Here’s a list of ten apps that computer nerds turn to when they want to engage their young kids in math and science…

Dragonbox – “My 3.5 year olds were doing algebra with fractions without realizing it” said a user. “I’ve personally seen a 4 year old get an elementary understanding of algebra from this app,” said another user, Thwyx. And “fascinatingly friendly and effective way to teach symbolic arithmetic to children,” said stonecypher. “Awesome and I highly recommend it, even to adults. It’s basically a series of algebraic puzzles, using cards that start off not as numbers,” said Roogna. This app was favored by several parents.

Isaac Newton’s Gravity — “You try to solve mazes by putting blocks in the righ place to let the ball roll down. My nephew has played that game since he was 3,” said codegen. Though user fermion notes that most kids need to be a little older.

Cut the Rope — “physics engine in it is a nice introduction to the likes of gravity, elasticity, etc.” said Kergan.

Monkey Preschool Lunchbox — loved by the 4.5 year old of Thorrablot. “Definitely geared more for pre school aged like 2-4,” said iTunes reviewer jteyer.

Feed Me Oil – “The first levels are easy enough for a young child, and our little girl loves it. With the fans, boards, and other mechanisms its a good introduction to gravity and other forces,” said myxiplx.

Algebra Touch – “Amazing app that demonstrates how variables work in algebraic equations, highly recommended. Maybe too high level for a 3 year old but it’s about as mathy as iOS can get,” said mewsenews. This is not a game; it’s a simple drag-and-drop equation solver.

Monster Physics – “Both my 4 and 7 year olds love Monster Physics. And by the same author, Stack the States and Stack the Countries are excellent for geography,” said MojoRilla. A game creating and controlling inventions.

Intro to Math – “she got a huge amount of use from, which while just basic as the names would imply was good around that age,” said Roogna.

Nova Elements – “When she got curious about elements, we picked up the Nova Elements app, which answered her questions at the time pretty well,” said Roogna. This was a complimentary app to a NOVA broadcast.

SkyView — “I have a very smart and curious 3-year-old daughter… She has a wonderfully curious mind, and really likes SkyView already,” said Timothy.

And a bonus recommendation for older kids:

Numbers League – targeting older kids, “covers math down to simple addition and subtraction and up to multiplication, division and simple fractions,” says rreay. The app is based on a card game. “M three children love to play against each other and their Mom and Dad to see who can make the highest point captures,” says iTunes reviewer Sarah Chase.

Other slashdot users also recommended: Tesla Toy and Angry Birds Space to develop an intuitive sense of orbits and attraction/repulsions.

To get thinking about it, here are some simple game structures that work well for museum learning:

• Roleplaying Games: Create powerful empathetic experiences, and give insight into what happens when different points of view collide. Roleplaying games can range from simple to fearsomely complex when variables of character qualities, goals, obstacles, and novel situations are factored in.
• Action Games: Get visitors moving. In outdoor spaces or large indoor halls, visitors can running through boundary areas, collect items, and navigate obstacles. Instructors create a physical space with very simple materials, like poker chips, lengths of rope, and paper plates, and use students’ powers of imagination to redefine them as resources like food or water, and constraints like space or predatation.
• Tabletop Games:  Board games, card games, dice games, tile games, and even paper-and-pencil games can create a context for history learning. Building on existing game types, content and imagery can be adapted to local content and topics.
• Parlor Games/Social Games: Some games require only people. Both period games like Victorian parlor games, and games that use words, motions, questions and answers (like 20 Questions). Street play games, like handclapping games, hopscotch, foursquare, or running bases, are also social and simple to present.
• Period Games: Bring a historical moment to life, giving a view of material culture and leisure time activities. At Strawbery Banke, red baskets contain popular toys and games from a historical time — a set of marbles in the 1950s Shapley-Drisco House, a Shut the Box board in the Colonial tavern.

See Moon’s article at the AASLH Arrrrducation Blog >

See also “Gaming the Past,” a repository for theory, research, and implementations of simulation games for history education.

Gameplay has a lot to teach us about motivating participation through joy. ‘Gamification’ is a new term, coined in 2008, for adapting game mechanics into non-game setting — such as building online communities, education and outreach, marketing, or building educational apps. Here are some ideas for how to do it.

