rss:9d9437cc2bdadfdb0c2a6594385b5cf5548bd329 rss_modified:rss:9d9437cc2bdadfdb0c2a6594385b5cf5548bd329 http://www.gamespot.com/mashup/ Gamespot's Everything Feed! News, Reviews, Videos. Exploding with content? You bet. en-us Sat, 16 Aug 2014 00:29:47 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/why-ea-founder-and-creator-of-madden-is-now-making/1100-6421715/ Trip Hawkins has been involved with video games in just about every way a person can be. He championed the publishing model by founding juggernaut company Electronic Arts; he created a multibillion-dollar empire in EA Sports; he worked in hardware with 3DO; and he stepped into the mobile space in a big way with Digital Chocolate. Hawkins, now 61, is trying something new.
His latest venture is If You Can Company, a San Mateo, Calif.-based startup (funded in part by the venture capital firm of Internet pioneer Marc Andreessen) that aims to use video games to teach children social and emotional learning (SEL) skills. The company's first game is called "If…", which gets its name from the Rudyard Kipling poem of the same name, which Kipling wrote in 1909 as advice to his son.
The game's overall ambition is to equip children with skills to help them handle bullying and manage challenging emotional and academic situations. The free game, which is aimed at children 6-12 and is set in a fantasy world with dogs and cats, unfolds across chapters, the first of which was released in February and has already seen more than 400,000 downloads on iOS. Chapter two arrived in July, and additional chapters are planned for release throughout 2014.
Children can play the chapters at their leisure, and they only have to spend about an hour per week to complete an entire lesson plan in a month. According to If You Can, the game covers the equivalent of a year's curriculum at leading SEL teaching schools, and only for the cost of $5/month, which is a major savings compared to traditional schooling.
"If you were getting SEL curriculum through a private school, you're [spending] $35,000 a year, and private tutors cost typically $50-$75/hour," Hawkins told me. "The typical child playing our game is going to probably spend three or four hours, maybe five hours, a month and it's going to cost them a $5/month subscription. So it's a pretty good deal."
A new dashboard app for parents, available on iOS devices or on the Web for PC or Mac, serves as a companion to their child's gameplay. Parents can log in and see lesson themes, updates on their children's accomplishments, and get ideas for how to translate the in-game lesson plans to real-world situations.
Why, at this stage in his career, is Hawkins turning to education games? "It's something really critical that fell through the cracks," he says about SEL teaching, which involves the fostering and nurturing of things like citizenship, character, and values. Hawkins says that in the past, children grew up alongside their parents, and as such, they were given constant attention and nurturing. But with the arrival of the urban, industrialized, and technologically advanced world, parents left their homes to work all day, leaving their children in public schools where they often don't know anyone. Hawkins says schools didn't do much in the way of SEL because teachers felt parents should handle this part of their children's development. As a result, SEL teaching "fell into a crack," he says.
"The game industry is mostly always been young men that want to make games that they want to play; and I certainly operated that way for the first 20 years I was in the industry," he says. "And now in the last 20 years, I've become a parent, and have learned about these needs and issues and I want to do something about it."
That's where If You Can Company and If come in. Hawkins wondered what could be done to scale up SEL teaching so that children everywhere could benefit from it without having to pay the thousands in tuition and tutor's fees mandated by educational institutions like the Nueva School that his children attended.
"Now in the last 20 years, I've become a parent, and have learned about these needs and issues and I want to do something about it" -- Trip Hawkins
"One thing led to another, and I finally realized that I was in a position to try to do something about it by basically putting this kind of knowledge in a game," Hawkins says. "In a way, I think this is a harbinger of a future industry where gameplay as the foundation of a media experience [and then] games as a platform from which to send serious curriculum with legitimate methods of assessment of learning."
"By just watching what my kids were learning through this innovative school area, it just dawned on me that, 'Wow, this is a really critical skillset,'" he added. "Nobody ever taught me these skills, and I've suffered because of it."
The reason Hawkins is turning to mobile platforms for If is because he says the way you communicate with children is by meeting them where they are. "If their attention and motivation is on a mobile device on a game anyway, why not use that as a 21st century platform for learning?," he says.
To create the actual lesson plans featured in If, Hawkins and his team worked with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning; and the Institute for SEL, a group of former teachers from the Nueva School.
"The design of the curriculum is modeled after what a really good and expensive private school, like the ones my kids went to, what they would learn about social and emotional learning in a year of school," Hawkins says. "And we teach basically the same kind of lesson plans, the same kind of academic measurements, and we deliver a year's worth of that learning over the course of a calendar year. And particularly as we get it out on more devices, more screen sizes, we feel like it's something like there will be millions of devices and plenty of people will have an opportunity to learn from it and benefit."
What separates If from a game like SimCity is that though there is educational value to Will Wright's iconic simulation game, it was not created for the specific purpose of teaching. "He never planned any specific curriculum; he never did any assessment of learning, so that's why there's an opportunity for us in the game industry to build a new category," Hawkins says.
Part of the reason Hawkins is so enthusiastic about video games as a teaching tool is because, unlike passive media like TV or film, video games actively engage the user. "It wasn't just an accident that television became known as the boob tube," he says with a laugh. "I think we've known for a long time that passive media puts us to sleep." Early in his life, Hawkins played lots of tabletop role-playing games. He found that he felt more energized and stimulated after playing tabletop games like Dungeon & Dragons that required him to think and strategize than when he was absorbed in TV. That's because humans learn best by doing, he says.
"You think about the last year you were a full-time student at school, compare that to the first year you were out of school--when did you learn more? There's just no comparison," Hawkins said. "You learn much faster in real-world situations. And then the power of the computer has the ability to simulate almost anything you want and crank out simulated real life situations at a much faster pace and to do things that go way, way beyond the scope of what a human being could do in a real life."
