Re: game or not

[Maria Droujkova]

Dear Jean-Baptiste and Rolf,

Thank you for this discussion, and thank you for creating DragonBox. I sent you invites to the Math Game Design group, whom I am CCing on this exchange, because many people there will be interested in your work - and in the issue of defining games in particular. 

For people who are joining this conversation, you can see some screenshots here:  http://wewanttoknow.com/game-based-learning/ 

I loved the project, and I will be referring people to it as an example of several strong aspects in math interactives/games design. In my review, I said the project is promising, largely because it's based on a math metaphor. Users can learn within metaphor-based environments, not just practice what they already know! I also raised an issue discussed below - WHAT IS A GAME?

On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 1:39 AM, jb <j...@wewanttoknow.com> wrote:

Dear Maria,
as one of the game designers and mathematics teacher, I appreciate your comments.

As a mathematics teacher I am obviously interested in high level thinking tasks. But it takes some time before we can provide the right level of choices that can be interesting for players.

This is in response to my comment: "Game can be defined as a series of interesting choices. Players are supposed to make a choice and see in-game consequences. Choices also support the development of tactics and strategies. There are no player choices that I have seen, just moves that are correct or not. This leads me to define this project as an interactive tutor or a simulation, not a game."

I agree that low levels of any game, or whole games for beginners, can't provide high level choices. They have to provide low-level choices. 

In a game, there must be some room for play. 

Players must have some agency and autonomy to make decisions within the game world that have in-world consequences they can observe, not just a "fail" message (visual or textual). 

To use another term, players can't always be railroaded into one sequence of actions they must follow.

We dont have the capacity to make many games, so we had to target the largest possible group. We have players who are 5-6 years old playing and solving literal equations...

So the progression must be as smooth as possible.

I want to applaud you on the progression curve, in particular. Nice flow there! That takes a lot of thought and a lot of knowledge of learners. I think this will even work for younger kids (2-4 year olds) with parent assistant. Within some of my projects, I work with kids under five, and this looks promising for them!

Some designers argue that there must be steeper increases in difficulty, randomly sprinkled through your progression curve, to increase player interest. I am of two minds about it for math games in particular, because of high levels of math anxiety even some six-year-olds are already likely to have, unfortunately.

 

That said, some levels require quite a lot of thinking. I can give you some examples. The box can be in the denominator. Players with absolutely no prerequisite knowledge will have to figure out how to solve that kind of equations, something which is never done in a classroom based on instructions. Or decide which operations to perform first.

A lot of thinking is something we love to see in kids! It is a big plus of your project. However, not every entity that requires thinking is a game. For example, problems, debates, engineering projects, question and answer sessions may all require active mathematical thinking without becoming games. 

So I have the pleasure to tell you DragonBox is a real game. Both children and parents have to think a lot.

In addition, we have entered a partnership with the center for game science in Washington to make Dragonbox fully adapable and test it with thousands of pupils.

Don t hesitate to share your thoughts. If you intend to design games yourself, there is certainly room for cooperation : )

Excellent news - I am very happy for you! When you do testing, you can ask kids to give suggestions for DragonBox 2, as well. 

Collaboration sounds good, too.

Cheers,

Maria Droujkova 

[Maria Droujkova]

Here is a lengthy review of DragonBox from GeekDad:  http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/06/dragonbox/all/ 

A quote about one of the strongest aspects of the product - the gradual curve of learning: "Here, though, we have an app that is allowing kids to learn a tricky subject through a gradual introduction of new rules and concepts — just like playing through an in-game tutorial where you first learn to look around, then walk, then jump, then pull out your weapons and fire, and then you’re off and running and you never had to sit down and read a manual. When the developers tested their app with hundreds of students in Norway, they found that more than 30% of them were able to solve equations after an hour of playing the game, and that rate more than doubled after two hours."

At one of the game workshops I did for math teachers this year, a participant said, "Math is my favorite game! Just solving a good problem..."

Something to ponder...

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova
919-388-1721

Make math your own, to make your own math