This is my essay for the 2nd assignment, just thought I would post it on here as I already have my draft on here too.
With particular reference to the readings you have undertaken this year what are the major design issues you have faced in developing a game for Key Stage 1 children
There are many ideas and methods I gathered from the earlier readings in the year to go forward with the key stage 1 game, for instance weather the game play mechanics are suitable for the sort of ‘fun’ a child would look for in an educational game and if it too easy that there is no struggle. I will go into depth on these along with some more readings which correspond with the struggles and design of our key stage 1 game. I will be using Greg Costikyan ‘I have no words I must design’ (2002), to reference about the design issues we faced along with Noah Falstein’s article called ‘Natural Funativity’ (2004)
Firstly the game we made had some constraints such as it being targeted towards key stage one children. When my particular concept of an archer shooting down balloons with letters in them to spell a word was put into where the design faze started and I thought it would be easy to create the game as I already had the idea but there were some major design issues which we came across. I will start off by looking at the Costikyan article where he writes about that Goals, structure, struggle and endogenous meaning. One of the many things he says in the article is ‘The structure, like the plot, is invented as needed – but kids do feel the need for structure, at times ’ (Costikyan, 2002) we took this and a lot of what he said about structure in the article to make sure we have a well-structured game, we decided that a decent structure backed up by an important story will be important for the game so that it becomes an enjoyable game which children would like to play rather than some of the educational games which can be lacking in uninteresting to some children of that age. The structure was going to be obvious from the outset and this problem was ironed out fairly quickly after some discussions over how it would be done. We decided on keeping it simple but try to keep the children entertained at the same time, so one item clicked and the bubbles coming down to spell the words was the final idea we went with along with background which should draw them into the game.
When Costikyan writes that Goals, structure, struggle and endogenous meaning are all needed when constructing a successful game we obviously took all the points into consideration. I have already spoken about the structural issue we faced so taking into account of the other points we did have some issues surrounding the goals of the game. The goal of the normal levels of the game was clear at first but after going into more detail with the coding we came across some simple things like how many words should be spelt in order to advance to the next level and others like I said before if the goal is actually achievable for children in the lower age bracket of Key Stage One. We had to come up with some answers to these problems and for the words we simply mixed them up so there are enough 3, 4 and 5 letter words on each level therefore hopefully allowing a child to spell a 3 or 4 letter world if they cannot spell the 5 letter word. Adding the variety in the words so children from 5-7 can all play the game was key as it’s designed to be for the whole of Key Stage One rather than just 5 or 7 year olds. The overall goal/final boss goal was to shoot the evil wizards name which in-turn ended up destroying him, his name would be jumbled up in bubbles floating around him. We wanted to have a climatic ending that made the game finish off on a high along with it being more on the game and fun side of things rather than just a flashing “Well Done for completing the game” at the end. For the child to have a slight change in game mechanic to avoid being bored of the same thing level after level was another aim for the boss level and final goal, at first we even wanted a simple mini boss to break up the game play too with the possible goal of having to knock him off a bridge. The mini boss goal would have been to knock him off a bridge into a lake or something which seemed child friendly; this would have the same goal of just scrapping the education side of things to break up game play as the mechanic would be changed just for one level. Time constraints however hindered the progress of these extra two levels, the mini boss was cut not too long into development as it just simply didn’t add too much in terms of how much work was need to put it in. The final boss was cut fairly near the end after some hiccups with the code, it did go from being still on for development to being scrapped quite a few times but about a month from the end as it just didn’t seem possible after some other bugs came up.
Seeing the two boss levels cut strengthened the cut scenes importance in order for the story to come across still. This didn’t cause too many problems apart from the script which was made slightly earlier in production being edited slightly to compensate for the bosses.
Struggle within the game was fairly important too as it was designed for Key Stage One children learning to spell. We didn’t want extremely easy words which they all knew as we thought it may bore the children getting the words spelt every time and it being an educational game we wanted to challenge them so they could perhaps learn a new word which is the goal of the game after all to teach children how to spell 3, 4 and 5 letter words just using the game medium as a method of doing so. The issue we faced with struggle was how to find some words which where a range from fairly easy to somewhat hard we think for a 5-7 year old. Being adults all over the age of 18 made this even harder, the thinking and research became incredibly important as we needed to get the correct item as the whole game depended on spelling and the children need to know what they are spelling. After many days of deliberation we started jotting down some words here and there trying to come up with some suitable ones, luckily we could test some of the words as another group member has a child at the age of 6 which was ideal. Once we heard this news thinking of some words became a bit harder as some of the suggestions seemed to be tricky. This is where the research came into play; we looked at similar spelling games which were aimed at the same age range to help with the sort of words which could be used.
Another issue we faced was the idea whether or not the child would actually find the game fun and enjoyable as we wanted to come up with something that didn’t feel like an educational game to play but in the end it was. In ‘Natural Funativity’ by Falstein he goes on to say under physical fun ‘Our primary urge is the survival instinct. Anything that directly threatens our survival automatically commands our full attention. It's not surprising that games, and in fact most of entertainment, use themes of survival to similarly capture the attention of players.’ (Costikyan, 2002) And under the heading mental fun he states ‘Even though we use our intelligence with physical and social fun, there is an entire set of entertainment activities including quite a few video games which focuses primarily on mental fun. We practice and improve our mental abilities in our leisure time just as we exercise our muscles and build social relationships’ – (Costikyan, 2002) The idea of having turning the concept of an archer shooting game which would come under the physical fun means the primeval instinct of shooting something and attacking, which seems to be more so in males into a mental challenge and mentally fun was a good idea. Mental fun is perfect in making the game a decent educational game that seems to be enjoyable at the same time, crossing physical and mental fun to make a game which rekindled some of the primeval instincts of fighting and those of mental challenges. Obviously being a children’s game we could have anything too dangerous or inappropriate so even something simple like when you click on the dog or a bird so you can spell the item an arrow doesn’t fire which may seem trivial but had to be done for a children’s game. Lots of issues about the game being suitable for children while still having some of the physical fun elements to it was thought about as no one had paid much attention to games of this sort before. This was probably was the biggest issue we had when designing the Key Stage One game as if it too dull or just not actually suitable for the children we would have failed. Reading into what Falstein said we decided to go along more of the mental route and keeping the physical fun to just the archer and some of the backgrounds in being adapted to that. Due to the game being a spelling game the mental fun is a big issue we decided on having 3-5 letter words because the research done had shown us they should be comfortably is able to spell those words. Having some 3 letter words and some 5 letter words in one stage was important for the fun too otherwise if a young Key Stage One child played the game and could only spell either 3 or 4 letter words that would be fine too.
In conclusion the articles we read throughout the year were a huge help in finding the solutions to some of the issues we faced, this may have been because it was the first proper game which we all worked on so some of the issues may be realised second time around. In particular though the Greg Costikyan article called ‘I Have No Words I Must Design’ was the biggest help in terms of games design in my eyes as it stated what successful games all have and what sort of things make up every day games. I felt the ‘Natural Funativity’ article was also a good read and help as I never thought of how fun the game concept was or if it would actually appeal to children. Luckily along with reading the other article from Costikyan we were able to figure out from our initial design if it was viable to make an education game which was actually fun as after we played some of the other education games they seemed just question based and to be frank fairly boring. We wanted to stray away from the traditional education game to make it fun as well as being educational so hopefully they would learn while they play.
Greg Costikyan, (2002), I Have No Words I Must Design, Costik
http://www.costik.com/nowords2002.pdf
Noah Falstein (2004) , Natural Funativity, - Gamasutra
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2160/natural_funativity.php
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