Games, serious Games and Pedagogy

1) Why game producers need to think about their purposes?

Because when they reflect on the purpose of a game for children, many aspects of the game becomes clear. The purpose is the seed point, that the game is based on.
"the purpose of good online content should surely include treating children as young citizens capable of learning and furthering their personal, social and intellectual development."(1) and if the producers consider this quote as their main purpose, it becomes clear to them what they need to take into account when designing and testing. They will need to obtain a good understanding of child psychological and developmental stages in each age group to developed right content for them. Also it gets more important to properly test the product on the audience to make sure that they get what is intended from the game(or anything designed for them).

2) Digital media are evolving rapidly. How does that affect your target group?

Before reading the text, I also thought that changing digital media actually affects children cognitively. For example I thought that "short attention span" is a real problem. However in the reference 1, Sonia Livingstone claims that these hypotheses about media's effect on children is not proven yet. The studies are contradicting and there is no accepted fact about it.


Still I think that media even if it doesn't directly affect children's cognitive abilities; it does affect their social and cultural surroundings and in turn at the end affects children indirectly. As mentioned in reference 1 "there is more evidence that the social and cultural circumstances of children’s lives are changing. In other words, childhood itself is changing.". I think media has a big role in this change in "childhood".

3) "Everything must be be educational " - Do you agree or not? Why?

Although in the text,  Patti M. Valkenburg’ disagrees with this phrase, I think everything is inevitably educational in one way or another. Some app(or anything for that matter) might not be developed with and educational purpose in mind, but it will have some effect on the user, specially child user.
Maybe I should rephrase my thinking: no i also don't think everything should be educational per se, however i think everything should be thought through carefully to avoid unwanted effects/or reinforce wanted effects. For instance in the example of the app for children to just have fun and laugh, designer should carefully investigate that by achieving this goal their app does not convey any wrong message to the child.

4) What are the main characteristics of good games? Do you agree? Would you add something more?

Based on the second source, a good game:
-Incorporates learning principles from education and cognitive science
-Gives information on demand and in the right time when user can apply it soon
-Gives player the opportunity to apply that knowledge to the situation she/he is in
-Tasks are challenging but doable(optimal challenge)
-Gives its player the possibility to customise the level(related to previous point)
-Allows players to be producers and not just consumers 

-Creates a cycle of experience by looping through new tasks and mastery

-Uses engagement techniques such as "action at a distance"

-Allow teamwork and cooperative work

Although some the characteristic he mentions are not at the same level of abstraction, I agree with most of them.
Some of them correspond to specific learning theories(behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism, humanism). for example "allowing players to be producers and not just consumers" is sort of similar to the ideas in cognitivism and constructivism.

Some other came from psychological theories such as self-determination theory. as an example the "optimal challenge" above relates to "competence" in SDT, "autonomy in creating new path" to autonomy and the "possibility of teamwork" to "relatedness"(although the interpretation here was that in the games player learns the teamwork, and in SDT it is a mechanism to fulfil the social need of the player). 

Adding to this based on SDT, I can say that group and community making, even if it is not in the context of teamwork, will still make a game more appealing.

5) How do serious games engage with pedagogy?

Reference 3 concludes that serious games evolved as learning theories evolved. starting with behaviourism came games that their base was repetition and rewards.
the next generation of serious games corresponded to cognitivism and constructivism. The features were multimodal learning(by pictures, sounds ...), actively applying learned skills in new situations
and learning by making.
The third generation games are based on constructionism. Where as I understood involves real world situations and reflection.

I think although each generation came to life in different time, each of them can have its own place in educational games based on the context and learning goals. Also all of them can be combined to achieve a single learning outcome as well. One game can have both reflection and sense making, and reward and repetition system.