What Is It About Games?
If you’re not a gamer, it can be hard to get the appeal of video games. The challenges they present can be frustrating, and non-gamers often lose interest. But for gamers, video games offer a wide range of pleasures that make them deeply enjoyable. These videos explore some of the playful experiences that make games so much fun.
Different Games, Different Pleasures
Most games are designed to appeal to specific types of players, ranging from those who love to solve puzzles to those who enjoy challenging their dexterity in sports games. The videos below offer a look at the different types of fun offered by different types of games.
Arrangement
In popular “casual” games, such as Candy Crush, Bejeweled, and Tetris, players must find patterns within chaos or create patterns out of randomly arranged elements. Basic gameplay is simple—you move or rearrange candies, gems, tiles, or other objects—and the enjoyment comes from creating matching combinations of shapes and colors. But levels become progressively more challenging, and winning requires increasingly sophisticated pattern recognition and strategic thinking.
Experience Gameplay Involving Arrangement
Though they look very different, each of these three games invites players to take disparate objects and arrange them into patterns or functional groups. They have a wide range of difficulty, from Word Girl’s freeform play space to the multifaceted complexity of Sim City.
Sample Games for Different Age Groups
Everyone
In Word Girl Build-a-Lair, players can design their own supervillain hideouts, placing furniture and decorations wherever they want. Meant for young children, the game has few constraints.
Everyone 10+
Luxor 3 is an action-puzzle game in which players score points by creating patterns of rolling spheres. The rich graphics and challenging gameplay make it appropriate for adolescent audiences.
Teen
SimCity is an urban-planning simulation game that lets players design and build thriving cities. The game is complex and challenging for even the most committed gamers.
Everyone
In Word Girl Build-a-Lair, players can design their own supervillain hideouts, placing furniture and decorations wherever they want. Meant for young children, the game has few constraints.
Everyone 10+
Luxor 3 is an action-puzzle game in which players score points by creating patterns of rolling spheres. The rich graphics and challenging gameplay make it appropriate for adolescent audiences.
Teen
SimCity is an urban-planning simulation game that lets players design and build thriving cities. The game is complex and challenging for even the most committed gamers.
Credits
Word Girl Build-a-Lair
Platform/URL: http://pbskids.org/wordgirl/games/buildalair/
Developer: Creative Bottle
Publisher: Scholastic and Soup 2 Nuts
Luxor 3
Platform/URL: Windows, Wii, Mac OS X
Developer: MumboJumbo
Publisher: MumboJumbo
SimCity
Platform/URL: Windows, Mac OS X
Developer: Maxis
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Solution
A huge variety of video games is available for players who love solving puzzles. Some are classic logic or word puzzles that have been remade as video games. Others use the affordances of digital gaming to create fully realized worlds and mind-bending new types of spatial or physics puzzles. Whatever the game, the fun comes from using mental skills, such as deductive reasoning, pattern recognition, and strategic thinking, to solve brainteasers and mysteries.
Experience Gameplay Involving Solution
Fans of brain-twisters will enjoy these games. Buzz and Delete will likely only challenge the youngest players, while Portal 2 can stump even the keenest minds.
Sample Games for Different Age Groups
Everyone
Buzz and Delete is the simplest of solution games. Players try to fish colored gems from a river, avoiding the wrong colors. It's an uncomplicated puzzle for young children.
Everyone 10+
In Scribblenauts, players must imagine objects that could solve various spatial and conceptual puzzles. Each challenge has many possible solutions, rewarding creativity and imagination.
Teen
Portal 2 is a first-person puzzle-platform game with dark humor and difficult challenges aimed at older players. It requires complex spatial reasoning to succeed.
Everyone
Buzz and Delete is the simplest of solution games. Players try to fish colored gems from a river, avoiding the wrong colors. It's an uncomplicated puzzle for young children.
Everyone 10+
In Scribblenauts players must imagine objects that could solve different spatial and conceptual puzzles. Each challenge has many possible solutions, rewarding creativity and imagination.
Teen
Portal 2 is a first-person puzzle-platform game with dark humor and difficult challenges aimed at older players. It requires complex spatial reasoning to succeed.