Achievements

Badges, trophies and points represent having accomplished something. Since antiquity, people have been honored with medals, crowns and other decorations. Wreaths made of bay laurel were awarded to Greek athletes, and worn by Roman poets (e.g., Ovid, at left).

Judd Antin, at Yahoo! Research, in a talk this summer noted, “Closer to home, the Boy Scouts of America’s iconic merit badges promote the acquisition of specific skill-sets as diverse as nuclear science and basketry. One of the first large-scale implementations of badges in online games began in 2002 with Microsoft’s Xbox Live service. Since that time, badges have become a fixture in many games.”

Achievements can be easy, difficult, surprising, funny, accomplished alone or as a group. FourSquare uses badges to promote location-sharing via “check-ins,” StackOverflow and Quora use rating systems to encourage members to write quality answers to posted questions, KhanAcademy uses cute meteorite badges to reward correct answers (see KhanAcademy “Going Transonic” badge above left), and Wikipedia encourages hardcore contributors to post barnstars and WikiLove to other member’s profiles. Many shopping and social media sites have some form of member ranking.

“This has already occurred in education for a long time with things such as merit certificates and awards,” says Australian science teacher Alice Leung, but “gamification is more than that “because the game guides learners towards those goals, and gives constant feedback.”

It’s not about winners and losers, says Leung. Gamification leads to fewer “losers” because the education is personalized for each learner, and “students feel safe to take risks in their learning.” Rather than most students having to work at the same pace, with gamification, “students work at their own pace to gain achievements.”

Judd and his colleague Elizabeth Churchill outline five key psychological functions of badges:

• Setting goals: Badges challenge participants to reach a higher mark, and are best when they are just outside of comfortable reach, and when participants can see their progress.
• Instruction: Badges embody the social norms of a system, exemplifying activities and interactions that are valued — i.e., what participants should do. — In a social setting, a party organizer could reward positive social behaviors by assigning roles to event attendees (e.g., matchmaker, deep talker, explorer) and awarding prizes for fulfilling their roles.
• Reputation: Badges encapsulate a participant’s interests, expertise and past interactions — providing an easy way to gauge the trustworthiness of other people, the reliability of content, and assess whether a participant is a casual or fanatical community member.
• Status & affirmation: Badges serve as a status symbol, advertising a participant’s achievements and accomplishments without explicit bragging. Some people are highly driven by status rewards (displayed in leaderboards, class rankings, etc.), but most people are more driven more when their work interacts with others’ and when their recognition creates enduring artefacts (e.g., school newsletters, posters, wikis, blogs, etc.).
• Group identification: Badges bind a group together around their shared experiences, lend a sense of solidarity, and promote collaboration.

A limitation of achievements is that they are external motivators, and only a subset of people really care about external recognition, so don’t rely on achievements alone to drive interest in your project.

In a classroom setting, Leung cautions, “If gamification is implemented in a superficial way (just points and badges), it is just a layer of extrinsic motivation, which may work well for younger students but not for older students…” it needs to include “strong narratives, goal-orientated lessons and personalized learning.”

Other game mechanics

Many other game dynamics can help engage your audience. Dynamics that draw on the human psyche, create feedback loops, or lead participants to accumulate skills or accomplishments. Here are some more:

• Appointments are specific times/places a participants must participate. (e.g., FourSquare and geocaching are based on physical places; Farmville requires players to return to harvest their crops after a specific amount of time has passed after planting; last summer, nine Smithsonian museums cooperated in a mobile game based on SCVNGR called goSmithsonian Trek, played on iPhones or Android phones.)
• Behavioral momentum is people’s tendency to keep doing what they have been doing.
• Blissful productivity is a sense of accomplishment, which might be missing elsewhere in someone’s life.
• Cascading Information Theory says information should be released in the minimum possible snippets, as not to overwhelm.
• Community collaboration rallies people to work together to solve a problem or a challenge. Learners are more motivated if their success at tasks is dependent on other group members, not just their own scores. Cooperative motivators should be stronger than competitive motivators. (e.g., DARPA balloon challenge.)
• Countdowns give participants a short amount of time to do something, and can spike participation. Arcade games often have a countdown. (e.g., Bejeweled Blitz gives players 30 seconds to get as many points as they can.)
• Discovery or Exploration delight participants with the surprise of something new, sparking their curiosity. The element of surprise can come from unraveling a complex subject, or challenging preconceived notions. A slick presentation will attract attention from its technical novelty, but thoughtful curiosity comes from sustained engagement that makes learners think, gain productivity, filter information, or create. Discovery works because it is mostly an internal driver, but some people can be encouraged by giving them a bonus for exploring, e.g., how many new pages they read each week.
• Epic meaning lends a sense of achieving something great, awe-inspiring, and bigger than oneself. Meaning can drive people to participate in citizen science, or other crowd sourcing projects like Zooninverse. Meaning also comes from creating an environment that does exist, such as inventing characters, locations, objects; and from applying a skill to that environment (e.g., simulation and roll employing games). Richer learning happens when learners connect new learning to prior knowledge through their narrative structure. (e.g., The online game, War of Warcraft’s ongoing story line motivates players to devote hours to the game, and also work outside the game, where volunteers have created a huge wiki to help them achieve their individual quests and collectively their epic meanings.) What’s challenging or an interesting fantasy will vary from person to person, and vary over the course of  a person’s learning life.
• Free lunch is when when participants feel they are getting something for free due to someone else having done work. (e.g., Groupon gives participants the sense of a great deal because other people have also signed up.)
• Infinite gameplay does do not have an explicit end. (e.g., Casual games like Farmville have a static, positive state.)
• Levels are a system, or “ramp,” by which participants are rewarded for accumulating points. Often features or abilities are unlocked as participants progress to higher levels. Leveling is one of the highest components of motivation for gamers. There are typically three types of leveling ramps: flat, exponential and wave function. — An example in an online community is giving frequent contributors special perks, like the capability to moderate, or the ability to unlock new content.
• Loss aversion is the drive to avoid punishment. (e.g., In Farmville, player receive alerts so they remember to log in and harvest their crops, other games have decays of points which require active participation to maintain.)
• Lottery determines winners based solely on chance. This can create a high level of anticipation, but can quickly alienate losers.
• Ownership gives participants a sense of control, and fosters loyalty. In the game world, participants’ decisions have consequences; winning isn’t dependent on completely random factors. Empowering learning environments depend on making learner’s choices tied to significant and meaningful outcomes. Learners must feel they are capable of succeeding. Conversely, too many choices can swamp and frustrate a learner.
• Points are a running numerical value given for any single action or combination of actions. They are a form of achievement, and can indicate a participant’s progression in completing itemized tasks. Points can be delivered as virtual currency. Here’s a video of adding points to a recycling bin — making it an arcade game — dramatically increasing recycling.

  //www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSiHjMU-MUo

• Quests & challenges – Challenges usually have a time limit or a competition, and Quests are a journey of obstacles which participants must overcome. — Learners prefer the right level of challenge, with clear goals and feedback on performance. Goals can be relevant for allowing a learner to do something new (functionally useful), feel emotional connection (fantasy relevance), or social relevance. Uncertainty also matters. If you know you will triumph, you stop caring. Uncertainty can be boosted by varying difficulty levels, hiding information, or otherwise randomizing.
• Reward schedules are a timeframe and delivery mechanisms through which rewards (points, prizes, level ups) are delivered. Three main parts exist in a reward schedule; contingency, response and reinforcer.
• Urgent optimism is extreme self motivation. A desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success.
• Virality is a game element that requires multiple people to play (or that can be played better with multiple people).

You can combine these mechanics. In the following 20 minute video from TED, Jane McGonigal talks about the lure of the ‘Epic win,’ and how gaming can make a better world:
[ted id=799 lang=eng]

Keep in mind, gamification does not necessarily mean playing games, though there is certainly a place for games in outreach & education. Gamification is not serious games, and it is not playful interactions (see chart at left). Though, there is continuum from games with a purpose to subtly incorporating some principles of gameplay into other projects.

Gamification “really has little to do with games or video games,” rather it is about giving people proper, faster feedback says Ryan Elkins, an entrepreneur who started gamification platform company IActionable. “It helps new people learn what is expected of them and that they are on the right track. It gives experienced people reasons to continue by quantifying their intrinsic motivation. It helps provide context to users so they can make better decisions. It helps individuals track personal growth and progress with measurable goals and a path to mastery.”

No size fits all. People might be driven by (a) a desire for achievement and the prestige of accomplishment; (b) the joy and delight of exploration, satisfying their curiosity; (c) a draw to socialize and connect with other people; or (d) a thirst for competition. — Your audience (e.g., students, the public or your community) will all have their own unique motivations for learning, participating in you projects, or using your resource. — And you don’t want to accidentally alienate some of your participants who don’t care about petty tokens, or make the game elements overwhelm the core job to be done.