"You think about the last year you were a full time student at school, compare that to the first year you were out of school--when did you learn more? There's just no comparison. You learn much faster in real-world situations" -- Trip Hawkins
"The best way for us to learn about ourselves is by having the fantasy of pretending to be other people," he adds. "And that's what we do all the time in games through role-playing and simulation and fantasy. And it's really true; you can have so many more synthetic experiences through computer simulation than you could possibly have in real life. And it allows you to be able to then reflect and organize your thinking about what does that all mean and how do you apply that to yourself and your real life."
Currently, If is only available through the App Store, but I wondered if one day his company could align with a major educational institution or organization to offer the game as part of an official curriculum. "I don't rule that out, but you need to know yourself and what you're capable of doing," Hawkins says, admitting that he has no experience with foundations or running a non-profit company. "That doesn't mean that we don't have a social purpose or a social conscience," he added. "It's definitely our longer-term goal that as many people as possible benefit from this kind of human knowledge. And there's nothing that prevents us in the future from giving the product away to certain needy customers."
Since If is released on a chapter-based model, I was also curious if there was an opportunity for new content to focus on current events or trends. I brought up bullying, a topic that unfortunately hits the headlines often. Hawkins said If's lesson plan teaches children about empathy and sensitivity, and some levels even have story elements around the topic of bullying. But as for releasing new content based on current events, Hawkins said this isn't really possible because If's content is created ahead of time.
"What's maybe not as easy for us to do is, on short notice, suddenly say, 'Hey, let's completely change what our game is today.' It's a production pipeline, but it's really like producing a bunch of interactive movies," he says. "And the content gets produced, and gets put on the shelf, and then gets pulled down off the shelf when the customer gets to it and is ready to consume it. So we may not have the facility to reinvent the movie every day; it's more prescriptive. We can't just radically change what the product does every day on short notice."
I also wondered if parents might be skeptical about trusting a startup company and an unproven educational model with something as important as their child's life and emotional development. Hawkins said he understands this concern, but pointed out the the lessons in If were designed by experts.
"We're all going to be better off if a decent share of the time we spend on [tablets and smartphones] actually has some benefit besides just keeping us busy" -- Trip Hawkins
"We understood from the beginning that there would be these questions if a bunch of guys from the game industry came in and say 'Hey, we know how to take care of a child, we know how to teach a child.' And we didn't do that," Hawkins said. "We brought in the experts. We're working with an all-star team of these teaching masters and research experts. And they've been integrated into the team in the same way that athletes and coaches were integrated into EA Sports. I think EA Sports was successful because people were able to recognize that I was committed to the products being authentic; I was a lunatic about it; In fact, Madden football at EA became known as Trip's Folly just because I wouldn't allow the game to not be the real thing even if it was going to take years to get it right. So it's a similar situation here."
On top of that, because If is free-to-play, a parent or teacher can try the game before subscribing. Hawkins is confident, too, that once you try the game, you'll understand the value. Reviews for the game so far bear this out. "Pretty much everybody that does that gives a two thumbs up," he says.
Finally, Hawkins said he sees a bright future for education-themed games like If. In addition to his new game, the market includes LeVar Burton's recent Reading Rainbow project, SimCityEDU, MinecraftEDU, and interactive math game DragonBox, among others. This category is only going to grow larger thanks to the rise in devices like tablets, he says.
"There are a handful of examples I think of flagships for what ought to become a whole new industry category that is following these [education] principles," Hawkins said. "And I think it's going to allow the parents and the teachers to curate the quality and wholesomeness and value of what's on this burgeoning tablet market that's going to reach a billion or two devices over the next period of years. I think, by contrast, in the absence of these kinds of wholesome choices, there's a lot of kids getting addicted to games that are really just for entertainment and are kind of a waste of time. And we're all getting addicted to mobile devices. We're all going to be better off if a decent share of the time we spend on the devices actually has some benefit besides just keeping us busy."
You can download If today from iTunes. More information about the game is available at its official website.
]]> 1100-6421715Sat, 16 Aug 2014 00:15:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/dogfighting-in-star-citizen-gamescom/2300-6420861/ 2300-6420861Fri, 15 Aug 2014 18:00:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/15-of-the-best-games-from-gamescom-2014/1100-6421759/ The world's biggest games convention has just flown by, with dozens upon dozens of games being shown off in the crowded halls of Gamescom 2014 in Germany. The GameSpot crew was on hand all this week to bring you news, previews, and videos direct from the event, but in case you missed some of our coverage, below is a list of some of our top features from the last week.PS4 Exclusive Bloodborne Features Health Regeneration, Encourages Offensive Combat
"For all of Dark Souls developer From Software's talk about Bloodborne being opened up to a "wider audience" than its spiritual predecessors, and the gameplay concessions to less experienced players that would entail, it sure as hell doesn't look like this game is going to be easy." Read more here.
There's More to Quantum Break Than You Might Think
"Quantum Break is a game about a man seeking to rescue the very fabric of time. But if you caught the gameplay demo that Remedy debuted on stage at Microsoft's Gamescom 2014 press conference, you might be under the impression that time must be rescued with a whole lot of gunfire and slow-motion punches to the face." Read more here.
Dead Island 2
Why Mortal Kombat X Has Renewed My Enthusiasm for the Series
"For the first time in a while, I'm ready to give Mortal Kombat another shot. After experiencing Mortal Kombat X first hand at Gamescom, my suspicions based on the initial gameplay videos are confirmed; Mortal Kombat X is the most fluid entry in the series to date." Read more here.
Until Dawn's Hollywood-Infused PS4 Reboot is Absolutely Terrifying
"Originally unveiled as Move game on PlayStation 3, Until Dawn has now ditched the Move controller and the PS3 for Sony's shiny new Dualshock 4 and PS4. But the biggest change to the game comes from its new stylistic direction." Read more here.
