HamsterSpeak #36 Online

[The Wobbler]

http://superwalrusland.com/ohr/issue36/cover.html

Here we are; a feature heavy issue introducing what is hopefully the first in a new series of articles, a look at the dreaded Yo Ghost, arguments about the 8-Bit contest, free sprites from Okedoke Man, and more.

[Blue Train]

Gud issue.

I liked the yo ghost history and I'll probably like james's philosophy by the time I'm done reading it.

Also: Bell of chaos got a really low score for what i expected, the whole 8 - bit contest lacked games generally too. I thought like, 20 people entered. Bell of chaos is the only game I played thus far so i guess i better play the other ones as well.

[Mogri]

Bizarre! I was just thinking to myself that word games would be the least likely genre to ever pop up on the OHRRPGCE. Guess I'd better get started on that first-person shooter.

[FnrrfYgmSchnish]

Heh... I'm referred to by a whopping three names/aliases in this issue: Dark Blubber, FnrrfYgmSchnish, and That Guy With The Hard-To-Spell Name.

Really wasn't expecting the Yo Ghost article! I mean, I kinda knew there was going to be a Yo Ghost article, but I had no idea it was going to be this funny, or have this much stuff in it.

And also...

• VocabMosaic by James Paige by Fieron

...Fieron created James Paige!?

[The Wobbler]

...Fieron created James Paige!?

Haha, oops. I like this error, but I'll fix it anyway. Also, I really would like to see people go through and name all the dudes in your art.

My biggest reastion is to JSH's review. His overall point is valid, it's written extremely persuasively, and I think it's one of the best written articles in the issue. I disagree with some big parts of it though.

I agree that Kana Learning itself is kind of pointless but;

"Here we have Math Blaster for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The objective of the game is to solve basic mathematical puzzles in order to progress through a level. There are tons of different versions of Math Blaster in existence, and all of them are built upon this concept.

What's wrong with this concept, inherently? The player has to know the math in advance in order to finish the game. The game does not do anything to teach him. For this reason, it is not really an educational game—it's a puzzle for people who already know the solutions."

The purpose of games like this isn't to teach someone new concepts, the purpose is to reinforce ideas through repetition, and to make someone's math solving skills quicker and more efficient. Kana Learning doesn't really do this in a useful fashion, but plenty of people have found language learning games useful. Yeah, they're fairly useless on their own. That's not their point, they're meant to be fun ways to speed up your brain's recognition and to keep yourself sharp. They're supplements. This is the reason games like Brain Age are enormously successful.

Also, I love Slimes, but it's not teaching you anything any more than any other video game. Yeah, you "learn" while playing it, but what you learn is useful only within the context of the game's rules. By this argument you also "learn" while playing Mario Brothers. You don't learn anything about physics from playing Slimes, you just learn how to use and react to the physics within this individual game. You could argue that you learn sound puzzle design, but that's a side effect and not an intention.

[JSH357]

Glad you disagree; the whole point of criticism is to get both sides thinking about an argument.

I'm not against games being memory tools, but one of the points I might not have gone in to deeply enough was that flash cards and worksheets can accomplish the same things as Math Blaster or Carmen Sandiego with better success. In that light, there isn't really any purpose to these memory games. While they are popular, I kind of frown on the fact that some parents will try to use them as pure educational tools when they are just quick fact-checking devices (A book would be a better tool). It's kind of like people buying Wii Fit thinking it will inherently get them in better shape--that's not true. You have to work out, then all Wii Fit does is tell you how you're doing. Game designers, in my opinion, SHOULD strive higher than making virtual alarm clocks and bathroom scales. If a game is supposed to be educational, it needs to actually teach something, and it needs to use the strengths of the game medium to do so. Kana Learning fails in that regard. There is absolutely no way you're going to learn how to read Japanese text from playing it, so calling it Kana LEARNING is a case of false advertising.

I only used Slimes as an example; there are plenty of games I could have chosen to illustrate my point, Mario Brothers being one of them. What one learns from playing them isn't necessarily substantial, but it still STICKS. Twenty years later I can pick up Super Mario World and still understand all the physics and remember where most of the secrets are. Educational game developers don't really understand this--they try to teach the information the same way an instructional video or a flash card would. There's nothing wrong with learning this way, but games are not the best medium with which to do so.

Pretty good issue. I hope we have the Yo Ghost thing out of our systems now. :p It's probably run its course.

[Mogri]

I learned a lot about US geography from playing Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego? as a kid. My first exposure to the magical world of multiplication came from Midnight Rescue -- the first time the robots started giving me multiplication problems, I had no idea what to do. I had a little breakdown. Did the game teach me multiplication? No, but it made me want to learn them.

I agree with you on the basis that this type of game isn't actually educational on its own. If it were, I would have learned how to multiply by playing the game. But I disagree that games are a flawed medium for this sort of thing. I wouldn't have given half a crap about US geography if not for Carmen Sandiego. I would have been doing something less educational if I didn't have the Midnight Rescue games to cut my teeth on. I didn't play them because I wanted to learn. I played them because they were games, and I learned as a side effect.

(edit) but kana learning is not actually a game, so none of this really applies to it

[JSH357]

I learned a lot about US geography from playing Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego? as a kid. My first exposure to the magical world of multiplication came from Midnight Rescue -- the first time the robots started giving me multiplication problems, I had no idea what to do. I had a little breakdown. Did the game teach me multiplication? No, but it made me want to learn them.

