According to an AARP survey, 44% of adults over 50 years old played video games in 2019 at least once a month-the average is five hours a week-compared with only 38% in 2016. The AARP survey includes players of all sorts of computer or video games, and the majority say they play puzzle and logic games, such as Sudoku or Words With Friends.
Read MoreSuper Mario Bros designer Shigeru Miyamoto wasn't just crafting a tutorial when he built the game's opening level; he was establishing a whole new world. Super Mario Bros was released on the NES back in 1985, at a time when the majority of the gaming conventions we're now accustomed to had yet to become commonplace.
Read MoreSelf-Gamification is turning our projects, activities, and our whole lives into fun games, of which we are both the designers and the players. I think the biggest reason for so many people to go to games as inspiration is the experience of FUN. When talking about fun, I love quoting Heidi Klum, a German-American supermodel and television personality, who had been one of the four judges on America's Got Talent for many years.
Read MoreRegular video game use was linked to a lower risk of depressive symptoms among boys but not girls. On the other hand, frequent social media use was linked to a higher risk of depressive symptoms among girls but not boys.
Read MoreJon Ingold, co-founder of Inkle Studios, talked for almost 50 minutes before addressing the main question posed by the Writer's Guild of Great Britain: How do you make choices matter in video games? When he finally considered it, his answer was brief.
Read MoreAs the Nazis are not a player faction in Cramer's game, it represents them abstractly via a track. As a lot of what makes the experience of a game is created by the players rather than the designer, games benefit from a thorough contextualization.
Read MoreA team of researchers at the University of Oxford working with two video game makers has found that volunteers who play video games self-report a positive feeling of wellbeing. In their paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the group describes experiments they conducted with volunteer game players and what they learned from them.
Read MoreThe climate crisis impacts our ability to keep making and playing the games we know and love. We as game makers and players have significant power to take truly meaningful action against this existential threat. To ensure our video game ecosystem's survival, we need to increase the sustainability of our products and supply chains.
Read MoreActive learning is a teaching method that encourages learners to engage with learning content more actively. Active learning strategies like gamification add the much needed "Entertainment" value to an otherwise lackluster learning experience.
Read MoreNo matter how entertaining or original the concept of a mobile game, if the user experience is not up to scratch, it will neither gather momentum nor earn an audience. So what is the difference between a well-oiled mobile game from a UX perspective, and one which is just average or even worse? Here is a look at the factors which determine this, so you can keep them in mind if you decide to develop your own interactive creation.
Read MoreI've spent the past six months teaching game design at the Cologne Game Lab, a German institute dedicated to the study of digital games. In this blog post, I want to share what I've learned during the process and condense it down into five practical rules you can apply to improve your own teaching.
Read MoreA computer game could hardly succeed in replicating the luxury experience of a fortnight in the Maldives, but one game in particular has been bestowing its players with a little escapism, sightseeing and global knowledge. Geo Guessr, a game which places you in a 360º photograph taken somewhere in the world and challenges you to pinpoint where you are on a map, has had a surge in interest in recent months, as talented players build large followings on Twitch and YouTube.
Read MoreJust like in software, there are 'bugs' that can crop up in a board game or card game. A Balance Error occurs when some text or balancing factor was left off of the component during pre-press, resulting in an unintended effect or interaction which alters game balance.
Read MoreTraditional training methodologies like classroom-based learning have gradually given way to more modern learning strategies. Most organizations use the combination of gamification and microlearning because it adds a bit of interaction and fun to your eLearning content thus, providing more rich and structured learning experiences to your learners.
Read MoreA new study reveals that pigs are not only very intelligent animals, but are great at gaming too. The paper appeared in the Frontiers in Psychology journal, and showed how two Yorkshire pigs, Hamlet and Omelet, and two Panepinto micro pigs, Ebony and Ivory, became adept at playing video games. The pigs were trained using a "Rudimentary joystick-operated video game task" that was first developed to test chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys.
Read MoreGiven the prevalence of the Pareto Principle, we could say that, hypothetically, only 20 percent of gamification efforts in the Learning and Development space will be successful. This is why, at Sententia Gamification, we have a five-level process for creating successful gamified learning programs.
Read MoreA bad user experience is like a never-ending spiral staircase; you go on climbing the stairs but don't find what you are looking for in the end. 5 Ways to Enhance User Experience with AI. Artificial Intelligence has made a dramatic impact on user experience.
Read MoreSo I was excited to see a JAMA article led by Mitesh Patel demonstrating that people exercise more when their experience is "Gamified". Their idea of gamification was not as much fun as it ultimately needed to be. People were given 70 points each week, and could hold on to those points if they met their "Step goal," for how much they walked each day.
Read MorePeople like to play games of all kinds, and people like rides. Many theme parks decided to add pay-to-play interactive water geyser effects to their water rides. These allow guests on dry land to drop money into a slot and time it just right so that a geyser of water would trigger and soak the riders in a passing boat on a water ride.
Read MoreA new Twitter thread has highlighted a common UI design flaw that's all too familiar to gamers - regardless of what console they're using. Games will often direct players to press a specific button by flashing its symbol on the screen, without also showing its position on the controller. Twitter user Kyle McKernan suggests games that display the required button in the context of other buttons around it are the ones that are getting it right.
Read More
