MediaLAB Amsterdam is now the Digital Society School! You are viewing an archive of MediaLAB projects. Content on this website may be outdated, and is without guarantee.
How can hybrid games & physical exercise help special needs students in the ages of 12-20 years old collaborate better and build more trust in themselves and others to become more independent? A project in collaboration with Orion and Lectorate Games & Play.
Today I played the game Classroom 2. This game is about cheating on multiple tests. Your main goal is to do so without the teacher noticing. Together with a few classmates you have to steal exams and sabotage equipment of the teacher. The story where this game is built upon is really entertaining. Even though the graphics aren’t good at all, the game keeps you hooked because of the various levels and the funny storyline. Usually, at least in the beginning stages of the game, the teacher moves around in a certain loop. Because the teachers’ line of sight constantly keeps changing you can take advantage of this by staying out of the line of sight, consult the notes of your comrades and get back in your seat without getting caught.
+ Many levels and clear goals within these levels.
+ Funny sounds when the teacher is talking.
+ Simple game. Not hard to understand.
+ Build-up in difficulty in the game is well done.
– Can be frustrating when you keep getting caught by the teacher. The level isn’t going to get easier, even if you have played that level 100 times.
– In some of the levels you have to move very quick to reach your goal. Sometimes it seems like you just can’t make it and this is very demotivating to play the game.
Happening is an app where you can create groups and add functionalities. For example split the bill between you and your friends or a date picker. I created a Playful Learning group but we did not split the bill, we did some photo hunts! In these hunts you get an assignment, take a photo of you kissing someone. First hunter gets 10 points, if you’re second you can win 2 more points. The idea of the game is fun, but the fun feeling did not last for the whole weekend. You can cheat very easily, if you update a picture you automatically win, even if you didn’t live up to the requirements. Conclusion, it was nice for the friday afternoon and we did not take things seriously but we send each other some funny pictures.
Skyrim is the kind of game that you start up at the beginning of the evening with the intention of just playing for 30 minutes and before you know it, 6 hours have past and you promise yourself that the next level will definitely be the last. The game has the amazing gift of eating away all your time without you noticing it, which is in my opinion the mark of a great game.
But let me explain to the uninitiated what the game exactly is. In Skyrim you explore a massive open fantasy world full of dungeons, wizards, bandits and dragons. At the start of the game the player makes his or her own avatar and after a brief tutorial (in which you have to escape from being sentenced to death) you are free to explore and do whatever you want. Will you help a village get rid of a terrorizing werewolf? Or will you try to get into the mages guild? Or maybe become a thief and steal your way to richdom? It is all possible and it’s up to the player whatever he or she wants to do.
This is what makes Skyrim so addictive, there is always something new to do, a new place to explore or another quest to embark upon. You are free to make your own story and if you don’t feel like doing something, you have 10 other things to do. For example, I started out as the worst thief ever, by accidentally wandering in the wrong room during a burglary, which turned out to be the room of the guards. After being sent to prison I tried to escape three times, however I got caught every time. When I finally got out of prison, a dragon attacked the city and during the fight I accidently shot a guard in the back. So after the dragon died I had to go prison again.
None of these events were part of a story or designed by the programmers. They just happened because of my actions and that is what makes the game so exciting. Every player has his own random stories and every time you play, you experience new things. It is the perfect example of a “virtual world” that is tons of fun to explore.
Super Hexagon is the kind of game that is easy to understand but very hard to master and very addictive. The rules are simple, you control a triangle around a hexagon shape and with this triangle you need to dodge walls that move towards the hexagon. The only controls you have are left and right, that’s it. But what seems like a simple game quickly becomes devilishly hard. The walls “attack” you from all sides and you get immediately the feeling that you’re being overrun. There is no winning in this game, it is all about how long you can dodge the walls and survive. To give you an indication of how hard this is, my best time so far is about 20 seconds.
But it is exactly this high difficulty level that makes Super Hexagon so addictive. Most rounds take between 10 or 20 seconds, and as soon as you fail you tap the screen and start again. There is no waiting involved and you always have the feeling that you can do better. There is also a great sense of progression, in my first rounds I couldn’t even get to 6 seconds but you quickly come in a flow where you keep beating your own high score. It is the ultimate mobile game, that you will start playing everywhere, as soon as you have some free time.
The Wikipedia Game
Back on high school we had to work a lot with computers during classes, to do research on the internet or to write papers. It was strictly forbidden to play games or to do anything other than studying, but this of course didn’t stop us from trying to play games anyway. To do this we had to come up with clever disguises for our game playing activities, one of which was The Wikipedia Game.
The Wikipedia Game is a game for 2 or more players, everyone having their own computer and access to Wikipedia. The goal of the game is to get from one Wikipedia page to another as quick as possible, by only using the blue links. So one player starts by choosing a starting page (“Sesame Street”) and an end goal (“eclipse”) and on the count of three all the players try to get from the Sesame Street page to the one about eclipse. The player who is the fastest is the winner and he or she gets to pick the start and end pages for the next game.
This was the perfect game to secretly play during classes. It was always exciting and it required a surprising amount of thinking. You had to connect subjects with each other and in your mind you tried to make a map of connections between subjects. Also, the teacher didn’t suspect a thing, because students visiting Wikipedia had to be studying, right?
Age of empires is a RTS game where you have to build a city that collects resources. You use these resources to create an army to conquer the map from other players.
