Growing up I always used to argue with people on the topic that 'games are a waste of time' or 'games are evil' (made me laugh everything I heard the latter). It is a fact of life that people tend to reject/degrade new ideas and inventions. History has numerous examples to back this fact up (which is just sad if you ask me).
[I don't own this image, Wiiz7 on deviantART owns it]
Games always have something to offer if you are willing to learn. Few weeks ago, I read an article that Norwegian boy saved sister from Moose attack using World of Warcraft Skills. You will find similar examples if you open your mind to new concepts.
My aim in life is to build interactive educational games for children so that learning to them feels like games, not like homework. Games in my opinion is an untouched gold mine. Something that people have only recently begun to realize and started working on it. That said... read ahead and be amazed at what games can be and do... happy reading!
Imagine wheeling through different points of view in a beautifully rendered, three-dimensional, dark and moody landscape. This is the arena where your robot, customized out of spare parts from a virtual junkyard, will fight another robot. This is the concept of Hakitzu: Code of the Warrior. The first release is scheduled to be launched this month, from Kuato Studios, a start-up based in London and Palo Alto that has assembled a formidable developer team, including SRI, the people who gave us iPhone’s Siri, and game designers formerly from Sony PlayStation, Idea Works, Blitz, Konami, and more. The creators of the game have kept the golden rules in mind while creating this game. The golden rule (my golden rule that is) is:
Teaching something to children should be fun for them. They should get absorbed in the activity by having all their senses engaged in learning topics that are actually interesting, and that aren’t covered well in the traditional curriculum and keeping technology meshed in there somewhere. - Nidah Ali (this is me)
Hakitzu isn’t just another versus fighter. Instead of using a touchpad or other controller to play, I have to type in a set of command lines that tell the robot what to do: walk forward, walk back, turn around, and so on. Without really knowing it, you will be learning to code JavaScript while your robot fights. Kuato is trying to redefine what learning games are by making the game come first. (where were these companies when I was studying)
[I don't own this image but its cool ain't it]
Hakitzu keeps it all fun and games for the kids all the while motivating them to build and fight robots by learning various JavaScript codes.
We wanted to be the first proper learning to code game that’s hit mobile," says Frank Meehan, the British founder of Kuato.
But his vision doesn’t stop there. Kuato’s big idea is to advance current technologies to create a virtual, artificially intelligent personal tutor that practically passes the Turing test, and could be used to teach anyone anything they want to know, in any domain of knowledge. Their first AI game, debuting later this year, features a girl crash-landing in an Enterprise-like spaceship. Her computer is damaged and because of the First Law of Robotics, can’t repair itself. So she must hack her way in and fix the computer before she runs out of oxygen. The computer in the game uses conversational AI to help guide the player.
[This is a small trailer I found on Kuato Studio's YouTube channel, obviously I don't own this video]
Kuato plans to release an API in further iterations of the game, so that any knowledge domain can be programmed in: the challenges may include biology (learn about the life forms on a new planet so you can farm food and defend yourself), chemistry, or even foreign languages and poetry. "We’re trying to distill a teacher’s intelligence and empathy into a machine and lead a child towards learning a concept," says Miller. "We’re working really hard with the AI people in order to create an intelligence that mimics a teacher’s encouragement and feedback. That’s the end goal. Games should be about the experience of learning, rather than the experience of being taught."
I am so going to learn JavaScript once this game is released! I will end with this beautiful quote:
"I hear and I forget,
I see and I remember,
I do and I understand." - Confucius
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