What Can g-Learning Designers Learn from Commercial Games?

First of all, if you don’t know what g-Learning is, have a look at our post “g-Learning: Is this the learning term we have been looking for?”.  Then have a look at the infographic courtesy of topwebdesignschools.org and our insight below.


Source: TopCollegesOnline.org

So, what can we learn from the above infographic?  Does it contain any useful information for g-Learning designers?  We think so.  There are some useful reassurances about perceptions of games and some interesting demographic insight (average game player is 30 years of age).  However, we think that g-Learning designers should take note to the types of games and gameplay that feature on this list as the ‘top’ games.  The top games on the list can be split into several broad genres:

• Adventure (e.g. Assassin’s Creed, Halo)
• Sport (e.g. FIFA, Madden NFL)
• Strategy (e.g. Age of Empires, The Sims)
• Party (e.g. Just Dance, Guitar Hero)

This is useful in itself, as g-Learning designers could design their games around these genres/styles.  However, what interests me, is how most of these games are famously played cooperatively.  Obviously you can play most of them solo, people may only ever play them solo and some of them can only really be played solo (e.g. The Sims).  However, by and large, the top games seem to be the ones which allow cooperation and collaboration.

This is interesting, as it suggests yet again that gamers aren’t all anti-social loners and that this view of gaming is seriously outdated (see our article, “Gamer Myths: Infographic and 10 Facts").  However, for g-Learning designers, it suggests that perhaps we should be creating more collaborative learning games.  Perhaps these are the most enjoyable or engaging.  Click here for a case study of one of our collaborative learning games, to see how we do it.  Interestingly, our market for sim-uni is also adults.  Click here to see our “Adult Games Based Learning and sim-uni” post.

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