What is fun about AoE? The fun part at the start of age of empires is the progress in developing your city and units. Later in the game it’s fun to hinder the resource income of your enemy. In the end of the game it’s fun to have big tactical battles with other players with a rock paper scissor mechanism.
Another fun part of the game is the teamplay. You can team up with other players and help them in collecting resources or making a big army.
Rock paper scissors
A fun part of the game is the rock paper scissors mechanism. Certain units are stronger against certain type of units. For example: Horses are good against bowmen, but are bad against speared infantry units. However, the infantry units are bad against arrows. So to take the maximum out of your units, you have to combine them when doing an attack on the enemy. This makes the game very tactical.
Team battles When you play with multiple people, you can have team battles. Online, a lot of players play 3v3 matches. In these matches, the team members have certain roles in the team. Most of the times at the start of the game, 1 person focusses totally on gathering resources. By doing this, the other players could focus more on building an army. The civilizations that you pick at the beginning of the game also have influence on the composition of the team. Some teams are good at the start of the game and some at the end. A lot of times while playing 3v3, one of the teammembers has a support role.
Bad Piggies is a construction game. You need to build a vehicle that gets to the end of the level and use that vehicle to pickup all the items in the level.
What is fun about bad piggies?
The fun part about bad piggies is that most levels have multiple ways to finish them. You can build a plane, a car or a hoovercraft. You can get really creative and use a lot of items or you can keep it simple and build a small car.
It is also fun to see that you build it wrong and you mess up the whole level. It’s funny because of the art style in the game.
Globulos is an online multiplayer game where you have to lead your globulos (your team of strange alien-like figures) to victory in all sorts of games.
Some of the games are based on existing sports (like football, darts, basketball), other games are totally different.
Even though the rules were nowhere explained, everything was easy to understand. You knew the way of playing was always the same; you had to give direction and speed to your team in order to accomplish the objective. There are more than 20 games you can play and more than 50 fields.
Because of this variance in games this concept is very interesting.
+ Many games & many fields to play
+ Free, no registration required
+ Short, fun games to play
+ Quick start-up
+/- Online multiplayer
+/- Competitive
– Not possible to play when you have no internet
– Not possible to play if no one wants to join your game
– If your opponent is very slow it can be very frustrating
To play Globulos, go to: http://www.globulos.com/
To see some Globulos games in action, you can also check: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcEjNDNUfR8
Colouring is an exercise that is done a lot in preschool. You get a colouring picture and you have to colour it with pencils or markers.
What is fun about colouring?The fun thing about colouring is the amount of creativity that you can put in the picture. You can choose to color the picture in the right colours or you can go wild and pick a different colour.
I like to draw extra lines with black markers to edit the original lineart and add extras like eyepatches or walking canes.
It’s also a nice exercise because it’s really calming and you can use it to get to rest.
The game I want to talk about is Halo. I will discuss the storymode in this gaming insights paper.
This game is one of my personal favourites.
You play in the character of ‘Master Chief’, a cyborg who has to protect the human race from extinction. All hope depends on him because he has special capabilities that help him fight the aliens, the covenant, who are after exterminating human life. These aliens want to wipe out humans because of their religious believes.
The game is really fun to play. If you like shooters I would certainly recommend playing this game (Although it’s maybe a bit outdated on this moment, as the game was published 14 years ago).
What made the game such a success was:
+ It was easy to control your character, you really would get the feeling you were in control
+ You really had to outsmart the enemy. Therefore it was really challenging.
+ The enemies (or aliens) seemed to communicate with each other. The bigger aliens commanded the rest of them and this made the game realistic. Also, there were many kinds of aliens, all with their own strengths and weaknesses.
+ Also all the characters in the game had realistic emotions. This was something what also contributed to the realism of the game.
+ There was a huge amount of variation in the game. You had all kind of weapons and vehicles you could use. Also the firefights were never the same. The environment changed all the time.
+ It seemed like you wasn’t limited in the places you could go in the game, even though this was the case.
+ If you were lost you would get help of Cortana, the computervoice inside the masterchief’s head. She would give instructions on how to get back on the right track again.
+ The levels were challenging and huge, this contributed to the he game fun for everyone to success of the game I believe.
+ The music in this game was great.
+ You could play the storymode in different difficulty levels, this made the game fun for both skilled gamers as for people who almost never play videogames.
The things that could have been better in in the game were:
+/- When ‘the flood’ appeared in the game, it was less fun as it was before their appearance in my opinion. I think this was the case because these enemies didn’t play as tactical as the covenant. It did give a surprising twist to the story
+/- Some aspects in the storymode were over the top.
– There was one level (‘the library’) that was really long-winded. Also, the chance you would get lost in this level was greater than in the other levels.
Overall, this was one of the games I liked best. I could never get bored playing this and there were almost no parts in the game that I found annoying.
This week Jill and I made a first prototype with Makey Makey. First, we made the game Snake using Flash, but we figured that this game would be way too hard to play with the Makey Makey as a tool.
We decided it would be the most fun and useful for our project when we would use the Makey Makey as a tool for players to work and achieve certain goals together, as a team.
The game we chose to prototype with was “Bubble Trouble“.
We made a right and left step (to walk) and two gloves (to shoot) using cardboard and tinfoil. Our plan was that one person was the shooter, and the other person was the walker and these two had to work together to shoot the balls and accomplish levels.
We tested our prototype with Nick, Alexander and Dennis. Conclusion: team work is hard work but at least it was fun.
