Modern mobile and social platforms gave the second wind to educational games. The horizons opened for the development of new useful and profitable children's products even prompted investors from Index Ventures and Richmond Park Partners invest about $ 4 million in a new member of the development market for children – Mindshapes studio.
We talked with one of the founders and part -time commercial director of the company Christian Dorfer and learned what educational projects are now the greatest trust in cash bags.
Woe is crazy
Mindshapes studio appeared in 2010. The London company headquarters has only sixty people. “Many of our employees have been working in the industry for more than twenty years, since Atari. Someone managed to work with Sega , Someone s Sony ", Says Dorffer. We add that some founders of the studio are most directly related to Macrospace (Developers of mobile projects Actraiser , Power Strike ) And Playfish (This studio later became part Electronic Arts ).
Mindshapes focused exclusively on developing projects for children aged 3 to 12 years. The team understands the usefulness of such games from their own experience. Christian himself is a good stepfather. He played with the child, read him books. Approximately then he had the idea to come up with competent developmental products.
“We watched children playing in Mario Bros. , Cut The Rope or Angry Birds. These games are delaying and taking away extremely a lot of time. But when you are young and sit at such entertainments for days, you do not learn important knowledge for life, ”the specialist insists.
Christian agrees that the mentioned hits can also be considered developing, because they improve the reaction, coordination, thinking, but, unfortunately, almost nothing is taught.
[Bullet]] The title screen Magic Town offers to press one of the houses, a helicopter or space rocket to go directly to the stories. Here you can also clat in various subjects to see funny animation.
The young studio believes that all available games for children are made incorrectly. For example, interactive books are instantly forgotten as soon as they are completed to the end. There are successful things like Lego Indiana Jones , where you need to move with dumplings, solve problems, but even such entertainments are not able to teach children history, English or other subjects. Mindshapes is ready to take a decisive step and turn interactive products into learning tools.
What does the term "educational game" mean? To deal with this issue, the studio turned to Professor Paul Harris from Harvard.
“In the age group from 3 to 6 years, children need stimulation of imagination, help in the development of language skills and vocabulary, teaching moral standards, emotions, social context. Of course, you can start teaching children to mathematics at this age, but there will be no effect: they are simply not ready. The mentioned areas are most firmly related to the development of children at 3-6 years old, ”says Dorffer, talking about the research of the scientist.
It turns out that a game that does not leave the room for imagination will simply not teach young users anything. Moreover, they will get used to a set of glasses, spend time on meaningless tasks instead of knowing the letter and training memory.
Another important characteristic of any developing game: the child should not perceive it as a lesson. This truth was announced by Will Wright. In other words, educational functions need to be masked by gameplay. Indeed, someone will hardly be able to keep a little fidget in front of the screen without entertainment. However, you should be careful not to go too far.
“We do not want to create a“ sweet candy ”that children can swallow. Our task is to understand the needs of children of different age groups. It is easy to create a video game in which the children will play for hours. It is much more difficult and honorable to come up with a project that really helps a person develop, ”Dorffer explains.
To make the games not only useful, but also entertaining, in addition to consultations with professionals, Mindshapes employees play all kinds of entertainment – from console to browser. Having developed the experience gained, they formed the theoretically win -win formula of the game world.
“With extensive knowledge gained in the time of Playfish, as well as the experience gained in the process of work, we had a faith in our forces. In addition, there were no innovations on the front of children's games for a long time. There are strong projects like Moshi Monsters And Club Penguin , But all of them are intended for children aged 7 years. There are no virtual worlds for the smallest in the market. We are going to take this niche ".
Virtuality for five -year -olds
At the moment, the flagship project of the studio called Magic Town ( www.Magictown.Com ) already available through the browser. Before starting the game, you need to register through Facebook (or email), choose the gender and age of the child, assign a name (as part of one account you can have up to four characters).
Versions for mobile platforms came out in the summer, but so far only under iOS. The developers justify this by the fact that iPhone and iPad are still leaders in the field of mobile entertainment for the smallest. In the future, Mindshapes is going to expand the circle of influence and conquer the Play Store for Google Android. But so far these are only plans.
Magic Town is not just a game, but a set of interactive children's stories. You can read a fairy tale yourself, together with your parents or listen – as an audiobook. In each such funny story, the simplest quests are mounted, where the child needs to simply read, count or perform attention exercises. In theory, your child can return to Magic Town daily and listen to one free fairy tale every day. In total, 365 mini stories are obtained per year.
Mindshapes are well aware that children can not sell anything directly. All expenses and decisions should lie on the shoulders of adults.
“You can’t impose anything on the children, but, on the other hand, we do not want the kids to get us, pulled the sleeve with the words:“ Pa-up, we want another story ”. Subscription should solve this problem. If you https://davincis-gold-casino.co.uk/ want to get unlimited access, you will have to pay 8 pounds (about 400 rubles) per month ".
Developers do not limit themselves only to children's training projects. The second ambitious hit Mindshapes – Game Language City.
“This is an interactive seat for people aged 16 to 30 years, where you study the city to communicate and learn the language. There will be conversations with computer characters and points accrued for successful dialogs. As for earnings, our studio will receive money from the sale of objects inside the game itself. No one has yet created a good entertainment program for learning a language with competent social functions, no one is trying to turn the learning process into a game ". Language City was released on computers in July, and the mobile version of the system will appear no earlier than the fourth quarter of 2012.
True, except for these two products, you should not wait for a special fountain of applications from Mindshapes. “We are not going to spray into twenty projects at the same time. First of all, mindshapes is a media company. Our main focus is Magic Town. If everything goes according to plan, then after three years this brand will cost a billion dollars or more, ”Dorffer assures.
The future of Magic Town is still difficult to predict. The developers are full of enthusiasm, hoping to promote their products to schools and kindergartens. Christian said that the teachers contacted him while working in Playfish: “We were told that some of our games are already used in training, although they did not think as purely educational”.
Considering such a demand, it can be assumed that if Magic Town does not earn a billion dollars, as Dorffer hopes, then at least the project will serve as an example for independent developers, who will finally be able to distract from meaningless casual eightrs of time and begin to sow a reasonable one, Good and eternal.