Trying to define how to asses games

I will evaluate the games by the following guide lines to better understand:

URL:

Genre of game:

Target:

Design:

Strategy:

Complexity

Find an interesting video in youtube about autism

This video is very interesting as the girl in the video is a severely affected autistic person who can not care of herself. Just to boil water it takes her hours (watch in another video of her) but what is interesting is that she can explain what she does it might not make sense for us but to her she is interacting with nature and explains that us “normals” do not take notice of her unless she talks our language. It seems we are living in different worlds yet we share it. It is worth to watch her video in order to understand a little more the autistic world. She even is a member of second life

In my language video youtube

In my language

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc

Second Life with Autism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmTXGQ2BhUA

Gantt chart

I am trying to work out a chart plan for the project s I can work out my time for the development of the game.

plan for the project

Plan for a survey

I will use Vivek Bhaskaran to plan a questionare.

How To Effectively Conduct An Online Survey

By Vivek Bhaskaran

So you’ve decided to conduct an online survey. There are a few questions in your mind that you would like answered, and you are on the lookout for a fast and inexpensive way to find out more about your customers, clients and so on.

First and foremost, you need to decide what the objectives of the study are. Ensure that you can phrase these objectives as questions or measurements. If you can’t, you are better off looking at other means of gathering data, like focus groups and other qualitative methods. Online surveys tend to focus more on quantitative data collection.

Here are a few guidelines:

1. Review the basic objectives of the study. What are you trying to discover? What actions do you want to take as a result of the survey? This helps you to double check the validity of the data-collection mechanism. Online surveys are just one way of collecting and quantifying perspectives.

2. Visualize all of the relevant information items you would like to have. What will the output report look like? What charts and graphs will be prepared? What information do you need to be assured that action is warranted?

3. Rank each topic in items 1 and 2 according to the value of the topic. List the most important topics first. Revisit items 1 and 2 again to make sure the objectives, topics and information you need are appropriate. Remember, you can’t solve the problem if you ask the wrong questions.

4. How easy or difficult is it for the respondent to provide information on each topic? If it is difficult, is there another way to obtain the information by asking another question? This is probably the most important step. Online surveys have to be precise, clear and concise. Due to the nature of the Web and the fickleness of users, if your questions are too complicated and are not easy to understand you will have a high dropout rate.

5. Create a sequence for the topics that is unbiased. Make sure that the questions asked first do not bias the results of the subsequent questions. Sometimes providing too much information or disclosing the purpose of the study can create bias. Once you have a sequence of topics, you can have the basic layout of a survey. It is always prudent to add an introductory text to explain the project and what is required of the respondent. It is also professional to have an ending thank-you text as well as information about where to find the results of the survey when they are published.

6.Determine the type of question that is best suited to answer the question and provide enough robustness to meet analysis requirements. This means deciding whether you should use open-ended text questions, dichotomous, multiple choice, rank order, scaled or constant sum (ratio scale) questions. There is a fine line you need to walk here: Generally, tougher analysis requirements will lead to more complicated questionnaire design. However, there are a couple of tools available to make life easier:

a) Page breaks: Avoid having a huge scrolling survey. Introduce page breaks as necessary. Please also refrain from just having one question per page. This increases the time to complete the survey as well as increases the chances of dropouts.

b) Branching: Use branching and skip logic to make your surveys smart. Avoid using text like, “If you answered No to Q1 then Answer Q4.” This causes respondent frustration and increases the dropout rate. Design the survey using branching logic so that the correct questions are automatically routed based on previous responses.

7. Write the questions. You may need to write several questions for each topic, selecting the best one. You might also be better off dividing the survey into multiple sections.

8. Sequence the questions so that they are unbiased.

9. Repeat all of the steps above to find any major holes. Are the questions really answered? Have someone independent review it for you.

10. Time the length of the survey. A survey should take less than five minutes. At three to four questions per minute, you are limited to about 15 questions. One open-ended text question counts for three multiple-choice questions. Most online software tools will record the time taken for the respondents to answer questions.

11. Pretest the survey with 20 or more people. Obtain their feedback… in detail. What were they unsure about? Did they have questions? Did they have trouble understanding what you wanted? Did they take a point of view not covered in your answers or question?

a) An easy way to do this is to create another survey, with a few open-ended essay questions along with your main project. Let’s call this the “feedback survey.”

b) Email the “project” survey to your test group and then email the “feedback” survey also after that. In that way, you can have your test group send you comments regarding the functionality as well as usability of your “project” survey by using you “feedback survey”!

