how to keep children motivated in playing
For my master thesis in psychology I want to develop a game in which children learn to develop their executive functions (EF) (e.g. working memory, planning and mental flexibility). many children's disorders like ADHD and autism are associated with problems in the area of EF. The thought behind the game will be to train the children with ADHD in excersises in a fun way. At the moment most tests for EF are pretty boring and mostly developed for adults and therefore not connecting to the world of the children. Ultimatley the children should improve on their executive functioning and show less problems associated to their disorder.
So far for the theory. What i want to do is create a morpg to make it fun for the children and let them interact with eachother. Furthermore I want to make it FF-style. Thus a player walks into a character and a battle screen pops up in which the test displays. One of the problems I face is: keeping it interesting for the children and keep them motivated to continue playing the game. One of the things that motivated me in games was getting experience and become stronger/ learn new skills. Unfortunately gaining let see strenght is won't work because being stronger would mean defeating "enemys" easier. The problem is your performance on the tests shouldn't be determined by the chars increased strenght but only by their EF capabilities. One possibility is desinging the game in such a way that one can gain exp and increase skills but that the increase in stats is only for estatic reasons and fthus have no bearing on the actual battle ( This however feels like a sham because leveling up wouldn't actually matter). The same would go for other skills. gaining skills means gaining and advantage.
Especially children with ADHD react strongly to rewards theirfore i find it import to add many ways in which I can reward the children for their progress. One way of course is adding nice outfits and items, or even pets to motivate them. Also am I thinking to implement a sort of rewardsystem in such a way that if a child reaches a certain milestone it can get a reward from their parents (like a day to a funpark or deciding what to have for dinner in the weekend) Off coaurse this would be dependent on the willingness of the parents to cooperate in such a system. But then again the game is more a form of treatment then an actual game, i suspect that parents will be more cooperative then when it would be just a game).
To keep matters short. Do you guys have any alternative ideas for implementing a skills system or to keep the kids motivated.
Thanks in advance
ALice
i think one thing is possible - i'm not oposed to use statistics - but it think an easy approach is to use a static set of statistics in the player's avatar - if necesary - and put the statistics in the equipment - that way the game experience will depend heavily on the player's ability -.
another thing is to never penalize the player, never make it feel that is loosing something so he/she don't get frustated for lack of ability.
Spodi and Sabathorn. Thanks for the input. I like the combo-idea that is definatly something to think about and indeed making it in such a way that the player doesn't loose something is of great importance aswell.
The way I am thinking to go about is having different characters walking around the different places/cities. and every person has one task that the player most complete to "defeat" that character. For instance to beat char 1 the player needs to participate in a game similar to Simon (the game in which you have to reproduce a series of colors and tests for working memory). and then for example to beat char 1 you need to have the serie of 4 correct 4 times in a row ( the 4 times in a row will then be the base to test if the person is capable to proceed to a higher level). If the player is able to defeat char 1 he will be able to try on char 11 (which is a bit more difficult and the player now needs to get a series of 5 colors correct) In the mean time the player can off course challange other chars with different taks (like the tower of hanoi task in which planning and thinking in advance will be measured). So the way the battle goes would not be just mere questions but more like real psychological tests. The player would get some gold (and maybe exp) even if he/she didn't complete the task succesfully, based on how well the player did.
I still want to add gaining exp into it. maybe I can make it in such a way that gaining exp can go to skills in which you don't get an actual benifit on the tasks itself. Like increased walking speed , or being able to have other pets at certain levels of experience.
Any ideas or advice will be very welcome.
Thanks again Spodi and Sabathorn for your usefull input. Much appreciated
I think one important thing is being able to hold there attention. I mean i'm just an average gamer and many games bore me sometimes (Assassins creed - not educational but a boring example) . Keep it engaging by not making it too predictive. I guess its got to be fairly predictable to reduce learning curves for playing the game itself. But yeh. Also i remeber reading something can't remember where i guess you'd have to cite it in a thesis but in the Pokemon series of games. tajiri didn't want the character to "die" when they were defeated instead they "feinted" the article said something about the fact it was aimed at children and didn't want anything too grim. I'll have to see if i can find it 
There are 10 types of people in this world - Those who understand Binary and those who don't.
