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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.
In this quiz I was the quizmaster and Anne, Jill, Alexander and Dennis were contesters.
In this music quiz 12 theme songs were being played out and the contesters could write the name of music of the series they thought they heard on a piece of paper. After each song they held their answer they wrote down on the paper in the air so that everybody could see what they thought the answer was. If someone gave the right answer he/she would get a point. The main goal was to score as much points as possible and ofcourse to have as much fun as you could possibly have.
The theme songs that were being played out were of the TV series:
– Alfred Jodocus Kwak
– Pokémon
– Tom & Jerry
– Woody Woodpecker
– The Adams Family
– Johnny Bravo
– Maya de Bij
– Niels Holgerson
– Inspector Gadget
– Skippy
– Rescue Rangers
– Pink Panther
The contesters thought the fun parts about the quiz were:
+ All competitors were motivated to get the answer right.
+ If you were a competitor and you knew the song it was also fun to see if the others knew the song.
+ Nostalgia.
+ The subject was suitable for everybody who was in the game.
+ A music quiz is very alive. This was considered much more fun by some of the contesters than a normal quiz withhout music.
The things the contesters weren’t that psyched about were:
– The speed rate in answering didn’t result in extra points, what was disappointing for the people who knew the answers very quickly.
– It’s only fun to play this game once.
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
Date: 20-02-15
Game: Red Alert 2- Yuri’s Revenge
Red Alert 2 – Yuri’s Revenge is a multiplayer real time strategy game for the Computer.
Why is Red Alert 2 – Yuri’s Revenge fun? Competitive
Red Alert 2 is a very competitive game. It’s fun to play with friends. You can see who is the best when you play a game with your circle of friends.
Tactical
The game is also very tactical. You can be really creative in the ways that you attack or defend a base. There are multiple ways to win the battle. When you combine the units in a good way, you can make a really good attack or defense plan.
Creative
You can’t just simply build 100 of the same unit, because the enemy can use defensive tactics to stop your attack. You can attack from land; air and from water. If you combine these, you can make it really hard for the enemy to stop your attack. You can do lots of different types of attacks by combining groups of units. You can make a really armored army that will only destroy the base or you can attack from a distance and defend the long range units with stronger units.
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.
Yesterday I played a very interesting board game called Scotland Yard, which is all about team-coordination and working together. Scotland Yard is a game about cops chasing down a spy through London. What makes the game so interesting is that it pits one player against the rest.
One player assumes the role of Mister X, the master spy, who has to avoid getting caught by the police for a set number of turns. The other players take the roles of cops who have to chase him down. Both Mister X and the cops travel by public transportation (taxi, bus and underground) between different stations on the map. The cops are represented by different coloured pawns, only the location of Mister X is unknown to them. He writes his location and where he goes on a sheet of paper and only reveals his location every 5 turns. The only thing the cops know is his last revealed position and what kind of transportation he uses, with this information they have to puzzle together where Mister X might be hiding to catch him.
Scotland Yard is a so called asymmetrical cooperation game, the way Mister X and the cops play is very different from each other. It’s very important that the cops work together and coordinate their movements, however Mister X plays alone and can use this information to plan his own movements. This makes for a very interesting game of cat and mouse, where both teams try to anticipate the movements of each other. The game also facilitates to different kinds of players, if you like cooperation games you can become a cop, if not, you choose the role of Mister X. Also the difficulty is much lower when you are a cop because you can rely on the advice of your teammates. The game allows two different kinds of players to play together, catering to the needs of both of them. This might make Scotland Yard a very interesting source of inspiration for our project.
