. Boys are significantly more likely to play games daily than girls, with 39% of boys reporting daily game play and 22% of girls reporting the same. Boys are also more likely than girls to play games on any given day (60% of boys did, compared with 39% of girls), and when boys do play, they’re playing for longer periods of time.

Lenhart said I’d be interested in the findings on school gaming software, and she was absolutely correct. I suspect this might spur additional academic investigation, as a host of potential research questions come to mind from the findings on school games. This paragraph details the breakdown of students reporting school educational game use:

One-third (34%) of American teens have played a computer or console game at school as part of a school assignment. Lower-income teens (41%) and teens from homes with lower overall education levels (41%) are more likely than their counterparts (29%) to have played a game for school. Black teens (46%) are more likely that white teens (32%) to have played a game at school for educational purposes. Younger teens are also more likely to have played a game at school than older teens: 40% of teens ages 12-14 have played a game at school as part of a school assignment, while 29% of teens ages 15-17 have done so.

From there, researchers asked the students which games they played at school. Interestingly, here the answers got fuzzier:

When asked what games they played in school, many teens said they could not quite remember or that they played “math games” or “typing games.” Thus, we are not able to report on the most commonly played games with a degree of precision, and it was clear that no one game or one kind of game predominated. The games mentioned by five or more teens were: Oregon Trail, Fun Brain, Lemonade Stand, and Roller Coaster Tycoon.

I found it interesting that half those heavily mentioned titles stem from series started in the 1980s, which I blogged about recently here. It reminds me of some research a friend of mine once worked on in a third world country, focusing on non-governmental organizations. People working for the NGOs thought they were doing great, while the locals often held different opinions when answering the same survey questions. I suspect teachers using video games in the classroom could answer specific questions about them better than their students, but this probably holds true for other pedagogical activities as well. What kid remembers the name of any particular intervention? Without casting aspersions on either students, teachers, or the educational video games played, it was an intriguing tidbit.

In summary, this is an important dataset and report on teen gaming that other researchers will want to mine for details. There is something of interest here to anyone focusing on video games. I also liked the attention Lenhart’s team gave to social interaction in gaming, a facet so often overlooked by non-players. The main page for the report is here.

References:
Lenhart, A., Kahne J., Middaugh, E., Macgill, A. R., Evans, C., & Vitak, J. (2008, September 16). Teens, video games, and civics. Pew Internet & American Life Project. [Online]. Available: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/263/report_display.asp

The Eighties were an exciting time for video games, as graphics and computing power increased to the point where games started to become visually appealing and interactive. Educational games from that decade in particular taught teachers, parents, students, and designers things that are still influencing titles today.

Thanks to the wonders of the web, the original versions of these games are often available online, and there are discs and ports to other platforms floating around as well. Playing the original versions, while nostalgic, also helps remind us what made these games important. Some things they taught us were good (learning can be fun when presented properly). Some things, not so good (skill and drill only gets you so far, even in a game). Read on for a trip down memory lane, a discussion of each game’s significance, and some locations to try out versions for free.

1. The Oregon Trail

Released: The Oregon Trail came out in 1985 for the Apple II from Brøderbund. Earlier versions were produced by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC).

Significance: Showed us resource management could be a fun and thoughtful element within an educational video game, with a strong dollop of historical context to boot.

Commentary: First developed in the 1970s by student teacher Don Rawitsch, the game probably stretched the boundaries of good taste in some ways, perhaps making it all the more intriguing to school children. Some of the elements bordered on the scatological (“You have dysentery!”). The hunting mini-game was popular with boys, introducing video game shoot-em-ups on school computers; those were more innocent times. But teachers in the 1980s were happy to put all those Apple II and IIe computers to good use engaging students. Even better, kids actually picked up a pedagogical point or two.

A good review, and a link to the original disc image and an Apple IIe emulator are available over at classicgaming.gamespy.com. A web version requiring merely a browser plugin is available at virtualapple.org. An online version called Westward Trail is available here.

2. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

Released: The original Carmen Sandiego title also came out in 1985 for the Apple II from Brøderbund; 1985 was a good year for the company.

Significance: Showed us a boring school topic (geography) could be presented in an interesting way within the videogame medium.

Commentary: According to Wikipedia, Gary Carlston, who helped found Brøderbund, was personally committed to making geography fun and spearheaded efforts to develop the game. Indeed, almanacs were never so cool as students followed the trail of a master thief across the world. Subsequent titles focused on the United States, Europe, and even the space-time continuum. The Carmen Sandiego games were lauded for their educational content, and found their way into classrooms everywhere. For a while, The Learning Company kept up a free online version based on the TV series. Alas, those wishing to play down memory lane for free will have to check the abandoned software sites. As of this writing, the 1991 DOS version is available for download here.

3. SimCity

Released: One of the two first games released by Maxis, in 1989.

Significance: Showed us that games without a clear way to win can still be fun, educational, and time consuming.