I'd reccomend something music/hanging out based in the game. Like me, I like games, but I'm more of a social,school,and math person. So what I think you should do, is have them interact just as much as they would play. Like if you talked to a NPC, they would be able to give you something about the game, or a "Did you know" question about any subject. But also, you should let them actually talk with the NPC (like this:"Hello sir. How are you today? Choose an answer Good, Fantastic, Horrible.) And depending on the answer, Horrible would let the NPC know that the kid needs help with getting less depressed. I've made a few games at school with some friends (I'm 10) , and we didn't only think about what we wanted, we thought about what other people wanted, so we did a survey. Most of them said they would like a place that had a jukebox that would change songs each time (Currently our project Radix) and a living community. Then some others said that they would like to fight more.
I hope I helped a little. Good luck!
Kairu
Thanks for the input,
@ aphro indeed things should't be to grimm for the kids and I was also thinking of doing something like that and not call it die but name it unconsious or something like that. Also not succeeding at the different taks for improving their executive functioning should't come with severe punishments like loss of life or something like that , in order to not demotivate them. Unfortunatly I'am in a bit of a time constraint to make the game very elaborate and create a great story line. creating the game is just a minor part of the work that goes into the research data gathering and writing of the thesis. But if the idea works and indeed proves to be an effective intervention for people with ADHD etc. then I will go on and improve on that department.
@ lyneku I agree with letting them interact for a large part. The problem is that it is more or less a form of intervention/therapy to decrease the problems of children with adhd, autism and other related disorders. Letting them interact and do other stuff instead of the exercises for a large part of the time would indeed make the game more fun , but comes at the cost of time efficiency. I need to find a good balans between them, but indeed some interaction is indeed needed. that's why I choose to make it around an morpg instead of just simply letting the children do "boring" exercises for an hour a day two or three times a week. Another big benifit with this is that they have a change to come in contact with other people who have the same disorder and learn from them.
You might want to check out Jesse Schell who's done a lot of research into kids and games.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jesse+schell&aq=f
well I have 2 little kids myself, here is things that keeps them interested in the tv.. their toys and the educational stuff I made for em... weird random sound effects lots of particles (have to be very colorful) cartoonish.
kids are attracted by constantly being surprised... and if its something they find cool, they will keep doing it non-stop take my oldest son for example. smartest 2 year old I know he can speak english, spanish, and is learning japanese... he can count to 100, knows his alphabet, reads children books(like the book read to your bunny often not sure if thats the right name since i havent been home in like 2 months), and the kid can beat me in almost any video game(Note: any video game I am willing to let him play, nothing violent.) he is one of those kids baby gates cant hold back... there is no way to child proof the house from him. something because he observes everything and learns how they work. I'm assuming the way he got this way is because whenever I'm with him I always smile(even if im mad) and I over-dramatize things. if he does something new and cool I'm the kind of dad that u see at talent shows that is always like thats my boy wooo!!!
so basically to sum it up. u need a explanation, something to show em how to do it, and a huge prize(to kids being avatars like spodi said) You pretty much have to make a big deal out of everything to keep them motivated and excited to keep doing things. another things make it something a parent can enjoy as well, a child is more willing to learn if an adult can help. if both have fun it will increase the overall value of the game, and creates a memory they can share.
@ bake , thanks for the links i will look into them tonight, when i have some more spare time.
@ Shinsetsu I definitly like the idea of involving the parents in the process. Not really gave that much thought before. but that is absolutly something that keep the kids motivated and even improve quality time that the parenst spend with their kids.
