Hi guys, sorry for the absence during the autumn break. I have decided to talk about casual gaming, perhaps along with second life as well.
Casual games are video games targeted at a mass audience. Casual games can have any type of gameplay, fit in any genre and are typically distinguished by their simple rules and lack of commitment required in contrast to more complex hardcore games. (Basically, one that you can stop playing once you have something more important to attend to) Casual games started out on the internet on sites such as miniclip.com, but are now progressively seen on portable devices like mobile phones and gaming devices as well.
Why is casual gaming significant?
The sheer availability of casual gaming ensures that it is more likely to reach a wider audience than games that require a certain amount of commitment. The increasing portability of casual games also makes them far more easily accessible than traditional games.
Let's take games on mobile phones as an example. According to Digital Buzz Blog, "Apple has sold almost 60 million iPhones world wide, while Google’s Android OS is growing at 886% year on year and now activating over 160,000 devices a day, across 60 devices in over 40 countries." On the iphone, users can download games such as Words with Friends, where users can challenge one another to a game of scrabble. Here is a demonstration of the game:
Another iphone app, Hanging with Friends, works on the same concept but with Hangman instead.
The ease of availability of the game in terms of time and location means that one can be thinking of a new word to beat your friend on the bus, in a lecture theatre and even in the bathroom. As a new learner of english, this could be very beneficial as language learning can continue even outside the classroom and away from more traditional (and perhaps, boring) mediums such as reading the newspaper. The element of competition, a mark of social gaming, is probably motivation enough for many people to learn new and obscure words in order to beat their friend. The added bonus here is that even if you do lose, you learn new words along the way as well, be it yours or your friend's.
I completely agree with you! Games like Scrabble or Word Search are very useful in the sight of language learning, let it be on paper or online. However, in our continiously developing technical age, smart phones and iPhones are becoming more common, thus these games are also becoming more readily accessible to anyone, anywhere, and anytime. Personally I don't have a smart phone yet, but I do love games on Miniclip. :)
VálaszTörlés