Documentation

Educational games are usually associated with infant and toddler, however, in 1971 three seniors at Carleton college of Minnesota created a game, Oregon Trails, because they wanted to find a way to integrated computers into their history course. According to  the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, “Oregon Trail [was an] overland emigrant route in the United States from the Missouri River to the Columbia River country (all of which was then called Oregon)” The Oregon Trails was followed by many families of inventors in the North American continent between the 1940’s and 1950’s .  In addition The Oregon Trail was more than just a trail to the state of Oregon; it was the only useful passageway to the west of the United States. The states we now know as Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Idaho and Utah would possibly not be a part of the United States if it weren’t for The Oregon Trail; since the Trail was the only reasonable way for pioneers to get across the mountain to the north. Nevertheless, The purpose of creating this game was to capture the attention of students without them fully being aware of its educational value. And that it is what we have achieved with our game

In order to accomplish an educational game, our team thoroughly investigated games with this exact concept. As we began researching we found a few modern games and gadgets that were used for educational and entertainment purpose and we then began researching the elements these games incorporate for an influential learning experience. With the information we collected we were able to incorporate these ideas with what we thought would help achieve a knowledgeable and ntertaining experience.

Every game begins with a story and we have decided to integrate ideas for this project and focus on an educational game that will help scholars with writers block. Once the theme of our game was decided we began focusing on characters we wanted to intergrade into the game. we’ve chosen to begin with a neutral character for every player to begin with as they start their journey through the game and understand how to  properly conduct research and eliminate writers block and become confident in their work.  As the players begin to explore this game they will be given the option to choose how they want their story to progress and end. With every decision they make their character will either begin to possess qualities of a hero or of a villain.

One of the most important features in a game is the environment of the game. The environment of a game is what will attract students, with fun illuminating colors and appealing characters we will be able to entice students and encourage them to play.  By creating a scenes with animated adventure style surrounding, the player will start to feel as though they are actually playing for fun instead of learning. Through the use of this method of learning, one will be able to understand how research could be fun and conducting proper research will also be successful.

Three key components in creating this game and making it successful would include: First, an elaborate introduction that will give the gamer an understanding of what options they have in order to complete the game in a manner that will help with the anxiety of writing a research paper. Second, Options throughout the game, so that the gamer is in complete control of how they will finish the game, whether it be in a villain or hero perspective and finally the ability to redeem themselves from a situation in the game that caused them to, once again, feel trapped in writers block. for example: giving suggestions to continue their journey and successfully completing the game and delivering an outcome that was desirable.

Throughout the game, players should have a good understanding of properly evaluating information needed to complete each level. They can begin by understand how to cite their work effectively to keep from plagiarism and give each author the credit they deserve for their work. In addition to proper citations the gamer should also be able to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant research. once they have a complete awareness of conducting research, we also suggest checking your work for grammatical errors, such as spelling and punctuation.