Education in Gaming: The Game Factory

I know this is a forum for gadgets, gizmos and overall technology — but I felt it was also an interesting forum to place things that I find a constant evolutionary process. The kind of subjects that maybe weren’t that interesting before all these platforms turned ho-hum into ooh-ahh.

Education is a huge subject for me because in the gaming industry, a lot of times we lose sight of what is going on in our brains when we’re playing videogames. Our synapses fire off and our hand-eye-coordination becomes something to behold, we’re becoming more and more intelligent with every game we play and that’s not a coincidence. Companies have jumped on this idea and some have even formed OUT of the simplistic notion that gamers are getting younger and younger and the best way to nurture a seed is to give it water and food to grow.

Currently, my favorite gaming company out there that is geared towards educational software has to be The Game Factory, a company that releases games based on popular franchises that teaches young children valuable lessons and helpful tools on the path to growing into gamers years from now. What fascinates me about this dedicated group of men and women, is that they’re tireless about their cause in an area that is so underpopulated. Their competitors take the other ground, catering to older audiences while they will put their toes in the water and take care of those little future gamer guppies.

Recently, one of the fine people at The Game Factory sent me some of their Nintendo DS games to try out and since I’m such a huge supporter of educational technology – I had to take a look. One of the games, a franchise out of the Nick Jr. series “Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Friends“, comes an interesting DS game where simple puzzles and memory games come in a palatable form that don’t confuse and bewilder young players. Fantastically enough, my five year old daughter seemed to have no issues with controls or figuring out the guidelines in each level. I find it’s important in games like these to show players who aren’t your general Halo players – what they’re doing without losing them in the hyperbole of instructions.

Another game they sent me was “Strawberry Shortcake: Strawberryland Games“, which is made for a slightly older audience than the “Miss Spider” group. With a bit more reading involved, I found I had to help my little niblet along with certain objectives. However, the objectives were still the kind that were simple but still enriching and rewarding come the end of the level. She’ll still sit there and quietly tip and tap at the screen with the stylus until her bedtime because by now, she’s got the characters and their objectives MAPPED out. That’s how brilliant our gamer kids are becoming folks.

The good people at The Game Factory sent me a game that hadn’t been released at this point and I really wanted to work up some more for a nice write-up, so I sat on it for a bit. I played it and while playing it – I noticed a harrowing situation. See, they sent me the game based on “Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties“. The situation comes from the fact that not only had I not seen this movie, I had no clue what kind of story I was being pushed into. I was playing, bouncing from one goofy platform to another and setting off voice reactions to certain things with no clue how I was doing so. It was then, that my five year old came in the door, took the DS Lite out of my hands and literally “showed me” how it was done. Schooling me in every sense of the word, she pointed out that to get him to move certain directions and/or set off an event – you spoke into the mic on the DS and this made him meow. So, all those times I kept hearing him meow while I was talking on the phone — finally made sense!

This is what it all boils down to, our children are getting SMARTER and adults can’t deny any longer that videogames are an inevitablity. They’re fascinating and proactive to every child’s development now and thanks to companies out there that are willing to market towards those kids — not only will our kids be more intelligent, but they’ll be entertained.

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