Hi Juan,

This is truly a challenge! Children and young adults are very different target groups. Educational games already have the challenge to be appealing for a very broad usergroup. I think asymmetric games could be a solution. Having different roles for different user groups. I am not aware of any work on this for educational games but there is a lot of work on parameterizable games (attached paper) as well as different types of gamers (link to gamasutra). Maybe you can be successful combining both concepts. The idea is that players can customize the game to their play style with some parameters. You can either ask players or make a self adapting game. I hope this was helpful. If not do not hesitate to ask ;-).

Cheers,

 Markus

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6474/personality_and_play_styles_a_.php?print=1

Conference Paper Design and Evaluation of Parametrizable Multi-Genre Game Mechanics

I agree with Markus Krause, that in game development for children, your end users are entirely different audiences. Gather as comprehensive requirements as possible to design educational game for them so that the application comes up to their expectations.

You are both right. In order to fulfill different dreams, this game should adapt itself to those dreams. A one-size-fits-all solution, if exists, could be too risky here, possibly ending with too many/few features and being disliked by everyone.

Thanks for the references Markus, they are helpful in deed. While interesting, the Gamasutra article more than age differences handles personality differences, which can be seen at every age. In your study you use a very specific age group with an average age of 25.66 years. Your goal was to merge game genres, not players age. I am trying to reach a broader audience, from 8 to 25 years. The current version of the game already uses the difficulty level parameter, which affects the time pressure mechanic. We already have a very-simple-parameterized game, so, the next most obvious parameter is age, provided by the player. But ... what to adapt in the game mechanics respect to that age parameter?

By the way, wish you a happy new year :-)

Hi Juan,

Both articles were meant as an inspiration. In our paper we mix genres but maybe it is also possible to mix game styles in a similar manner. Imagine three different games or styles each matching a specific player type. This player types could be the types found in the gamasutra article. Depending on some parameters from the user you mix these game styles individually for each player. The parameters should indeed not be age but things like how much do you like to explore, how much do you like to interact with other players, and there a like. The challenge is now to find mechanics that can be altered using these parameters. I agree that the idea is a bit crazy but on the other hand age group 8 to 25 includes all types of gamers imaginable. Anyway your challenge sounds like a great idea and I am looking forward hearing more.

Cheers,

 Markus

Hi Markus.

Yes, the articles inspired med, they also moved me to an higher abstraction level. Now I'm wondering from how many perspectives are parameterizable games being approached: genre, personality, age ... Can you sugest a work on this topic?

I played Game of Thrones once and the character creation screen offered a lot of parameters to set up. Now I think again about it and it looks like some kind of personality test. Also, in Diablo, Sacred, and Dungeon Siege II for example, all asymetrical games, the game characters to play as are very different. I'm sure they have some personality model behind the scenes.

I made some research and found "Fundamentals of Game Design, 3rd ed." book, by Ernest Adams. In chapter 4, he groups children (and not so children too) under four categories:

• Preschool and kindergarten (ages 3 to 6)
• Early elementary (ages 5 to 8)
• Upper elementary (ages 7 to 12, the tweens)
• Middle and high school (13 and up, the teens)
• Late teens to mid-20s. Although these people are no longer children, their brains are still developing.

Then, he speaks about the following issues when designing games fot the previous groups:

• Hand-eye coordination
• Logic development
• Systematic thinking
• Immediate versus long-term goals
• Visual design
• Linguistic complexity
• Experimentation
• Reading
• Appropriate content

I think this is exactly what I was looking for before. This characterization of the potential players will show me where to look for customizable elements in the mechanics. Let's say I've got the hammer. Now I have to find the nails and Bang!, magic happens (I hope so). I will keep researching.

To avoid cross posting I created a new question:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/From_how_many_perspectives_are_parameterizable_videogames_being_approached

Hi Juan,

Your approach looks very promising to me! I am not aware of substantial research in this direction as my own focus has shifted a lot since the paper. There are definitely some aspects that depend on age as you mentioned content restriction might be one of it. Other elements such as reading are in my opinion variables that depend on the player and less on the age. From my own experience as a Dad ;-) I know that there are kids in kindergarten loving to read and people over twenty that hate to read in a game. I would probably have to groups of parameters. The first group is bound to age (content control) and a second group that depends on players actions or a personality test. A game that tries something similar to adapt to the player is Ultima X. I really hope your research takes of it sounds complex and complicated but would be great if it works! 

Cheers and a happy new year,

 Markus

Hello,

Working towards the parametrizable direction is certainly a  possibility and at some extent probably required, however I would personally reason in a different way: rather than trying to fulfill all the requirements of all the (many) age groups you need to serve, I would try to concentrate on what all the audiences _share_, and then working on those core similarities to deliver the educational message (which probably should be different depending on the age group, but here you can parametrize). After all, I enjoyed mario bros when I was 10, and even at 25, so why shouldn't be the same possible also for a "serious" game? One key thing to remember is that games are most of the time a learning experience by themselves (did you ever read the book "A Theory of Fun" by Koster?) and thus that you can deliver an educational message through game mechanics, and mechanics can appeal to various groups simultaneously more easily since they relate to the most fundamental aspects of playing.

For example: I have worked on a small educational game that was meant to explain to high school students of technical schools how an IT helpdesk service more or less works. We had in the game a few operators and a stream of people coming in forming a queue. By hovering the mouse over the people coming players could inspect their stories and thus their needs. Then, they needed to drag people to the (right) available employee that would fix their problems. Fixing needs time, so if the players were not reactive enough, people would queue up for too long, get angry, for example because of their serious-high-priorities issues, and leave, decreasing the score. Moreover, players would have the option of researching "upgrades" that would keep one employee busy for quite some time, but will then allow to fix some incidents way faster. Through the simple mechanic and the balance of the game, players could understand that reactivity is important, that operators should be kept busy with high-priority incidents, and that research is costly but pays off and should be done, which are the main ideas about working in an IT help desk company. But the fact that ideas were emerging from the mechanics made the game fun also for older/younger people :D

Good luck with your project and happy new year!

I'm at work right now, so sorry for very brief answer. Take a closer look at Minecraft game - it's suitable for almost any age or gender. It's achieved by combining very simple mechanics with optional use of more advanced ones. It enables youngsters to just play with growing plants but allows grownups to build 16-bit CPU inside game world. The answer is: try to build advanced mechanics on top of simple ones which will allow players to use what they learnt before, so the learning process would become reward itself. [sorry for my poor English]

edit:

It also may be an opportunity to make utilize some machine learning tricks to figure out how difficult next objective should be based on learning curve from all the previous - but this approach would stick you to designing LOTS of parametrized puzzles which is probably harder task than making rest of the game.