12. Revise your online questionnaire using incorporating the feedback that you received.

13. Send the survey out to all your respondents!

http://archive.webpronews.com/2003/0922.html

Target audience

I felt that is important to be familiar with your  target audience and their needs. I realize there is the need to carry a short survey to forward to people that could be interested in my activity game e.g. “Idioms”. I could ask parents, teachers perhaps, speech therapist…

From all these sources, A conclusion or description can be drawn of my target audience, making it as specific possible and make a decision of my primary objective with each of them.

This could answer the following questions:

What group of autistic children be able to play the game?

Is the game interesting enough for them?

Which group would be more interested?

Game proposal

I have been doing some research on how proposal of games work. But decided not to use this information as i am more interested in the process of the development of a game.

The game proposal is a project proposal used to secure funding and resources for a game development.  It is also the expansion of the game concept it also involves a collection of information of all departments involved mainly from the marketing department if it exist. All the groups involved in programming should perform the initial evaluation of the concept.

The target market is defined by the genre and the platform.

Successful titles will indicate the viability and size of the market. An explanation of how it works can be found on gamasutra.com (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19991019/ryan_03.htm), which explains the process, approaches and steps to be taken.

The game proposal includes the following features:

• Revised game concept (preceding)
• Market analysis
• Technical analysis
• Legal analysis (if applicable)
• Cost and revenue projections
• Art

Research materials:books and tutorials

Sam teach yourself web application, databases, cookies, PHP in 24 hours, Matt Zandstra

The computer game design course, Jim Thompson, Barnaby Berbank-Green and Nic Cusworth

Tutorials

PHP with MySQL Beyond the basics

evaluating some game online

In order to create my game to standard  I am following the advice from  Jim thompson books  ’The Computer Game Design Course’. Explains on how to evaluate other games before making a decision for your game concept and development of the game.

It is important to understand first how games work. Learn about their rules, procedures, objectives, etc. What is a game? What makes games compelling to play? The answer to these questions and not only that but by playing similar games in structure and others will help to make a decision for the concept and development of the game Thompson, Berbank-Green and Cusworth (2007, p.84) explains.

treehousetv.com/ is a TV programs that was created for parents and children to surf together specially aimed to preschool children. Its games are mostly colourful images, bold use of colours, intuitive and interactive. It uses animation and sound.

www.starfall.com/ is a website of educational products aim at young children. Its games are colourful images, uses bold colours, animation, sound and very interactive with some games.

Similar concept on online games

I am browsing some online games in order to understand how concepts and mechanic are used. I will play some similar games that I intend to create in these websites.

www.dotolearn.com is a website offering activities or games mainly for children with learning difficulties or autism. Using tools to make them understand our world by: breaking it into small parts that are easy to handle, activities that can be repeated often and left to his/her own pace, it also allows interact by customizing tasks.

The process of game development

I am trying to understand concepts of gameplay and game mechanics,  learn how to develop ideas for games, test initial concepts, draft a game design document, and implement a prototype. Understand what aspects of a game are strong and which are weak, and how the latter can be replaced with more of the former.

I have found some useful information for the developments of games. A description of how it works can be found on xs4all.nl (http://www.xs4all.nl/~mgsch/gaming/concepts/games_concepts.htm), which describes the mechanisms and guidelines for the development of games. I have taken the parts that are relevant for my project at least at this stage. I will try to apply some of these concept for reviewing some games…

What is a game?

“A game is defined by its system of rules,” wrote Claude Lévi-Strauss in Structural Anthropology.

The main characteristics of a game are:

• closed environment with formal and unambiguous rules and goals
• In general a model of a sub-set of reality
• In general interaction between players
• as a rule: a safe end, no one gets hurt (neither physical / mentally / financial) (betting games are an extension be played with tokens in the first place)
• a game sets goals for player to achieve

General guidelines for development

In general, keep the following rules in mind

• Keep it simple
• Use intuitive mechanics
• Use intuitive models and symbols/descriptions
• Define the goals clearly
• Make the game easy to learn, hard to master
• Avoid exceptions on the general rulings
• The game should have several ‘thrills’ / ‘layers’
• Minimize the number of attributes
• Check the time-span of playing (< 1 hour)
• Mind the theme!
• MIND THE LOOK AND FEEL!

Get a checklist on how a game can be successfully:

• is it build on existing games / concepts (how many scrabble look-alikes can a human stand?)?
• Does the game have a great name? That is remembered easily? That reflects the heart of the game? That appeals to the gamer’s fantasy?
• Do the game elements challenge the gamers fantasy, will to play, will to win?
• Did you have a test group? Who will alpha/beta test your game? Do you have methods and tools to measure and improve your game? How do you guarantee a non-broken game?
• Do you have anyone with a mathematical background around that can tell you about chances, lockups and broken situations?