Forza Horizon 2 Lets You Hang Out in a Van Down by the River
"Microsoft and Playground Games are showing a new demo of Forza Horizon 2 here at Gamescom 2014, and it's one that's absolutely packed with new features. It includes a look at the new day-night cycle, a feature that lets you hang out in a parking lot trading liveries with other players, and the return of custom tuning settings that never made the transition from Motorsport to the first Horizon." Read more here.
Battlefield Hardline
PixelJunk Developer Reveals Details of Genre-Bending PS4 Exclusive The Tomorrow Children
"Confused by the reveal of Q-Games' The Tomorrow Children during Sony's Gamescom press conference? You're not the only one." Read more here.
Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain - Horse Poop, Wolves, and Twin Snakes. Oh My!
"At the start of today's demo, Snake rode on horseback into an enemy base situated in Afghanistan. As in the E3 demo, Snake's horse, for lack of a better word, defecated in the road after riding a few meters into enemy territory, but it actually served a practical purpose this time around." Read more here.
How the Assassinations in Assassin's Creed Unity Encourage Patience and Creativity
"Its assassinations, nicknamed "black box missions" by the development team at Ubisoft Montreal, look like a return to the more sandbox-driven approach of old..but with some modern twists." Read more here.
FIFA 15
Making Friends With Yaks and Snow Leopards in Far Cry 4
"This high up, in the ruins of an old monastery, the scenery is dominated by snow, rocky cliffs, and howling winds. But though my mission seems like a challenging one, I've got one secret weapon at my disposal: yaks." Read more here.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Raises More Questions Than It Answers, and I'm Just Fine With That
"Exploring this world from a first-person perspective, I was immediately reminded of games like Gone Home or the upcoming Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. There's an unsettling stillness to it all." Read more here.
Four Reasons I'm Suddenly Interested in Assassin's Creed Rogue
"But you know what? Maybe I was too quick to write off Rogue. I'm still not entirely sold on it, but after getting some hands-on time with the Gamescom 2014 demo, I'm ready to give Assassin's Creed Rogue another look. Here are a few reasons why." Read more here.
Borderlands The Pre-Sequel
]]> 1100-6421759Fri, 15 Aug 2014 17:53:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/diablo-iii-ultimate-evil-edition-act-v-co-op/2300-6420868/ 2300-6420868Fri, 15 Aug 2014 17:39:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/all-the-biggest-sony-playstation-news-from-gamesco/1100-6421758/
Gamescom gets bigger and bigger every year, and although it might not quite rival E3, the show has more than its fair share of bombshell announcements. Here's a rundown of the biggest Sony news from the show so far.
If you've got the time, you can also catch up on the entire Sony press conference right here, or get a rundown on our thoughts in the video above.
PlayStation 4 Games News:
Sony's presser was almost E3 like in the number of new games they showed off. Well, new games related to PS4, anyway. You'll notice a distinct lack of Vita and PS3 news at this year's show. Also no Last Guardian...but we still have the Tokyo Game Show, so don't lose hope yet.
Everything Else Sony:
We have even more coverage of the games and stories around Gamescom throughout the weekend, but you can check it all out on our hub page here.
]]> 1100-6421758Fri, 15 Aug 2014 16:44:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/gs-news-top-5-silent-hills-will-ruin-pants-tomb-ra/2300-6420855/ 2300-6420855Fri, 15 Aug 2014 16:00:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/no-mans-sky-players-would-need-5-billion-years-to-/1100-6421757/We know the universe of No Man's Sky is truly massive, thanks to its procedurally generated worlds. Even if developer Hello Games could share the exact number of worlds players can visit, it would be incomprehensibly big. What it can provide is a rough estimate of how long it would take to visit every planet in the game: five billion years.
That figure was shared with IGN by Hello's Sean Murray. It's an extraordinarily long time, but what makes it more impressive is the fact that it's merely how long it would take to visit each planet for a single second. What we've seen of the game so far suggests you'll need far longer than one minute, let alone one second, to fully explore any given world, so suffice it to say, you're never going to run out of new places to visit.
This is made possible because Hello opted to use 64-bit numbers to generate its worlds, rather than 32-bit numbers. When 32-bit numbers were being used at one point, it still would have meant taking several thousand years to visit each planet for one second. By moving to 64-bit numbers--which can store the astronomical sum of 2^64 total values, substantially more than the 2^32 total of 32-bit numbers--Hello was able to ensure it's even more difficult to fathom just how many planets No Man's Sky contains.
You can expect to hear more about the game before long, as Murray teased that Hello "will have something big to show soon."
The open-world game was first revealed last December and is expected out in 2015 for PlayStation 4. (A PC version is also in the works.) For more, check out our Next Big Game coverage from July, which dives into just how massive the game is and the tools Hello is using to make this all possible.
| Chris Pereira is a freelance writer for GameSpot, and you can follow him on Twitter @TheSmokingManX |
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| Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com |
The Xbox One's next system update is now live for those enrolled in Microsoft's preview program, providing access to many of the features announced earlier this week at Gamescom. As an extra surprise, some previously unannounced--if somewhat minor--features are also included in today's update.
This update adds major new features like the Media Player app and a new friends area. It also includes a redesigned Party app that makes it easier to see what everyone in the party is doing, and gives control to one person who can remove party members and dictate whether people need an invite to join.
There are other, smaller features added in this update that Microsoft didn't mention earlier this week when it previewed some of the features being added in the next few months. These include a way to save your Avatar gamerpic to your OneDrive account, a tool for tracking your Xbox One's bandwidth usage, and new options to "help you manage your controllers and accessories." One addition I'm particularly thankful for is a way to delete multiple Game DVR clips at once, which should be a real help when trying to clear out all of those automatically recorded Peggle 2 highlights I've been amassing.
