Saturday, December 6, 2008

Instructional Game vs Computer Game



I was working on the 10 blog posts required for the class with Dr.Kapp where i came across this interesting post about the comparison between a Computer Game to a Serious or an Instructional game.
When a designer or developer looks from the angle of the gaming, two formats of the game are meant for entertainment, but interesting debate would be does serious game has to compete with a computer game to make it more captivating and motivating? Certainly it would be a designer's dream to build an application that would be designed to perfection showing rich graphics and animation. But when analyzing this component one has to focus on certain factors like the time frame for the project, hardware used, learners, type of organization and the instruction itself.
Looking at these factors from a designer's perspective will certainly lock the components that can be used to make the prototype work. But certainly a designer has varying options to make the solution interesting and appealing for the client. Even the budget allocated for the project can lock the hands of the designer. But a good designer can figure out ways to create an attractive and working solution within the allocated budget. The key to achieve this goal, pretty much depends on the common sense, and the good or bad experience from the past projects. To be more precise its all the life experiences will make one grow perfect.
To sum up, instructional or serious games can take certain inputs from its elder brother(computer game) to build an interesting and attractive game to captivate and motivate the learners keeping without loosing the very purpose of instruction.
Please check this interesting post related to the current topic.
Learning circuits Blog

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