Two examples 

A classroom example is from Leung, who created a unit called ‘The Great Science Race‘ with game mechanics like narrative, quests and achievement badges. See her post with positive data on student responses.

The LA Times ran a story last year: “Michael Pusateri is a 43-year-old senior vice president at the Disney-ABC Television Group, but he still doesn’t eat his vegetables. So in October he joined Health Month, an online game that allows him to compete against 16,000 other users in striving toward his goals — which include cycling 80 miles a week and going on a weekly date with his wife… When he made progress, he earned life points and raised his ranking. When he failed, he lost points but could ask other players to take pity and ‘heal’ him by giving him virtual ‘fruit.’ The game prepared him for his first triathlon. ‘My wife has been after me for years to eat more fruit and vegetables and bring my lunch to work, and it was, ‘Next week, I’ll do it next week,” says Pusateri, an avid video game player and father of two. ‘Just because it was on this dumb website I actually did it.'”

Gaining popularity

Gamification is gaining traction as a word. The term was first used in 2008, and became more popular in late 2010 (see Google Trends graph at right). In online marketing circles, gamification tends to focus on achievements because they can be readily added to web sites and apps. Vendors like Badgeville, Bunchball, Bigdoor Media, and GetGlue jumped to deliver a service layer of reward and reputation systems with points, badges, levels and leader boards.

But gamification is much more, and is a useful mental framework for planning how to incentivize your audience to be active and productive.

Leung says, “You don’t fail in games. If you don’t pass a stage, you reflect back on what you need to change and improve on and you play again. This is a vital element of gaming that will vastly change students’ academic achievements.”

Sources: The structure and much of this article comes from  a list at the gamification wiki. Some background from instructional designer and blogger Dianne Rees, who writes about education psychologist Jerome Bruner’s work on intrinsic motivation in 1966, and Malone and Lepper’s 1987 taxonomy of intrinsic motivation. See also papers from a 2011 CHI workshop (PDF). 

Update 20-Oct-2011: Added several quotes from Alice Leung.

This story came to my attention last week, when I wrote a blog post about a cool online science game for Middle School kids which won the grand prize as part of the contest run by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop (the parent organization of Sesame Street) and E-Line Media. That article briefly mentioned anomalies in the contest, and the Cooney Center sent me an email: “Please take this article down as soon as possible because of a legal issue that is pending.” This made me wonder, is there a scandal on Sesame Street?

Team too large?

The contest web site clearly says that “Teams may be comprised of up to four members.” Project lead Dan N. of the grand prize winning team said, they were “definitely in keeping with the principle of ‘small teams development’ that the contest wanted to embody.” However, the winning game lists 13 individuals in the credits (click red image to see credits). Dan N. says their credits screen is inaccurate, and they listed their entire staff out of a sense of solidarity. He says the actual core team was: himself (lead designer), Arthur L. (lead programmer), Trevor B. (illustrator), Amanda L. (voices), and Dan W. Moreover, special education researcher Dr. Matthew M. helped plan two vital aspects of the proposal: the research theories underlying the game, and their strategy for serving the underserved communities of kids with learning disabilities. That’s six people.

Who should be counted? The woman who supplied voices? The rest of the company’s team who may have done some minor programming or illustration? The programmers who wrote older source code which was reused? The researcher who collaborated on planning and defining the educational value proposition and impact, the research theories, and strategy for reaching underserved communities?

Wrong target age?

The contest strictly limited the game’s audiences to young children (grades pre-k through 4th). But president and founder of E-Line Media, Alan Gershenfeld, gave contradictory information in an interview, saying the methodology of the challenge was “to try to get the most talented game designers to make great games that make impact by engaging the largest number of middle school students.”

Due to ambiguity and disregard for the rules, only 8 out of 25 applicants expressively targeted the correct age range. The grand prize winner targets middle school audiences. Dan N. says their game could be rewritten for a younger audience, but it has not been.

Not mobile?

Mobility was an unofficial requirement. The contest site said “The Developer Prize challenges emerging and experienced game developers to design mobile games, including games for the mobile Web, for young children (grades pre-K through 4) that teach key STEM concepts and foster an interest in STEM subject areas.” The promotional description sent to other channels like the White House blog mirrored these guidelines. Mobile was not expressively mentioned in the official rules.