I agree with you on the basis that this type of game isn't actually educational on its own. If it were, I would have learned how to multiply by playing the game. But I disagree that games are a flawed medium for this sort of thing. I wouldn't have given half a crap about US geography if not for Carmen Sandiego. I would have been doing something less educational if I didn't have the Midnight Rescue games to cut my teeth on. I didn't play them because I wanted to learn. I played them because they were games, and I learned as a side effect.

(edit) but kana learning is not actually a game, so none of this really applies to it

That's great, and I'm not saying it's impossible to learn from these things, but I seriously doubt Carmen Sandiego is a more effective teacher than... a teacher. Even a bad teacher. Or a book. The point that a game might inspire you to go out and learn something is completely removed from the point I was making; you're getting in to the science of games as a motivational tool, which can be applied beyond the scope of education. (e.g. Pokémon inspiring you to look up a bunch of information on how to train stuff right) In short, that won't work on every player who picks the game up. YOU were inspired to learn multiplication, but the average kid is just going to stop playing the game because he doesn't know what to do next, and then perhaps go play something else. I would wager that only people who play lots of video games already are going to use them as an excuse to learn other information.

Games aren't a flawed medium for this sort of thing. Game designers just rarely make games that use the strengths of the medium to educate players. I actually have high hopes for games as an educational tool in the future, but I don't believe they are there yet.

[The Wobbler]

That's great, and I'm not saying it's impossible to learn from these things, but I seriously doubt Carmen Sandiego is a more effective teacher than... a teacher. Even a bad teacher. Or a book.

A decent teacher is definitely much more valuable, but there are some really, really bad teachers out there who give more misinformation than anything else, and playing the game would at least be less damaging than that. I mean, I agree with you here in concept, but the US education system kind of sucks.

I might not have gone in to deeply enough was that flash cards and worksheets can accomplish the same things as Math Blaster or Carmen Sandiego with better success

You're right, but that's less fun. Kids like Math Blaster, they don't like flash cards. (There's nothing fun about Kana Learning itself, though)

[JSH357]

Well, yes, there is some truth to that unfortunately. I was fortunate enough to have great teachers growing up, but I know firsthand how awful some can be, even at the college level. The motivation at college level, though, is such that one might learn something even if the teacher sucks. Learning data structures from a woman who had no idea how to code beyond FORTRAN was pretty harrowing.

[FnrrfYgmSchnish]

Also, I really would like to see people go through and name all the dudes in your art.

Heh, me too. I'm guessing there's a few that'll really give people a hard time... one's from a game I never finished (Spuduf Splorchers), and there's also a couple of heroes/enemies from really old newbie games.

[Bob the Hamster]

Some thoughts:

* Is that Misa du Hamstre in the top left on the cover? Yes, I think it is!

* Kana learning should have been named Kana practice.
** I agree that educational games all to often fall short of their awesome potential.
** I think a flashcard game is WAY better than a real set of flash cards, because the game doesn't get scattered all over the house and I'm still finding cards between the couch cushions a year later.

* If anybody plays multiplayer vocabmosaic against a real other player by passing the mouse (as opposed to pretending to be 4 different people and doing silly voices for each of them) I am curious to hear how it went.

* Yay! I won the consolation-prize multi-review! Although its a shame that all my stuff has been pretty well reviewed already.

* Congratulations horse game, you are so full of horses that it should be illegal. really horse game. we are going to lock you up! Neiiigh!

* Glad to see a Bloodlust article, even if Only One in All had to write it himself! :) That game didn't get the attention it deserved. Seriously like 80% of my total play-time during the voting round of the FYDG contest was devoted to Bloodlust, and that for a game with zero grinding. (Actually, a game with considerable anti-grinding motivation)

* Bell of Chaos feedback
** I am pretty sure that I will never satisfy everyone with this game.
** If you haven't tried it already, the latest version features more responsive jumping.
** I do plan to experiment with knockback, in the hopes of making the bell (a little) less frustrating to fight with.
** I think it is good that a lot of people resorted to avoiding the enemies entirely, but I would like it if I could find a way to make the act of avoiding an enemy entirely feel satisfying to the player, rather than feeling like a frustrating defeat.
** Accidental windows key hits: I am a selfish Linux user. My windows key is a dead key. I need to make the keys configurable.
** I have a good reason for not using space bar for jumping. Up+Left+Space is an impossible key combination on 95% of all keyboards. <a href="http://www.sjbaker.org/wiki/index.php?t ... _Evil">Why Keyboards are Evil</a> is a good overview of the technical problem behind this.
** Most of the random goddess names are mesopotamian, but a few egyptian and african ones are mixed in.
** Title Screen was scratched together last minute from <a href="http://www.chinaheritagenewsletter.org/ ... .jpg">this shamelessly ripped photo</a>. I really do need to make a better one. I often dislike drawing graphics, but I always really loathe drawing backdrops :(
** I think what I really need to do is make an in-game bell debugger that lets you customize a bunch of bell parameters. Then people can mess with different settings, and then tell me things like: "hey, James! when I decrease the chain by one link but add 2 pixels to the chain link gap, it swings forward just right when you run and stop suddenly"

[Shizuma]

It was a really good issue. I'm glad I got to be a part of it and hope to work a bit on future issues too.

I'll thank James here for reviewing my game, I was kind of surprised and am glad you seemed to of liked it. As for undergarment related humor... Yeh I kind of missed the bus on that one. But maybe in the sequel(?).