Credits
Buzz and Delete Save the Day
Platform/URL: http://pbskids.org/cyberchase/math-games/buzz-and-delete-save-day/
Publisher: THIRTEEN/WNET
Scribblenauts
Platform/URL: Nintendo DS
Developer: 5th Cell
Publisher: WB Games
Portal 2
Platform/URL: Windows, OS X, Playstation 3, Xbox 360
Developer: Valve Corporation
Publisher: Valve Corporation
Dexterity
Many video games are designed to challenge players’ physical skills and manual dexterity. They include sports, rhythm, and dance games, such as Dance Dance Revolution. Platform games, such as Super Mario Bros., are also hugely popular. Players race along, jumping from one platform to another, leaping up to collect prizes while avoiding all kinds of obstacles. But the real reward in all these games is the adrenaline rush players get as they pull off unworldly feats of agility and dexterity.
Experience Gameplay Involving Dexterity
All these games are fast-paced and require nimble fingerwork, the need for speed and finesse increasing along with the intended player’s age.
Sample Games for Different Age Groups
Everyone
Whack-a-Mole is an online version of the carnival favorite. Players must be quick to hit the moles in time, but pacing and challenge are geared to younger players.
Everyone 10+
In Joe Danger, players control a stuntman racing through a series of obstacles. Great timing and quick fingers are needed to succeed in this fun, stylish game.
Teen
Rayman Origins is a platform game with challenging, varied gameplay and lush, surreal graphics that can draw in older players.
Everyone
Whack-a-Mole is an online version of the carnival favorite. Players must be quick to hit the moles in time, but pacing and challenge are geared to younger players.
Everyone 10+
In Joe Danger players control a stunt man racing through a series of obstacles. Great timing and quick fingers are needed to succeed in this fun, stylish game.
Teen
Rayman Origins is a platform game with challenging, varied gameplay and lush, surreal graphics that can draw in older players.
Credits
Whack-a-Mole
Platform/URL: http://www.kongregate.com/games/coolspot501/whack-a-mole
Developer: coolspot501
Publisher: Kongregate.com
Joe Danger
Platform/URL: Playstation Network, Xbox Live Arcade, Microsoft Windows, iOS
Developer: Hello Games
Publisher: Hello Games
Rayman Origins
Platform/URL: Playstation 3, Wii, Xbox 360, Playstation Vita, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo 3DS, OS X
Developer: Ubisoft Montpellier
Publisher: Ubisoft
Collision
What gamers love about racing games, fighting games, and shooters are the fast pace and constant action—and the ability to make things crash, collide, and explode in spectacular ways. The goals of these games are usually clear and simple, and the pleasure comes from smashing through obstacles, beating your opponents, and blasting your way to success. As with movies, some games for mature audiences feature repellent violence, but there are lots of age-appropriate games that provide exciting action rather than gratuitous aggression.
Experience Gameplay Involving Collision
It won’t be hard to see that collision is the source of fun in these three games. For the youngest players the graphics are cartoonish and the gameplay comical, while for the older players the look is realistic and the action intense.
Sample Games for Different Age Groups
Everyone
Designed for young children, Chuck's Extreme Sandwich Crusher is a silly game with a simple premise: Players smash sandwiches while avoiding obstacles.
Everyone 10+
Zombie Bowl-O-Rama is a standard bowling game, except with shuffling zombies as pins and comic-horror bowling balls. It has enough gross-out humor to keep adolescents entertained.
Teen
In Motorstorm Apocalypse, players race through cataclysmic environments, dodging obstacles and battling with other racers. The frenetic action is great for teens.
Everyone
Designed for young children, Chuck's Extreme Sandwich Crusher is a silly game with a simple premise: players smash sandwiches while avoiding obstacles.
Everyone 10+
Zombie Bowl-O-Rama is a standard bowling game, except with shuffling zombies as pins and comic-horror bowling balls. It has enough gross-out humor to keep adolescents entertained.
Teen
In Motorstorm Apocalypse players race through cataclysmic environments dodging obstacles and battling with other racers. The frenetic action is great for teens.
Credits
Chuck's Extreme Sandwich Crusher
Platform/URL: http://pbskids.org/wordgirl/games/chucksandwich/
Publisher: Scholastic and Soup 2 Nuts
Zombie Bowl-O-Rama
Platform/URL: Windows
Developer: MumboJumbo
Publisher: MumboJumbo
MotorStorm: Apocalypse
Platform/URL: Playstation 3
Developer: Evolution Studios
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
The Possible Worlds Games
This video provides an introduction to the four Possible Worlds games available on this website. Ranging widely in style, they include features of adventure, puzzle, strategy, maze, and platform games, and offer players many of the gaming pleasures illustrated in the previous videos. At the same time, they provide a playful way to help students construct new and more accurate understandings of complex concepts that are often the subject of persistent misconceptions.
