Where's the game?

Was over at my friend Darius' blog.  It's a good read and well worth your effort to keep up with the man.  he's going to run the entire industry some day, or at least know everyone in it.

He's pulling in an RSS feed that keeps him up to date on games.  I happened upon a link to Sheppard Software.  Go there and try the games.  Please.  I'll wait....

Dum da dee.... dum da doo.... dum da dum... dum... Dum.... DUM.

Ok, back yet?  You should be.   The 'games' don't take that long.  In fact, I don't recall seeing any games there.  Puzzles perhaps.  Diversions.  But nothing that strikes me as being a GAME!  In fact, there is nothing that sets up any of the key factors that would distinguish these as beinga game.

I know I keep writing about this, but it is IMPORTANT.  Until we as educators demand quality gameplay in the games that are produced and touted as being educational games, the field will not advance.

I'm sure the coders at Sheppard are very sincere and applaud them for trying something novel and for allowing everyone to try it.  If someone from that company wants to comment I would be happy to turn this into a discussion rather than a rant.

~~crosbie out

Comments

[Darius]

Actually, the feed comes from http://del.icio.us/dariusk/games -- it's just a list of things that I've bookmarked and filed as "games". So it's really *me* keeping *everyone else* up to date!

Salen/Zimmerman would say that those educational dealies are in fact games. "A system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome."

System: Sure, it's there: objects, attributes, relations, environment.
Conflict: It's a mental challenge.
Rules: Sure.
Quantifiable outcome: Absolutely.

'Course, if you don't agree with Salen/Zimmerman, that's fine. I like their definition because it includes things like these "educational half-games." While many good definitions exclude these types of play-exercises, I like the fact that the Salen/Zimmerman definition is inclusive, since these things *intuitively* feel like games to me.

[Bill]

Darius, First, welcome to the kvetch. Glad you can drop in.

Second, damn you, you have to go and point out a glaring hole in my rant. But it doesn't change the fact that if it is a game, it isn't very good.

What I'm reacting to is that it could be so much more. It *should* be so much more. I allow for it to be a puzzle, a mental challenge, a form of play that Sutton-Smith would recognize, but I don't know that I agree with "game," Eric and Katie's definition not withstanding.

What I see this as akin to is one of those pre-school wooden puzzles. Everything has a proper place. The goal is to pattern match or to remember the proper location of the major land masses and oceans. The time constraint adds the potential for conflict and twitch measurement. IT may add a sense of urgency, but what purpose does it really serve? There is no desirable educational goal that I can readily define.

Maybe I just haven't been in elementary school for too long. This may be an important chunking exercise. But why can't most of us identify the countries of eastern europe, let alone the former Soviet republics central asia...

Did I mention that this is Everkvetch?

So what do you say to this - why don't we take on a quick design exercise to propose but not implement. Let's choose one of the games on the site and conceive of a rework that:

* is implementable in flash
* could be written by someone knowledgable in a month
* engages more than one player at a time
* is playable in no more than 5 minute segments

What do you say? Are you game?