If you're enrolled in the preview program that provides early access to Xbox One system updates, you'll be able to download this update now. Microsoft has yet to say when many of these features will be made available to all Xbox One owners, but we do know an update is coming for everyone this month that will include an enhanced activity feed and 3D Blu-ray movie support, among other things.
The previously unannounced features in today's update are listed below; check out our story on the original announcement for details on the others.
- Redesigned parties -- Makes it easier to see who is playing what, to see whether others are in the same game as you, and to do common tasks like joining, inviting, or muting someone. Also adds the party-leader designation, allowing that person to remove others from the party and decide if an invite is needed to join.
- "Xbox On" expansion -- The ability to turn the system on with the "Xbox On" voice command expands to new countries, including Australia, Canada (in French), Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Brazil.
- Multiple Game DVR deletes -- Delete multiple clips at a time in the Upload app.
- Save Avatar gamerpics -- Love the way your Avatar looks in your gamerpic? Save it to your OneDrive so that you can make it your Twitter icon, print it out and frame it, or whatever else you feel like doing.
- Settings update -- The location of the Instant Sign-In option is being moved, and new, unspecified options for "manag[ing] your controllers and accessories" are being added.
- Bandwidth usage -- See how much bandwidth your console has been using from the Network Settings area.
| Chris Pereira is a freelance writer for GameSpot, and you can follow him on Twitter @TheSmokingManX |
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| Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com |
Gamescom gets bigger and bigger every year, and although it might not quite rival E3, the show has more than its fair share of big news. Here's a rundown of the biggest Xbox announcements from the show.
If you've got the time, you can also catch up on the entire Microsoft press conference right here, or get a rundown on our thoughts in the video above.
Hardware News:
Changes are coming to the Xbox One. Most of these are the result of the upcoming August Xbox One update, but here's what we learned about during the show:
New Hardware Bundles:
Xbox Games News:
The biggest talking point from Microsoft centered on Rise of the Tomb Raider. With gratuitous use of the word "exclusive," Microsoft heavily implied that Tomb Raider sequel would only be on Xbox. Microsoft Xbox head Phil Spencer later clarified that the deal with Square Enix "has a duration," implying that it will come to other, unspecified platforms at a later, unspecified date.
We have even more coverage of the games and stories around Gamescom throughout the weekend, but you can check it all out on our hub page here.
]]> 1100-6421755Fri, 15 Aug 2014 14:23:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/star-citizen-constellation-trailer/2300-6420863/ 2300-6420863Fri, 15 Aug 2014 12:59:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/madden-nfl-15-madden-season/2300-6420862/ 2300-6420862Fri, 15 Aug 2014 12:53:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/fifa-15s-cover-has-messi-and-now-pes-2015-has-mari/1100-6421753/Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 will feature German midfielder Mario Götze on its cover when it's released on November 11, Konami has announced.
That it's Mario Götze--who scored the winning (and only) goal in the 2014 FIFA World Cup Final--and not Italy's Mario Balotelli is disappointing to me because it prevents me from saying that Super Mario (Balotelli's nickname) is on the cover of PES. It does, however, mean that the covers for this year's FIFA and PES games each have a star from the two teams that played one another in the aforementioned World Cup Final; FIFA 15's cover features Argentina's Lionel Messi (and, in North America, US player Clint Dempsey).
PES' release in November means the game is coming out much later than FIFA 15, which launches next month. Perhaps to make up for that, Konami plans to release a demo of PES 2015 on September 17, a week prior to FIFA's release on September 23. The PES demo will be available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3; the full game is also coming to PC. A FIFA 15 demo will be available in September, too, meaning you'll have the opportunity to see for yourself which game you prefer.
EA Sports has boasted a great deal about the enhanced levels of realism it's brought to FIFA 15. Konami, too, has spoken about striving to be the best video game simulation of the sport, saying last month that PES 2015 represents a "true return to core PES values of total control, super responsive controls, and renowned gameplay, where the user has unrestricted control over how they play." The game runs on the FOX Engine, the same technology powering Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and will also offer microtransactions, which Konami insists they are purely optional.
Based on what we've seen so far, are you more interested in FIFA 15 or PES 2015? Let us know in the comments.
| Chris Pereira is a freelance writer for GameSpot, and you can follow him on Twitter @TheSmokingManX |
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| Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com |
The company is launching the program by offering download codes for Max: The Curse of Brotherhood and State of Decay, as well as "select" map and expansion packs for Halo and Forza games. The company will add more codes in the coming months from other publishers and also plans to extend the program to more countries.
Microsoft says this new program is all about giving gamers more options for how they can purchase digital content. Of course, you can still buy digital games and DLC through Xbox.com and on your console.
Buying digital content at a physical retailer might sound backwards, but it's already big business for retailer GameStop. In fact, more than half of GameStop's digital revenue comes from brick-and-mortar stores. One of the advantages to shopping for digital content in a physical store, according to GameStop, is that if you have a question, you can ask a store associate. If you're shopping online, you don't get that kind of customer service.
Another potentially compelling reason to buy digital games at retail is because you won't necessarily need cash or credit to do so. For retailers that accept trade-ins (like GameStop), you would be able to buy the digital games using your trade credit.
Microsoft's new digital purchasing option runs alongside the gift cards that it already sells at retailers that you can use to buy items from the Xbox Marketplace . Sony (PlayStation Network) and Valve (Steam Wallet) also sell marketplace gift cards at physical retailers like GameStop.
Do you buy digital content at physical retailers? Let us know in the comments below!