The grand prize winner is an Adobe Flash-based game designed for web browsers. It is a large-screen app that is currently unable to run on the Apple iPad, and the game design is not mobile-ready. For example, the grand prize winner uses the mouse for both pointing and clicking, which is not possible on a tablet where there is only one kind of tap. Moreover, the game is designed to require keypresses, such as the spacebar. There is no spacebar on a tablet computer:

These are important distinctions, and the game will require substantial redesign to work on a tablet computer controlled by only fingertip gestures. There are major differences in how games are designed for mouse and keyboard controlled interfaces, vs. touch-controlled interfaces. The programming process is also very different. Only 4 of 25 submitted games expressively targeted mobile.

Challenge or award?

On 20 December 2010, the White House blog promoted the contest, saying that it “challenges emerging and experienced game developers to design mobile-based video games.” They wanted developers to kick into action and make new games.

However, a week later, contest organizers expanded their scope to recruit games already in development. Clooney tweeted on 29-December, “Have a great game for kids in development? Just one week left to submit to the National STEM Video Game Challenge!”

The challenge successfully spurred many applicants to create mobile games for young kids. However, it did not spur the grand prize winners to create the game. The grand prize winners were already planning to make the game, as they had recently won a $839k contract from the U.S. Dept. of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences’ Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to do so.

The honest losers

The two runners up were mobile games which targeted young children. They received no cash award. These two games are by amateurs and are less impressive than the grand prize winner.

One of the runners up was a husband and wife team, who created “A sciTunes Human Body Adventure.” He is a middle school teacher and musician, and she works in career services for a university. He has created several mobile apps already. Their game targeted elementary kids, and is designed to be a mobile app. “The winning team was from a professional design studio, so I don’t feel too bad,” said Daniel C. to the Watertown Daily Times. “The main thing was if I had won the prize, it would have helped with getting the business off the ground. It would have done quite a bit for a one-man studio.”

The other runner up was a 3-person team, which created “Doc Y and Bacon Figure Out the World” (See video.) The project lead, Bill G. is finishing up his MFA in Interactive Media at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. The game is centered on mobile devices, using Twitter or text messaging. Doc Y is a scientist, and Bacon is his dog. The game is designed to be played over a series of days, asking kids questions they can answer by reply text message.

This ain’t DARPA

By comparison, a successful challenge is the famous DARPA Challenge for autonomous robotic cars. DARPA had three challenges to spur innovation. Inspired by glory and a $2M prize, 89 applicants entered the most recent challenge, navigating in urban settings. The contest was announced in May 2006. Applicants had 4 months indicate interest, then 8 months to submit demo papers and videos. Of those applicants, 35 passed muster and were invited to test their robot cars for real in an urban environment in November 2007. The DARPA challenge had a major impact in spurring innovation, had clear guidelines and rules which were realistic, and did careful due diligence before passing out the cash.

More about the contest

The National STEM Video Game Challenge contest was funded by AMD Foundation, Entertainment Software Association and Microsoft. Several organizations helped publicize it, including the White House.

On 16 September 2010, the White House announced an expansion of Obama’s “Educate to Innovate” campaign to improve science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. The White House announcement was the cornerstone of the promotion campaign for this contest. The contest itself opened for applications on 14 October 2010, when Cooney tweeted: “Gamemakers: Make FUN science/math games 4 kids + win up to $50K, STEM video game chalenge opens TODAY.”

The official rules explained the restriction on small team sizes and the audience focus:

The goal of the Competition is to challenge emerging and experienced game developers to design video games for young children (grades pre-k through 4th) that teach key Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (“STEM”) concepts. … the Team must consist of no more than four (4) individuals … and [proposals must describe each] Team member’s relevant work experience and educational background… each Applicant represents and warrants that … all ideas, creative elements and any other materials and information contained in the Submission are wholly original with the Applicant, … no person or entity has collaborated with Applicant in creating the Submission, provided any material or information for inclusion in the Submission”

At the awards ceremony, Aneesh Chopra, the U.S. Chief Technology Officer, praised the challenge, saying, “Three cheers for the National STEM Video Game Challenge for catalyzing this entertaining and educational approach to harnessing American ingenuity, all for the cause of science, technology, engineering and math education,” said Chopra. “It is efforts like these that will ensure our nation’s continued economic and technological leadership well into the 21st century.”

