A blog turning into a game

Yesterday, EA released its long awaited massively single-player online game, Spore.  The game has received widespread acclaim over the past several months because of its technological richness and creative storyline and game design.  Spore allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its earliest beginnings, through its entire development.  The game is in the tradition of classics like Civilization and SimCity.

Players can populate their world in Spore using creatures that they, or others, make.   Even though the game is single player, objects or creatures built by users get uploaded to a master database for others to download and rate.  The game uses a sophisticated form of design called procedural animation.

The game has transplanted real-world debates into the realm of educational game design.  For instance, critics note how the game raises questions on creationism vs. evolution.  Game creators have even referred to their perspective as “creativolution.”  When it comes to educational games, does the content have to project a specific pedagogical theme? Or it can be open-ended? Spore allows for unbound creativity in universe design, but how much should that design reflect real-world constraints imposed by science? One might expect a similar debate when thinking about how real environmental concerns like global warming should be reflected in the game environmnet, if at all.

Here is a TV ad for the game and a link to the official website:

Much has been written about the poor knowledge of geography of Americans.  For example, in a survey, 63% of respondents could not identify Iraq on a map.  Fewer than half could identify New York and Ohio.  If we really believe in the flattening of the world, then it is more important than over to ensure we (and our kids) are global citizens.

Today, at RamoGames.com we’re releasing a bunch of games to help improve our knowledge about geography.  They include games covering, Africa, Asia, India (we had to do this one given the origins of our name!), Europe, North America, and South America.  They are suitable for all ages, and we even predict that kids will do better than adults in some of them.

Let us know your high score in the comments and we look forward to hearing your feedback!

At Ramo, we’re big fans of serious games, games that serve a purpose other than pure entertainment. The ability to create engaging products with meaning beyond the games themselves is wonderful, especially if the lives of others can be improved.

In a previous post, we wrote about FreeRice. The website, in cooperation with the UN World Food Program, donates 20 grains of rice to the hungry across the globe for every word that a visitor gets right in its word game.

Best of all, the game is surprisingly simple. You are given a word and you must click on one of four choices that most accurately reflects its meaning. The game gets harder after each correct answer, but 20 more grains of rice get donated for each word that you get correct.

As of today, 39,471,718,130 grains of rice have been donated. Roughly several million grains of rice get donated every month.

The simplicity of FreeRice, combined with the charitable nature of the cause and the fact that visitors of any age can play it make it one of the best examples of a serious game with meaningful educational value. In fact, the guy who started the game built it using the 10,000 words his son was studying to prepare for the SAT.