Commentary: The first smash hit from legendary game designer Will Wright, and one of the first for the Maxis software company, SimCity was destined for greatness. Legend has it the project was turned down by all the big gaming companies, including Brøderbund, when Wright pitched it on account of the game’s objectives were ill defined. How they must rue the day now, as the Sim line of titles has sold in the multi-million copy range for years. The game spearheaded a wide variety of complex computer social simulations featuring variable manipulations for education, business, and entertainment.

Users have long been able to play Classic SimCity online. Earlier this year, the original code was released as open source so it could be loaded on the XO, better known as the “$100 Laptop,” as part of the One Laptop Per Child initiative. The open source version uses the name Micropolis, Wright’s original name for the program.

4. Reader Rabbit

Released: The first title in the Reader Rabbit series was released by The Learning Company in 1989.

Significance: Showed us that computer games could be effectively used in early education introducing toddlers to language arts.

Commentary: Reader Rabbit is a household name in educational software, and the series remains active. Reader Rabbit became one of the early educational gaming series that capitalized on name brand awareness. Many innovators in the edutainment genre followed the Reader Rabbit formula of placing educational content for young players in a fun and interactive environment. Among the more notable: titles in the JumpStart series.

The first edition of Reader Rabbit featured word games designed to introduce letters and sounds to children. Subsequent titles rapidly increased in complexity. It’s hard to find the original online, but for those interested in sampling the look and feel of the series, Riverdeep offers a trial download of the Learning to Read with Phonics version here.

5. Math Blaster

Released: The first title in the Math Blaster series was released by Davidson in 1987.

Significance: Demonstrated how basic math worksheets could be fun when delivered within a videogaming environment.

Commentary: Math Blaster is yet another household name in edutainment with versions still being released under the brand. Brian Crecente over at Kotaku noted a version for the Nintendo DS is to be ported over later this year. One item of interest is the notion of interspersing math problems within a pure gaming environment. I remember playing a version requiring the proper answering of basic equations in order to load up on ammo for the space “blasting” game. This particular type of edutainment has been criticized as the “chocolate covered broccoli” approach to educational gaming, notably by Justin Peters in Slate among others. In other words, it couches the boring, educationally valuable stuff (math worksheets, in this case) within a fun gaming environment. In that regard, many serious game designers today often try other approaches, such as integrating pedagogy directly in the game play. Finding a free online copy to play is tough, but a 2 hour free trial of a recent version is available from DemoNews.com.

6. Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing
Released: Software Toolworks released the first version of Mavis Beacon in 1987.

Significance: Showed us computer skills could be effectively drilled through playful software.

Commentary: I was in an electronics store in College Station in the late ’80s, near the software section. A couple of elementary teachers walked in, and one of them saw the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing box on the shelf.

“Look! It’s Mavis Beacon,” she said, a note of wonder in her voice.

The other one said, “Mavis! What are you doing now!?”

They stood and stared for a while, gushing in their praise for Ms. Beacon. After they left, I wandered over and inspected the box. On impulse, I bought it and brought it home. Someday I’ll have to write about the house I lived in while attending Texas A&M. Up to eight guys lived there at any given time; most were engineering or ag science students. We had a BBS set up on a separate phone line, and spent a lot of time on TAMU mainframes. It was a terrific introduction to educational computing, and PCs were still young back then. To show you what nerds my roommates and I were, all of us took turns on Mavis Beacon to see who could type the fastest, a competition that lasted all semester.

Alas, little did the elementary teachers from so long ago know, nor I, nor my roommates, but Mavis Beacon was a marketing nom de guerre. It turns out the picture of the smiling Mavis was that of a model, and like Betty Crocker she was a persona created to sell products. Regardless, the product was a good one, and it has helped countless people improve their typing down through the years. Version 17 of the venerable program is available for trial download here.

7. Lemonade Stand
Released: Created by Bobb Jamison from the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) in 1973; coded for the Apple II by Charlie Kellner in 1979. Copies were included with Apple computers sold throughout the Eighties.

Significance: Showed us that potentially complex and hard to understand concepts like economic theory could be simply and effectively illustrated in a video game.

Commentary: MECC was one of the great success stories of early educational computing, and Lemonade Stand is perhaps their most famous program after The Oregon Trail. A holdover from the 1970s, a version of Lemonade Stand was included with Apple II machines into the Eighties. Countless school children fired it up and were introduced to economic theory through playing the game. A web version (one among many) is available here.

The game was a “practical simulation,” combining economic theory with simple concepts kids understand (i.e., a lemonade stand). It showed that with judicious decisions, positive outcomes were possible even with variables outside the player’s control (like the weather). The concept has not died, and there are later versions like Lemonade Empire, Hot Dog Stand, and others which follow the same concept.

8. Number Munchers
Released: The DOS version was released in 1988 by MECC.

Significance: Showed basic skill and drill for math could be much more fun on a video screen than on paper.