]]> 1100-6421754Fri, 15 Aug 2014 12:35:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/reality-check-yet-more-pc-gfx-explained-motion-blu/2300-6420858/ 2300-6420858Fri, 15 Aug 2014 12:00:00 -0700rss:9d9437cc2bdadfdb0c2a6594385b5cf5548bd329 rss_modified:rss:9d9437cc2bdadfdb0c2a6594385b5cf5548bd329 http://www.gamespot.com/mashup/ Gamespot's Everything Feed! News, Reviews, Videos. Exploding with content? You bet. en-us Sat, 16 Aug 2014 00:29:47 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/why-ea-founder-and-creator-of-madden-is-now-making/1100-6421715/ Trip Hawkins has been involved with video games in just about every way a person can be. He championed the publishing model by founding juggernaut company Electronic Arts; he created a multibillion-dollar empire in EA Sports; he worked in hardware with 3DO; and he stepped into the mobile space in a big way with Digital Chocolate. Hawkins, now 61, is trying something new.
His latest venture is If You Can Company, a San Mateo, Calif.-based startup (funded in part by the venture capital firm of Internet pioneer Marc Andreessen) that aims to use video games to teach children social and emotional learning (SEL) skills. The company's first game is called "If…", which gets its name from the Rudyard Kipling poem of the same name, which Kipling wrote in 1909 as advice to his son.
The game's overall ambition is to equip children with skills to help them handle bullying and manage challenging emotional and academic situations. The free game, which is aimed at children 6-12 and is set in a fantasy world with dogs and cats, unfolds across chapters, the first of which was released in February and has already seen more than 400,000 downloads on iOS. Chapter two arrived in July, and additional chapters are planned for release throughout 2014.
Children can play the chapters at their leisure, and they only have to spend about an hour per week to complete an entire lesson plan in a month. According to If You Can, the game covers the equivalent of a year's curriculum at leading SEL teaching schools, and only for the cost of $5/month, which is a major savings compared to traditional schooling.
"If you were getting SEL curriculum through a private school, you're [spending] $35,000 a year, and private tutors cost typically $50-$75/hour," Hawkins told me. "The typical child playing our game is going to probably spend three or four hours, maybe five hours, a month and it's going to cost them a $5/month subscription. So it's a pretty good deal."
A new dashboard app for parents, available on iOS devices or on the Web for PC or Mac, serves as a companion to their child's gameplay. Parents can log in and see lesson themes, updates on their children's accomplishments, and get ideas for how to translate the in-game lesson plans to real-world situations.
Why, at this stage in his career, is Hawkins turning to education games? "It's something really critical that fell through the cracks," he says about SEL teaching, which involves the fostering and nurturing of things like citizenship, character, and values. Hawkins says that in the past, children grew up alongside their parents, and as such, they were given constant attention and nurturing. But with the arrival of the urban, industrialized, and technologically advanced world, parents left their homes to work all day, leaving their children in public schools where they often don't know anyone. Hawkins says schools didn't do much in the way of SEL because teachers felt parents should handle this part of their children's development. As a result, SEL teaching "fell into a crack," he says.
"The game industry is mostly always been young men that want to make games that they want to play; and I certainly operated that way for the first 20 years I was in the industry," he says. "And now in the last 20 years, I've become a parent, and have learned about these needs and issues and I want to do something about it."
That's where If You Can Company and If come in. Hawkins wondered what could be done to scale up SEL teaching so that children everywhere could benefit from it without having to pay the thousands in tuition and tutor's fees mandated by educational institutions like the Nueva School that his children attended.
"Now in the last 20 years, I've become a parent, and have learned about these needs and issues and I want to do something about it" -- Trip Hawkins
"One thing led to another, and I finally realized that I was in a position to try to do something about it by basically putting this kind of knowledge in a game," Hawkins says. "In a way, I think this is a harbinger of a future industry where gameplay as the foundation of a media experience [and then] games as a platform from which to send serious curriculum with legitimate methods of assessment of learning."
"By just watching what my kids were learning through this innovative school area, it just dawned on me that, 'Wow, this is a really critical skillset,'" he added. "Nobody ever taught me these skills, and I've suffered because of it."
The reason Hawkins is turning to mobile platforms for If is because he says the way you communicate with children is by meeting them where they are. "If their attention and motivation is on a mobile device on a game anyway, why not use that as a 21st century platform for learning?," he says.
To create the actual lesson plans featured in If, Hawkins and his team worked with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning; and the Institute for SEL, a group of former teachers from the Nueva School.
"The design of the curriculum is modeled after what a really good and expensive private school, like the ones my kids went to, what they would learn about social and emotional learning in a year of school," Hawkins says. "And we teach basically the same kind of lesson plans, the same kind of academic measurements, and we deliver a year's worth of that learning over the course of a calendar year. And particularly as we get it out on more devices, more screen sizes, we feel like it's something like there will be millions of devices and plenty of people will have an opportunity to learn from it and benefit."
What separates If from a game like SimCity is that though there is educational value to Will Wright's iconic simulation game, it was not created for the specific purpose of teaching. "He never planned any specific curriculum; he never did any assessment of learning, so that's why there's an opportunity for us in the game industry to build a new category," Hawkins says.
Part of the reason Hawkins is so enthusiastic about video games as a teaching tool is because, unlike passive media like TV or film, video games actively engage the user. "It wasn't just an accident that television became known as the boob tube," he says with a laugh. "I think we've known for a long time that passive media puts us to sleep." Early in his life, Hawkins played lots of tabletop role-playing games. He found that he felt more energized and stimulated after playing tabletop games like Dungeon & Dragons that required him to think and strategize than when he was absorbed in TV. That's because humans learn best by doing, he says.
"You think about the last year you were a full-time student at school, compare that to the first year you were out of school--when did you learn more? There's just no comparison," Hawkins said. "You learn much faster in real-world situations. And then the power of the computer has the ability to simulate almost anything you want and crank out simulated real life situations at a much faster pace and to do things that go way, way beyond the scope of what a human being could do in a real life."
