Here we talk about design, development, games, the publishing industry, and any other web-related stuff that we find interesting. And, of course, we talk about what we are up to in the studio, especially our projects.
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It’s our favourite time of the year, and to celebrate Halloween we created a new game for your enjoyment. Your village is under attack by hordes of the undead, and only you, with your trusty catapult, stand to fight them. Head on over to our games page and give it a try.
McDonald’s has taken a big stride in the web games arena with a new European marketing campaign for Happy Meals. Instead of plastic figurines, they will offer virtual toys in upcoming Happy Meals, and they will use web games to advertise them. Fuel Industries has done a wonderful job building the game site, titled Fairies and Dragons. The site ties together a series of games and puzzles that revolve around eight virtual toy characters: four fairies and four dragons. In their Happy Meals, children—and many adults, I’ll wager—will receive their virtual fairy or dragon (on a CD) and some playing cards. They can interact with the virtual toys on their computer and, of course, play all of the wonderful games on the Fairies and Dragons site.
How can we better educate our children? It’s a question that competes for a voice with Fast Food News headlines and breaking world events. Meanwhile, educators compete with actual fast food and entertainment media for the attention of their students. Ironically, if we focussed more on education around the world, there would be fewer doom-and-gloom headlines, and brainless pop news would garner less attention. Well, perhaps not the latter, but I can dream can’t I?
We need a way to bridge the gap between learning and entertainment, and games are the perfect medium for this. Games have a long and successful history of mixing education and fun. Nearly all games are educational in the sense that they teach logic, strategy, puzzle-solving, and hand-eye coordination, but there is a specific set that focuses on academic subjects: educational games. I have many fond memories of playing Oregon Trail, and later generations had games like Carmen Sandiego. In these, you have some fun and you learn about history and geography along the way. But how can these educational games compete with World of Warcraft or Halo? While dying of dysentery sounds interesting, it doesn’t compete with slaying dragons, fragging enemy teams, or warping through solar systems to wage intergalactic battle. So how do educational games compete?