Educational games

The game is good at teaching about evolution although some of the game is not related, for example in part of the game you learn about aliens and what they would eat. These are fantasy animals and therefore are not educational because they are not real. It does however still make you think about what sort of animal eats what sort of prey, for example certain animals are not large enough to eat others and some very large animals still only eat small prey. The aliens however do make the game more interesting to small children and therefore keep them entertained and concentrating on the game.
There are parts of the education that can be skipped, for example the introduction can be skipped, this means that you miss out some important parts to the game. However if you have played the game before then it is good that you can skip this part. The main educational part however cannot be skipped, you must watch her explain about what to do and different animals. You must also move them in to certain categories that cannot be easily guessed without getting lots of them wrong.
This game is an intrinsic game because the player must learn about the narrative of the game, in this case the game is about evolution and the food chain. An extrinsic game is when it is not about the game narrative, an examaple of this is hangman, if the hangman word is geographical then the player still doesn't learn about geography but instead learns about english literature as they must learn about letters.

Old and New Games Journalism

New Games Journalism - 'Bow, Nigger'




I found that the 'Bow, Nigger' article was very effective, it made me very interested in the game and after reading the article I am very interested in finding out more and even buying it. I did however feel that it didnt give enough information about the game, im not sure if it is only possible to duel or if there are other parts to the game.


The reason i think that i felt so interested in the game is because the writer gets you so involved in the events that hes taking part in. He gives the reader a lot of personal information to shw just how good the game is, for example he tells us how he never sweats playing games but he gets so involved with this one that he does "I felt a trickle of wet run down from under my right armpit". He also makes you feel like you should be on his side, jhe lets you know about how 'evil' his opponenet is and how his opponenet does not play by the rules "[The writer] played by the 'rules'"


The writer also get so immersed in the game that he lets you know how he insulted his opponent "socially retarded friend", "this wanker", both of these are very harsh things to say about someone that is just playing a game and i can see how some people would take offence by what is written in the article. However, i feel that withouth this it would be another boring article. The NGJ way of writing makes the article a lot more interesting and exciting to readin, emersing the reader in the game so they want to join in and buy the game themself.

Globalisation

The McDonalds game does raise awareness about what must be done to keep a business such as McDonalds runing and staying in profit. It makes us realise how corrupt organisations such as McDonalds are, and how things such as injecting cows and doing other things that may harm the consumer are almost neccesary just to stay in profit, as well as needing to bribe important people to stop them from finding out and shuting you down. The game raises a small amount of awareness about globalisation and how business's such as McDonalds have influenced places such as Italy, as this was the game was made. The person responsible for making this game is clearly not impressed with how McDonalds is run and is definately trying to prove to others that McDonalds is a corrupt business, although he did choose to do this in a very crude way.

The Peter Packet game is not very good at raising awareness in my opinion because there is not information about poverty until the end of the game, the only education that anyone would get from playing the game is how information travels through the internet. This shows that games cannot be used well to raise awareness about issues such as poverty.