"You think about the last year you were a full time student at school, compare that to the first year you were out of school--when did you learn more? There's just no comparison. You learn much faster in real-world situations" -- Trip Hawkins
"The best way for us to learn about ourselves is by having the fantasy of pretending to be other people," he adds. "And that's what we do all the time in games through role-playing and simulation and fantasy. And it's really true; you can have so many more synthetic experiences through computer simulation than you could possibly have in real life. And it allows you to be able to then reflect and organize your thinking about what does that all mean and how do you apply that to yourself and your real life."
Currently, If is only available through the App Store, but I wondered if one day his company could align with a major educational institution or organization to offer the game as part of an official curriculum. "I don't rule that out, but you need to know yourself and what you're capable of doing," Hawkins says, admitting that he has no experience with foundations or running a non-profit company. "That doesn't mean that we don't have a social purpose or a social conscience," he added. "It's definitely our longer-term goal that as many people as possible benefit from this kind of human knowledge. And there's nothing that prevents us in the future from giving the product away to certain needy customers."
Since If is released on a chapter-based model, I was also curious if there was an opportunity for new content to focus on current events or trends. I brought up bullying, a topic that unfortunately hits the headlines often. Hawkins said If's lesson plan teaches children about empathy and sensitivity, and some levels even have story elements around the topic of bullying. But as for releasing new content based on current events, Hawkins said this isn't really possible because If's content is created ahead of time.
"What's maybe not as easy for us to do is, on short notice, suddenly say, 'Hey, let's completely change what our game is today.' It's a production pipeline, but it's really like producing a bunch of interactive movies," he says. "And the content gets produced, and gets put on the shelf, and then gets pulled down off the shelf when the customer gets to it and is ready to consume it. So we may not have the facility to reinvent the movie every day; it's more prescriptive. We can't just radically change what the product does every day on short notice."
I also wondered if parents might be skeptical about trusting a startup company and an unproven educational model with something as important as their child's life and emotional development. Hawkins said he understands this concern, but pointed out the the lessons in If were designed by experts.
"We're all going to be better off if a decent share of the time we spend on [tablets and smartphones] actually has some benefit besides just keeping us busy" -- Trip Hawkins
"We understood from the beginning that there would be these questions if a bunch of guys from the game industry came in and say 'Hey, we know how to take care of a child, we know how to teach a child.' And we didn't do that," Hawkins said. "We brought in the experts. We're working with an all-star team of these teaching masters and research experts. And they've been integrated into the team in the same way that athletes and coaches were integrated into EA Sports. I think EA Sports was successful because people were able to recognize that I was committed to the products being authentic; I was a lunatic about it; In fact, Madden football at EA became known as Trip's Folly just because I wouldn't allow the game to not be the real thing even if it was going to take years to get it right. So it's a similar situation here."
On top of that, because If is free-to-play, a parent or teacher can try the game before subscribing. Hawkins is confident, too, that once you try the game, you'll understand the value. Reviews for the game so far bear this out. "Pretty much everybody that does that gives a two thumbs up," he says.
Finally, Hawkins said he sees a bright future for education-themed games like If. In addition to his new game, the market includes LeVar Burton's recent Reading Rainbow project, SimCityEDU, MinecraftEDU, and interactive math game DragonBox, among others. This category is only going to grow larger thanks to the rise in devices like tablets, he says.
"There are a handful of examples I think of flagships for what ought to become a whole new industry category that is following these [education] principles," Hawkins said. "And I think it's going to allow the parents and the teachers to curate the quality and wholesomeness and value of what's on this burgeoning tablet market that's going to reach a billion or two devices over the next period of years. I think, by contrast, in the absence of these kinds of wholesome choices, there's a lot of kids getting addicted to games that are really just for entertainment and are kind of a waste of time. And we're all getting addicted to mobile devices. We're all going to be better off if a decent share of the time we spend on the devices actually has some benefit besides just keeping us busy."
You can download If today from iTunes. More information about the game is available at its official website.
]]> 1100-6421715Sat, 16 Aug 2014 00:15:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/dogfighting-in-star-citizen-gamescom/2300-6420861/ 2300-6420861Fri, 15 Aug 2014 18:00:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/15-of-the-best-games-from-gamescom-2014/1100-6421759/ The world's biggest games convention has just flown by, with dozens upon dozens of games being shown off in the crowded halls of Gamescom 2014 in Germany. The GameSpot crew was on hand all this week to bring you news, previews, and videos direct from the event, but in case you missed some of our coverage, below is a list of some of our top features from the last week.PS4 Exclusive Bloodborne Features Health Regeneration, Encourages Offensive Combat
"For all of Dark Souls developer From Software's talk about Bloodborne being opened up to a "wider audience" than its spiritual predecessors, and the gameplay concessions to less experienced players that would entail, it sure as hell doesn't look like this game is going to be easy." Read more here.
There's More to Quantum Break Than You Might Think
"Quantum Break is a game about a man seeking to rescue the very fabric of time. But if you caught the gameplay demo that Remedy debuted on stage at Microsoft's Gamescom 2014 press conference, you might be under the impression that time must be rescued with a whole lot of gunfire and slow-motion punches to the face." Read more here.
Dead Island 2
Why Mortal Kombat X Has Renewed My Enthusiasm for the Series
"For the first time in a while, I'm ready to give Mortal Kombat another shot. After experiencing Mortal Kombat X first hand at Gamescom, my suspicions based on the initial gameplay videos are confirmed; Mortal Kombat X is the most fluid entry in the series to date." Read more here.
Until Dawn's Hollywood-Infused PS4 Reboot is Absolutely Terrifying
"Originally unveiled as Move game on PlayStation 3, Until Dawn has now ditched the Move controller and the PS3 for Sony's shiny new Dualshock 4 and PS4. But the biggest change to the game comes from its new stylistic direction." Read more here.
