There’s an App For That?: Are Mobile Music Games Serious Educational Tools


Pierce Charlotte Woodward Clinton J. Bartel Anthony
2020 DiGRA ’20 – Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere

Music students face a significant cognitive load, which often causes them to abandon musical studies. Serious games offer a solution to this problem: present educational content in a fun package to increase student engagement and foster self-regulated, independent learning. In this paper we examine serious music games, specifically on the iOS platform. We address three questions: whether these games exhibit the benefits that serious games are considered to have; whether they provide educational value; and whether they offer any improvement over traditional teaching tools. We found that although they can offer the benefit of immediate, automated feedback, the currently available games cover only a small amount of musical knowledge. They also tend to support rote-learning style tasks, resulting in low-level learning outcomes, and do not tailor content to players. Despite these drawbacks the games offer some educational value. However, there is significant scope for continued development in the future.

 

Taxonomies for Transactions and User Engagement in Mobile Games


Windleharth Travis Lee Jin Ha
2020 DiGRA ’20 – Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere

While monetization strategies become increasingly complex in mobile games, there is currently no standard vocabulary to describe different types of transactions. We present two taxonomies developed from studying 65 mobile games—a taxonomy of the types of transactions between game players and companies that transfer or create value for the gamer owner, and a taxonomy of methods companies use to drive engagement and retention with mobile games. We also introduce the concept of a transaction value map to illustrate how these taxonomies can be applied to characterize the transfer of value from cash into the game state. Transaction types were mapped to four major areas: real world value exchange, transaction methods, in-game resources, and in-game purpose. This work provides means for discussing transaction types which helps improve our theorized understanding of monetization strategies in games. In addition, it can be adopted in game marketplace to better inform the players.

 

Critical Acclaim and Commercial Success in Mobile Free-to-Play Games


Alha Kati Koskinen Elina Paavilainen Janne Hamari Juho
2016 DiGRA/FDG '16 - Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG

Critical acclaim is considered to be one of the main predictors of profitability of game products. Major game publishers face tremendous hurdles in order to fare well in different forums that review and rate their products. However, little evidence exists on the relationship between ratings and profitability beyond anecdotal assumptions. In this study we investigate the relationship between critical acclaim and commercial success in mobile free-to-play games via a mixed-method study. First we look at the correlation of reviews and profitability, and then present an exploratory qualitative inquiry, analyzing games with high Metascores and games with high grossing. The results reveal that the relationship between review ratings and profitability is even more problematic in mobile free-to-play games than in many other game categories. Games with high Metascores differ substantially from the top-grossing games, being closer to traditional single-player games than typical free-to-play games, with little emphasis on monetization mechanics.

 

Material Culture and Angry Birds


Heikki Tyni Sotamaa Olli
2014 DiGRA Nordic '14: Proceedings of the 2014 International DiGRA Nordic Conference

The article examines different ways in which the research of material culture is relevant for digital games. It is argued that despite the wide adoption of digital distribution, material culture still registers as a significant component of the overall gaming culture. The paper compiles a collection of different research areas relevant for the study of games and materiality. In order to better contextualize the different research approaches, the framework is applied to Angry Birds (Rovio 2009). The different approaches, ranging from platform studies and political economy to merchandizing and collecting, highlight how a seemingly small, digitally distributed mobile game still manages to connect with multiple facets of material culture in significant ways.

 

Teaching Serious Game App Design Through Client-based Projects


Totten Christopher
2014 DiGRA '13 - Proceedings of the 2013 DiGRA International Conference: DeFragging Game Studies

This paper explores mobile game development courses conducted during the 2012/2013 academic year at George Mason University. In the courses, students had to design mobile games for clients. Each design group of five students was responsible for developing a game that would address the clients’ goals. Throughout each course students developed mobile game prototypes and, eventually, an alpha build of the proposed mobile game on a phone or tablet. This paper explores the effectiveness of studio courses in embodying the game design process over individual tool-based courses. It examines the effectiveness of an immersive client-based design project at demonstrating development issues to students. Lastly, it explores how such courses can fit into a Game Design curriculum while still addressing specific Serious Game issues. Through the exploration proposed, educators can consider whether the challenges, surprises, and management issues inherent in client-based projects are worth wider adoption.

 

Understanding 21st Century’s Mobile Device-Based Games within Boundaries


Ihamäki Pirita Tuomi Pauliina
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

There are many new forms of entertainment in game industry. Often some of the forms are neglected in academic focus and research. Usually this is the case with marginal game forms. This paper will introduce two different, mobile device based game forms from the 21st century that are very successful among the users but are left out from the centre of game research. Qualitative studies of geocaching and SMS-to-TV human-hosted interactive TV games were conducted by analyzing the field of geocaching (by interviewing players and analysing geocachers’ web-pages and forums on the Internet) and iTV-entertainment (by recording sample of interactive TV-formats). These game phenomena were analyzed and discussed to answer the following questions: What kind of game culture these games represent? What new viewpoints they offer to the field of game studies? What are the reasons behind their success? What different dimensions can be found? Finally, why is it important to study marginal games and what can be learned from them?

 

Designing Sound for a Pervasive Mobile Game


Ekman Inger Lahti Jussi Nummela Jani Lankoski Petri Mäyrä Frans
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

We examine the role of sound design in designing pervasive mobile games. As a case study, we examine the sound design process and solutions of a working prototype game called The Songs of North. The goal has been a design that allows sounds to be used as a primary information channel facilitating the use of physical movement as a main game mechanics. We discuss insights from the sound design process and also generally consider the role of sound in producing immersive gaming experiences.

 

Angry Birds, Uncommitted Players


Bouça Maura
2012 DiGRA Nordic '12: Proceedings of 2012 International DiGRA Nordic Conference

Mobile phones have been game-enabled since 1997. However, it seems that mobile phone games are only taking off now, in the 2010s. With mobile phones and, specially, smartphones, reaching critical mass games, in their mobile form are accessible to more and more people, young and old, men and women. Angry Birds, first released for iOS in December 2009, was the best-selling mobile game in 2011 (Reisinger 2011). In order to understand who is playing Angry Birds, how, and why, the author conducted a series of interviews with a group of Angry Birds players. The results of those interviews are here analyzed according to perspectives arisen from those conversations. Two main axis of analysis resulted from the interviews: gender gap and gaming background.