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The End is a serious game that is part platformer, part board game, and part personality quiz commissioned by Channel 4 Education. Like all of their games, it is targeted at teens with the primary goals of educating them on real world issues. Things like sweatshop working conditions, safe sex, and in the case of The End, philosophical questions and moral dilemmas.
This ultimate goal of Channel 4 is, of course, admirable. Figuring out how to engage teens (or even kids for that matter) in education in new ways is something people have long strived for. Look at things like the Public Broadcasting Service and its television shows—that is something that Channel 4 and many others want to achieve through games. My problem with this lies in how most of the Channel 4 games try to do it. Instead of making the subject matter part of the play, it feels as if the curriculum is interspersed in between it.
In The End, a majority of the play is fairly standard platforming. Jumping on floating platforms, disappearing platforms, moving platforms, or flicking switches to solve puzzles. To its credit, it does have a decent unique mechanic to it, being able to create “shadow” platforms to solve platforming puzzles, but this has nothing at all to do with what the game wants to teach.
Same goes for the more interesting “boss battle” board game-like sections. Hexagonal tiles with numbers in three sections are placed on a board in turns. The player with the higher number between the adjacent edges of a tile then “flips” the opposing player’s tile and it become theirs. Some power-ups detract from the elegance of this but it is otherwise quite good. Again though, the play here does nothing to educate.
The way the game mainly conveys what it wants to teach is through a series of personality quiz-like questions at the end of each platforming level. It consists of yes or no answers to questions like: “Is it possible to be happy simply living in the moment, do you want to live forever, should anyone be allowed to hold the power of life and death over someone else, is there such a thing as fate?”
These might sound familiar if you ever read a friend’s GeoCities page. Except now, by logging in through Facebook, one can more easily see what friends who have played think, along with the general populace. It tells what “famous thinker” one is most like as well, based on these answers. The game educates on these topics and these people, specifically, by providing information to read that gets displayed at the bottom of the page along with links for further exploration.
The End, along with most of the other Channel 4 commissioned games, feels almost like it is attempting to trick people into being educated, rather than make education itself more interesting. It is as if someone looked at what teens like: video games, social networking, and personality quizzes; and then thought, “We can lure them in with that, then give them the education in between.” That isn’t what makes PBS successful. That isn’t what originally made edutainment games successful. They work because they are taking education and contextualizing it in a inherently more entertaining and engaging way.
[Play The End]
Comments
12 years, 8 months ago
You probably learn more in Assassin Creed 2 than The End, isn't that silly?
From the sound of it, kinda sounds like how El Shaddai is to gamers, it has a goal and has a sound game system but the goal of the game is marred by bad decisions without understanding the medium very well.
12 years, 8 months ago
I agree. I learned alot in assassin's creed and it was kinda cool. I hate generic platformers. I think of them as almost an "easy way out" if someone needs to make a game and can't think of anything because they're in almost every licensed game. *licensed game rage*
12 years, 8 months ago
Channel 4 must be pretty clever if they realised the way to sell games is to make it look like a generic indie platformer.
And i'll eat my metaphorical hat if 'generic indie platformer' ain't the silliest thing i've ever heard.
12 years, 8 months ago
Their trying to trick you into being educated? sounds like public school =/ of which i still have nightmares about
12 years, 8 months ago
Well now this is an interesting concept that can be pretty cool if done correctly. Red Dead Redemption's setting and characters made me become interested in the time period. When I went to this old mining town in the mountains I knew and recognized a lot of what they had in the museums because I had already learned about it in Red Dead. To make an education game you need to be honest and know about games. You need to not trick us but to give us an honest game with honest mechanics and story. If you make a game with an honest interesting setting like Red Dead, curiosity will get the better of most of us and we will want to learn more.
12 years, 8 months ago
Education in games can be good, but it has to be engaging and worked into the game in a manner that compliments the game system.
Bombader brought up Assassins Creed and I feel that this series is a good example of how educational content can be worked into games in an engaging way. Rather than simply letting you play a random game for a while and then throwing up a random trivia question, it incorporated historical facts and persons (though timelines and storylines were slightly altered for obvious reasons) as a core part of the games world and story that enhanced the playing experience of the game.
What I'm essentially trying to say is, when trying to develop an educational game, focus on making your game fun and engaging and incorporate the educational aspects in a way that embellishes the game itself, don't just tack it on at the end.
12 years, 8 months ago
Looks pretty cool
12 years, 8 months ago
Really cool that The End trys another way to educate teens.But I learn that Termite is a chemistry reaction that uses Aluminium and Rust to make a 300ºc weapon in Fallout:New Vegas.Silent hill and Resident Evil made me (really) grow up and lose fears.I increased my social skills by talking at Internet.If made in the right way,Games can teach us a lot of things,by creating a virtual world whit real elements and consequences.
12 years, 8 months ago
I'll try that
12 years, 8 months ago
When you said that it shows you what famous thinker your most like, all I really see there is an opportunity to boast to your friends and I really feel that most of the people who play this will do just that, brag about who they are like and not what they are learning. I agree, it gives the illusion of a lesson learned.
12 years, 8 months ago
dig the article
you didnt provide a link tho.
12 years, 8 months ago
It would be alot more fun and "edutaining", if the questions asked were more immersed in the game. If they did an RPG style game the main character could be asked these questions instead of just putting them in between levels.
12 years, 8 months ago
Oh great. Schools are teaching kids more effectively than ever before, and still channel 4 feels the need to jump in, this sounds great.
12 years, 8 months ago
I made my guy look like Charlie Brown.