Forza Horizon 2 Lets You Hang Out in a Van Down by the River
"Microsoft and Playground Games are showing a new demo of Forza Horizon 2 here at Gamescom 2014, and it's one that's absolutely packed with new features. It includes a look at the new day-night cycle, a feature that lets you hang out in a parking lot trading liveries with other players, and the return of custom tuning settings that never made the transition from Motorsport to the first Horizon." Read more here.
Battlefield Hardline
PixelJunk Developer Reveals Details of Genre-Bending PS4 Exclusive The Tomorrow Children
"Confused by the reveal of Q-Games' The Tomorrow Children during Sony's Gamescom press conference? You're not the only one." Read more here.
Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain - Horse Poop, Wolves, and Twin Snakes. Oh My!
"At the start of today's demo, Snake rode on horseback into an enemy base situated in Afghanistan. As in the E3 demo, Snake's horse, for lack of a better word, defecated in the road after riding a few meters into enemy territory, but it actually served a practical purpose this time around." Read more here.
How the Assassinations in Assassin's Creed Unity Encourage Patience and Creativity
"Its assassinations, nicknamed "black box missions" by the development team at Ubisoft Montreal, look like a return to the more sandbox-driven approach of old..but with some modern twists." Read more here.
FIFA 15
Making Friends With Yaks and Snow Leopards in Far Cry 4
"This high up, in the ruins of an old monastery, the scenery is dominated by snow, rocky cliffs, and howling winds. But though my mission seems like a challenging one, I've got one secret weapon at my disposal: yaks." Read more here.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Raises More Questions Than It Answers, and I'm Just Fine With That
"Exploring this world from a first-person perspective, I was immediately reminded of games like Gone Home or the upcoming Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. There's an unsettling stillness to it all." Read more here.
Four Reasons I'm Suddenly Interested in Assassin's Creed Rogue
"But you know what? Maybe I was too quick to write off Rogue. I'm still not entirely sold on it, but after getting some hands-on time with the Gamescom 2014 demo, I'm ready to give Assassin's Creed Rogue another look. Here are a few reasons why." Read more here.
Borderlands The Pre-Sequel
]]> 1100-6421759Fri, 15 Aug 2014 17:53:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/diablo-iii-ultimate-evil-edition-act-v-co-op/2300-6420868/ 2300-6420868Fri, 15 Aug 2014 17:39:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/all-the-biggest-sony-playstation-news-from-gamesco/1100-6421758/
Gamescom gets bigger and bigger every year, and although it might not quite rival E3, the show has more than its fair share of bombshell announcements. Here's a rundown of the biggest Sony news from the show so far.
If you've got the time, you can also catch up on the entire Sony press conference right here, or get a rundown on our thoughts in the video above.
PlayStation 4 Games News:
Sony's presser was almost E3 like in the number of new games they showed off. Well, new games related to PS4, anyway. You'll notice a distinct lack of Vita and PS3 news at this year's show. Also no Last Guardian...but we still have the Tokyo Game Show, so don't lose hope yet.
Everything Else Sony:
We have even more coverage of the games and stories around Gamescom throughout the weekend, but you can check it all out on our hub page here.
]]> 1100-6421758Fri, 15 Aug 2014 16:44:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/gs-news-top-5-silent-hills-will-ruin-pants-tomb-ra/2300-6420855/ 2300-6420855Fri, 15 Aug 2014 16:00:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/no-mans-sky-players-would-need-5-billion-years-to-/1100-6421757/We know the universe of No Man's Sky is truly massive, thanks to its procedurally generated worlds. Even if developer Hello Games could share the exact number of worlds players can visit, it would be incomprehensibly big. What it can provide is a rough estimate of how long it would take to visit every planet in the game: five billion years.
That figure was shared with IGN by Hello's Sean Murray. It's an extraordinarily long time, but what makes it more impressive is the fact that it's merely how long it would take to visit each planet for a single second. What we've seen of the game so far suggests you'll need far longer than one minute, let alone one second, to fully explore any given world, so suffice it to say, you're never going to run out of new places to visit.
This is made possible because Hello opted to use 64-bit numbers to generate its worlds, rather than 32-bit numbers. When 32-bit numbers were being used at one point, it still would have meant taking several thousand years to visit each planet for one second. By moving to 64-bit numbers--which can store the astronomical sum of 2^64 total values, substantially more than the 2^32 total of 32-bit numbers--Hello was able to ensure it's even more difficult to fathom just how many planets No Man's Sky contains.
You can expect to hear more about the game before long, as Murray teased that Hello "will have something big to show soon."
The open-world game was first revealed last December and is expected out in 2015 for PlayStation 4. (A PC version is also in the works.) For more, check out our Next Big Game coverage from July, which dives into just how massive the game is and the tools Hello is using to make this all possible.
| Chris Pereira is a freelance writer for GameSpot, and you can follow him on Twitter @TheSmokingManX |
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| Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com |
The Xbox One's next system update is now live for those enrolled in Microsoft's preview program, providing access to many of the features announced earlier this week at Gamescom. As an extra surprise, some previously unannounced--if somewhat minor--features are also included in today's update.
This update adds major new features like the Media Player app and a new friends area. It also includes a redesigned Party app that makes it easier to see what everyone in the party is doing, and gives control to one person who can remove party members and dictate whether people need an invite to join.
There are other, smaller features added in this update that Microsoft didn't mention earlier this week when it previewed some of the features being added in the next few months. These include a way to save your Avatar gamerpic to your OneDrive account, a tool for tracking your Xbox One's bandwidth usage, and new options to "help you manage your controllers and accessories." One addition I'm particularly thankful for is a way to delete multiple Game DVR clips at once, which should be a real help when trying to clear out all of those automatically recorded Peggle 2 highlights I've been amassing.