I was working on a similar concept with someone a few years back with vbGORE. Unfortunately it didn't go through (no surprise), but it was still a fun project while it lasted. Specifically, it was a online RPG for a non-profit group for special needs children.
It was quite similar to your average game, except that for the fighting was done by answering questions. There was a database of various questions pretty much in Q and A form. Nothing fancy here, just use whatever form of question generating you want where the input is always easily quantified. The math was a bit more fun since the equations and number ranges/limitations were what was entered, then the actual values were randomly generated based off of those limitations. NetGore even has a string-based equation parser already in it.
As you leveled, you just got stronger in the normal way. You also dealt more damage as you answered faster, and taking too long or answering incorrectly would result in a miss.
For young audiences, I have learned that the ability to do stuff like own pets, dress up your avatar, and other "useless stuff" is quite attractive, and would be a good way to help entice them to play. After all, you do need to "make up" for having a slow fighting system.
If you are really feeling up for the challenge, a better approach for the fighting (especially for those with ADHD) would be to make it so that answering questions doesn't make you just attack right away, but gives your character a better edge during the battle. For instance, when you enter a battle, a side-view of your character and the enemy (or enemies) is shown and they start fighting. Next to your character is a progress bar that starts at 100%, and represents your "combat efficiency". As time goes on, it drops, and can go all the way to... say, 10%. It can also raise up to a max of... say, 500%. As you answer questions, it increases depending on the difficulty of the question - an option that people may toggle at any time. Answering raises this bar, and the rate it drops is exponential to the actual value. That is, the drop from 500 to 400 would be fast, but 100 to 10 quite a lot slower. When your combat efficiency is higher, the amount of damage you deal is a direct product of the percent bar.
You can even have other stuff like a combo bar: answer a few questions correctly in a row (no matter the speed) for that battle, and you deal a special attack either automatically or let them choose. That way longer battles would have a bit more fun in them.
This may be a little over-stimulating, though. After all, they are trying to answer these questions while having a flashy battle go on in the background. But it would get them to play. This would also be a very good thing to discuss in your thesis.
As for the questions, there are quite a few ways to do it. For the most part, it would be trying to determine what should be dynamic and what should be static. Since a big part of learning is memorization, and since practicing memorization is a great help for anyone (coming from someone who's memory is below average), I think the rate at which you repeat questions would be quite important. For this, look to something like SuperMemo or Mnemosyne (which basically uses the SuperMemo algorithm). The algorithm is quite well-tested and works quite well. I was very happy with the results myself. This will help you determine at what rate to repeat questions based on their history of answering them.
Questions should probably come frequently in categories - not just randomly from anywhere. That is, keep Civil War with Civil War, not mix-and-match with the World Wars. Otherwise, you'd probably end up just blurring it all together. Add an indication of what the category is, too, when displaying the question, such as a themed dialog box with some little clip-arts and the name of the category at the top.
As for difficulty, it gets a bit hard since you don't want people to stay too low just for the advantage of having to memorize less (and being able to answer really fast while not learning). You also don't want to discourage having to repeat easier questions to help retain the memorization. But you do want to be able to work with people of all mental capabilities. So maybe what you can do is manually assign difficulties to questions, maybe on the range of 1 to 10 or some small yet manageable scale like that. As they run low on questions from the level 1 difficulty, start introducing some of the level 2 ones, and so on. You may also want to manually assign a value to determine how long the question should take to answer.
So then for the difficulty setting for individual players, it could be something like an easy setting gives you more time (slower combat intensity drop), but answering correctly gives you less bonus and your character deals slightly less damage overall (like there is a permanent -25% reduction to combat multiplier).
Be sure to keep lots of statistics. You can dynamically adjust difficulty and expected time based on how well others do on average.
Finally, not only allow time for people to read up on a question in detail (or a tutorial on how to get through it), but give them motivation to do so without making it exploitable. That is, try to find some way to reward them for reading up on a question but not make it so they just "read up" on it every time just to do more damage.