Summary

All this really amounts to a poorly run contest and challenge rules that don’t make much sense. It’s no fair to lump amateurs with professionals, especially if simple safeguards like team-member limits are not enforced.

The contest would have benefited from giving developers more time to design games, differentiating amateurs from professional contestants, clarifying what kind of prior work can be included, and strictly following the eligibility criteria.

Do challenges like this spur innovation in education? Maybe. But unlike robotic cars, the problem is neither a lack of technology innovation nor creative ideas. The problem is determining the learning value of mobile games for education, and finding business models which can a earn a living for science game developers. Giving a $50k prize to a company that already figured out how to get a million dollars in government contracts is not the right kind of support.

Note: The Cooney Center confirmed that they decline to comment for this article.

The premise of the “You Make Me Sick!” online game, which won a $50k prize last week from the National STEM Video Game Challenge, is that middle school kids invent an pathogen and fight the immune system — learning science along the way. The game steps players through several stages: briefing them on the habits and weaknesses of a target human, devising an evil pathogen (e.g., a virus or bacterium with different transmission means, shapes and characteristics), and playing a short arcade game in the lungs or guts of the human — battling the pathogen against immune cells.

About the game

The charming game hopes to engage kids in the process of infection, and familiarize them with attributes of pathogens and how infections occur.

The game is designed so that kids who don’t like to read or have trouble deciphering text can learn some microbiology. Dr. Matthew Marino, an assistant professor of special education at Washington State University worked on the education aspects of the game. Since learning abilities are a continuum, Marino says, “Our hypothesis is that if you build a game that addresses the unique challenges students with disabilities face, all students will benefit because the design will account for the wide range of diversity that is present in every class.”

The game fits typical curriculum standards of middle school (ages 11-14) science classrooms, and is intended to “motivate, engage, and teach a diverse range of students about science.” It’s online, running in web browsers with Adobe Flash version 10, and works on virtually all web browsers in the U.S. The game play itself is a little confusing and the arcade functions are cumbersome, but the overall design successfully draws gamers through, to experience the interplay between the pathogen and the host’s immune system.

The business model

The game is currently free, though the publisher, Madison, Wisc. based Filament Games, plans to bundle a suite of middle school science games spanning life, Earth, and physical science, and put them behind an “affordable” paywall.

The primary source of funding is from the U.S. Department of Education, via their Institute of Education Sciences’ Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The SBIR program funds commercial ventures that “directly or indirectly lead to improved student learning and academic achievement” but which can’t self-fund because they require too much research or the revenue potential is too small. The contract was awarded to Filament, for $838k. They have 2.5 years to make “six life science computer games on topics including cells, heredity, evolution, bacteria, plants, and the human body.” Filament was also awarded a $150k SBIR from NSF to make games targeting the physical sciences.

Still, it’s a labor of love. The SBIR contracts don’t fully compensate for the team’s time. Marino says, “the project is taking a great deal of time and energy. I stopped keeping track of the hours. It was depressing but we’re doing it for the students and that is our reward.”

Video game prize

The game leapt to notoriety because it won $50k in a science video game competition last week. The prize was organized by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and publisher E-Line Media, riding on publicity from President Obama’s “Educate to Innovate” campaign. One part of the prize challenged middle-school students to design video games on any topic (some of which dealt with science themes). Brian Alspach, vice president of E-Line Media is excited about kids doing game development, saying “we believe that the very act of designing a game has powerful implications for STEM learning.” The second part of the prize challenged emerging and experienced game developers like Filament.

The prize organizers had the support of the White House, which promoted the contest on their blog, as well as several nonprofits who promoted the contest via their existing channels. Thanks to that free publicity, the youth prize had 525 entries from imaginative kids (see the youth winners); and 50 entries from emerging and experienced game developers. Last week, Aneesh Chopra, the U.S. Chief Technology Officer, announced a dozen youth winners, and two developer winners.

For Filament, the $50k was an unexpected windfall. Their SBIR contract was awarded in July 2010, two months before the challenge was announced, so they had started development already. Filament submitted their web-based game on a whim, since it did not fully comply with the rules of 4-person teams creating mobile-based video games for young children, grades pre-K through 4^th. (Filament’s game is not mobile, targets older children, and had a 4-person development team plus several others who chipped in with planning, design, artwork and the soundtrack.) But it turned out that the contest rules were flexible, and contest officials loved the game.