Commentary: NumberMunchers was the first title in MECC’s muncher series, followed by WordMunchers and others. Vaguely resembling PacMan, players rushed to find correct numbers to the problem onscreen before getting “eaten” by troggles, a process which forced quick mental calculations. It continues to prove exceptionally popular, both among those remembering it from their school days to new adherents recently discovering the game. Online versions abound, but the most important one is over at numbermunchers.org. The actual game can be freely downloaded from PC Magazine here.

9. Zork
Released: 1980, Infocom’s first game.

Significance: Showed that interactive fiction was a compelling medium.

Commentary: To anyone who played it, the opening lines from Zork are immortal: “You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.”
Was it educational? Indirectly. The game certainly made players read and think, exercises which parents and teachers have harangued youngsters about for years. I played an early version of this game thanks to a fun loving uncle who had access to his office’s mainframe after hours. I think the game was an eye-opener as to what could be done with narrative text and programming. It inspired legions of imitators, but was quickly made obsolete by such graphical games as Wizardry and Ultima I. Infocom’s fate was tied to the ascension of graphical computing as well, as it was bought out by Activision and faded from prominence before the end of the decade. There are still versions of all games in the Zork series floating around online, and its predecessor Adventure. Java versions of Infocom titles as of this writing are available here.

10. Windows Solitaire
Released: Developed in 1989 by Microsoft intern Wes Cherry. Included in Windows 3.0 and every Windows version since 1990.

Significance: Eased the transition to a mouse-based GUI for millions of computer users. Showed us games can have an enormous impact on business computing skills.

Commentary: Before 1990, early versions of Microsoft Windows were nothing more than fancy menu systems, presenting a list of programs to choose when starting the computer. I recall reading PC Magazine when Windows 3.0 was introduced, telling us that finally here was a version of Windows worth getting, so I did. Like many others firing up Windows 3.0 the first time, I noticed the Games folder, and quickly tried out Windows Solitaire. The brilliance behind placing this game within Windows was the fact most DOS users grew up on keyboard commands and shortcuts. Despite the proliferation of menu systems, most computers booted to the C prompt, requiring a typed command to start programs. Windows 3.0 not only used the mouse, it required the mouse for navigation. After a few rounds with Windows Solitaire, even the most diehard keyboard shortcut user who had used the same key combinations since the days of WordStar, became proficient with clicking, dragging and dropping with a mouse. In some ways, Windows Solitaire became the most successful educational video game of all time.

Windows Solitaire is still available for free in Vista. The Media Center Solitaire Power Toy for XP is available from Microsoft here.

Honorable Mention: M.U.L.E.
Released: 1983 from Ozark Softscape via Electronic Arts, originally for Atari products.

Significance: Showed developers how to do multi-player action. Inspired many future programmers.

Commentary: Lazarus Long was a character developed by science fiction author Robert Heinlein as a time travelling fellow who could not, would not die. In Time Enough for Love, readers found Long on a frontier planet, where old fashioned technology was used until colonists could become self sufficient. The book provided an interesting dichotomy between space ships bringing in supplies and colonists using farm animals to settle the new world. Among the many derivative works from Heinlein’s writings (the Starship Troopers board game and movie, for instance), came M.U.L.E., an early multi-player video game. M.U.L.E. stands for Multiple Use Labor Element, and is named after the animals used in Heinlein’s book. The game focuses on supply and demand economics, and allows players to take turns exploiting resources on a recently colonized planet (the planet’s name is Irata in the game, or Atari spelled backwards).

One of the nice things about writing a blog is feedback from readers, and with any top ten list somebody may feel an important item is left out. Keri Mogret commented to suggest M.U.L.E. should be included as an influential educational game from the 1980s, and I heartily agree, resulting in the addition here of M.U.L.E. to the original top ten.

This particular game was something I’d heard about and later read about, but never had the pleasure of playing. (Yes, I read all of Heinlein’s books, but never played the games. Sorry. I did see the Starship Troopers board game at a relative’s house, ca. 1980, and looked at it but didn’t play.)

Via emulators, M.U.L.E. can be downloaded nowadays from several sources. Here’s one good site, and here’s a great fan site. Subtrade is reportedly the best clone of M.U.L.E., and by some accounts is actually better than the original game.

Honorable Mention: Rocky’s Boots
Released: 1982 by The Learning Company for various platforms; authored by Warren Robinett and Leslie Grimm.

Significance: Showed us a graphical game engine was viable for educational gaming.

Commentary: Rocky’s Boots and its sequel, Robot Odyssey (based on the same gaming engine) were puzzle games requiring players to think their way through solutions. The object of the game involved kicking different shapes off a conveyer belt for points. The concept of using computer graphics in a game designed to make children think was somewhat revolutionary at the time, and Rocky’s Boots won several awards. Here’s a quote from an abstract for a paper in 1984:

Rocky's Boots (RB), an educational game developed for use with Apple computers, is widely considered to be one of the most imaginative and engaging pieces of