If you're enrolled in the preview program that provides early access to Xbox One system updates, you'll be able to download this update now. Microsoft has yet to say when many of these features will be made available to all Xbox One owners, but we do know an update is coming for everyone this month that will include an enhanced activity feed and 3D Blu-ray movie support, among other things.
The previously unannounced features in today's update are listed below; check out our story on the original announcement for details on the others.
- Redesigned parties -- Makes it easier to see who is playing what, to see whether others are in the same game as you, and to do common tasks like joining, inviting, or muting someone. Also adds the party-leader designation, allowing that person to remove others from the party and decide if an invite is needed to join.
- "Xbox On" expansion -- The ability to turn the system on with the "Xbox On" voice command expands to new countries, including Australia, Canada (in French), Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Brazil.
- Multiple Game DVR deletes -- Delete multiple clips at a time in the Upload app.
- Save Avatar gamerpics -- Love the way your Avatar looks in your gamerpic? Save it to your OneDrive so that you can make it your Twitter icon, print it out and frame it, or whatever else you feel like doing.
- Settings update -- The location of the Instant Sign-In option is being moved, and new, unspecified options for "manag[ing] your controllers and accessories" are being added.
- Bandwidth usage -- See how much bandwidth your console has been using from the Network Settings area.
| Chris Pereira is a freelance writer for GameSpot, and you can follow him on Twitter @TheSmokingManX |
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| Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com |
Gamescom gets bigger and bigger every year, and although it might not quite rival E3, the show has more than its fair share of big news. Here's a rundown of the biggest Xbox announcements from the show.
If you've got the time, you can also catch up on the entire Microsoft press conference right here, or get a rundown on our thoughts in the video above.
Hardware News:
Changes are coming to the Xbox One. Most of these are the result of the upcoming August Xbox One update, but here's what we learned about during the show:
New Hardware Bundles:
Xbox Games News:
The biggest talking point from Microsoft centered on Rise of the Tomb Raider. With gratuitous use of the word "exclusive," Microsoft heavily implied that Tomb Raider sequel would only be on Xbox. Microsoft Xbox head Phil Spencer later clarified that the deal with Square Enix "has a duration," implying that it will come to other, unspecified platforms at a later, unspecified date.
We have even more coverage of the games and stories around Gamescom throughout the weekend, but you can check it all out on our hub page here.
]]> 1100-6421755Fri, 15 Aug 2014 14:23:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/star-citizen-constellation-trailer/2300-6420863/ 2300-6420863Fri, 15 Aug 2014 12:59:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/madden-nfl-15-madden-season/2300-6420862/ 2300-6420862Fri, 15 Aug 2014 12:53:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/fifa-15s-cover-has-messi-and-now-pes-2015-has-mari/1100-6421753/Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 will feature German midfielder Mario Götze on its cover when it's released on November 11, Konami has announced.
That it's Mario Götze--who scored the winning (and only) goal in the 2014 FIFA World Cup Final--and not Italy's Mario Balotelli is disappointing to me because it prevents me from saying that Super Mario (Balotelli's nickname) is on the cover of PES. It does, however, mean that the covers for this year's FIFA and PES games each have a star from the two teams that played one another in the aforementioned World Cup Final; FIFA 15's cover features Argentina's Lionel Messi (and, in North America, US player Clint Dempsey).
PES' release in November means the game is coming out much later than FIFA 15, which launches next month. Perhaps to make up for that, Konami plans to release a demo of PES 2015 on September 17, a week prior to FIFA's release on September 23. The PES demo will be available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3; the full game is also coming to PC. A FIFA 15 demo will be available in September, too, meaning you'll have the opportunity to see for yourself which game you prefer.
EA Sports has boasted a great deal about the enhanced levels of realism it's brought to FIFA 15. Konami, too, has spoken about striving to be the best video game simulation of the sport, saying last month that PES 2015 represents a "true return to core PES values of total control, super responsive controls, and renowned gameplay, where the user has unrestricted control over how they play." The game runs on the FOX Engine, the same technology powering Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and will also offer microtransactions, which Konami insists they are purely optional.
Based on what we've seen so far, are you more interested in FIFA 15 or PES 2015? Let us know in the comments.
| Chris Pereira is a freelance writer for GameSpot, and you can follow him on Twitter @TheSmokingManX |
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| Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com |
The company is launching the program by offering download codes for Max: The Curse of Brotherhood and State of Decay, as well as "select" map and expansion packs for Halo and Forza games. The company will add more codes in the coming months from other publishers and also plans to extend the program to more countries.
Microsoft says this new program is all about giving gamers more options for how they can purchase digital content. Of course, you can still buy digital games and DLC through Xbox.com and on your console.
Buying digital content at a physical retailer might sound backwards, but it's already big business for retailer GameStop. In fact, more than half of GameStop's digital revenue comes from brick-and-mortar stores. One of the advantages to shopping for digital content in a physical store, according to GameStop, is that if you have a question, you can ask a store associate. If you're shopping online, you don't get that kind of customer service.
Another potentially compelling reason to buy digital games at retail is because you won't necessarily need cash or credit to do so. For retailers that accept trade-ins (like GameStop), you would be able to buy the digital games using your trade credit.
Microsoft's new digital purchasing option runs alongside the gift cards that it already sells at retailers that you can use to buy items from the Xbox Marketplace . Sony (PlayStation Network) and Valve (Steam Wallet) also sell marketplace gift cards at physical retailers like GameStop.
Do you buy digital content at physical retailers? Let us know in the comments below!
]]> 1100-6421754Fri, 15 Aug 2014 12:35:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/reality-check-yet-more-pc-gfx-explained-motion-blu/2300-6420858/ 2300-6420858Fri, 15 Aug 2014 12:00:00 -0700Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
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