The competition was funded by sponsors (AMD Foundation, ESA and Microsoft): $50k for Filament, $50k to a team of graduate students, plus a dozen laptop computers to the youth winners and $24k for schools.

Games for learning

The success of the approach for this game is still unknown. The series of games are designed around the Universal Design For Learning (UDL) framework, which the team hopes will help meet the needs of all students. But Marino says, “the teaching methods within the game need additional empirical research.” “There is very little research about how to transfer empirically validated strategies from the classroom into a game.” They will test the games by comparing learning outcomes among kids that play the game vs. kids that are taught via conventional means.

Meanwhile, Marino and Filament are continuing with the game pipeline. Their next game, “Prisoner of Echo” is about sound, and comes out next month.

Check out the “You Make Me Sick!” online game yourself!

Update 7-Apr-11: Clarified details about Filament’s contest submission; corrected SBIR contract details.

One popular type of game is a miniature scavenger hunt, called “location-gaming.” The premise is that players go places (e.g., a restaurant or park), do fast, simple tasks (like typing something into their phone, or uploading a photo of something), and win a reward (the reward can  virtual “points,” or something tangible, like a free postcard or sandwich). Other types of games are more thematic, such as creating playing-card “battles” between characters that appear in art.

SCVNGR

The leading platform for location-gaming is SCVNGR, which recently reached over 1 million users (people who have used the app on iPhone and Android phones) and has been funded with $15 million from Google and other venture funds.

SCVNGR’s business model centers on collecting fees from merchants who want customers to come to their businesses to play and receive rewards. In an interview with GigaOM, SCVNGR CEO Seth Priebatsch said that SCVNGR analyzed its data and found that it takes three visits by a consumer before they are likely to become a regular at a business or at least have that merchant at the top of their mind. For businesses, paying SCVNGR is a form of advertising.

Kellian Adams, the company’s museum education technologist presented SCVNGR to an audience of museum staff. The conference attendees were mostly unfamiliar with SCVNGR: according to a realtime poll, 46% had never heard of it, 40% had heard of it but never played, and only 6% have created a game with their tool.

Kellian said that SCVNGR can work for museums, with some adjustments. She said, “Originally I would just give museums SCVNGR access and tell them to have a nice day but it really didn’t work. People weren’t playing, the games weren’t so great so SCVNGR tasked me to make sure everything that happened at a museum was good.” In her presentation, she suggested that prizes like sunglasses and glowsticks are good for motivating gamers, and emphasized that regardless of the game design, the most common demographic is 18-35 year olds.

For History, Kellian said, “a great way to use SCVNGR is to connect history with modern locations,” with a quest that takes visitors to various locations in a community. It can also work well for science topics when visitors have distances to walk, such as in a zoo or botanical garden. (See a detailed article by Charles Outhier about SCVNGR at the National Zoo, and further discussion of SCVNGR for museums.)

Hide&Seek

For other kinds of games, London-based Hide&Seek, showcased their first art museum app, Tate Trumps, a card-game based app in which different paintings at the Tate Modern do battle, are collected, or examined by ‘mood.’ The free game is designed to be played while visitors are inside of the Tate Modern. As the Tate explains, “In Battle mode, you need to ask yourself the question, ‘If this artwork came to life, how good would it be in a fight?’. In Mood mode, you’re looking for artworks you think are menacing, exhilarating or absurd. Or, if you wish you had a gallery of your own, try Collector mode, and find pictures which are famous, recently produced or practical to house. Once you’ve formed your collection, meet up with your friends, and play a fun game of trumps to see who did the best.”

According to Peter Law, development producer & creative project manager for Hide&Seek, games “can be used as marketing tools, to reach new audiences, or to change how people enjoy the galleries.” He says, “More than 20,000 games of Tate Trumps were played in the first two months after launch.” In the UK App Store, the app has 1020 ratings, averaging 2/5 stars; the most recent version fixes some bugs and has 23 ratings averaging 2.5/5 stars.

Law is enthusiastic about the future of mobile games for museums, saying, “Museums are really interesting right now. They’re looking for new ways to engage people and to encourage them to experience their collections.” His company makes a variety of games, and can readily adapt the format of Tate Trumps for other collections.