More

Message

Publish

Login

6

2

Favorite

Share

Evaluation of educational functions of video games: "Assassin's Creed: Journey to Discovery in Ancient Egypt"

2020-06-12 11:53·3DM Game Network

(I) Game introduction

Assassin's Creed is an action-adventure game series developed by Ubisoft Montreal Studios. The series of games originated from an earlier RPG game, "Prince of Persia", and later gradually developed into an independent and tremendously appealing classic series. After the release of Assassin's Creed: Origins, Ubisoft launched a version dedicated to education: Assassin's Creed: Journey to Discovery in Ancient Egypt. Although this is not the first educational version of entertainment video game, in terms of sophistication, the educational version of Assassin's Creed is unprecedented. This stems from its detailed and realistic modeling work.

The game background was set in the late Ptolemaic dynasty, during the reign of Queen Cleopatra, including the city of Memphis and Alexandria and the surrounding areas at that time. Almost all game scenes are restored from real scenes 1:1, and experts from their respective fields - especially historians - participate in the restoration work. The NPC population in the game can eat, sleep, perform daily work, and even interact with the gamer. Players can climb any building, dive underwater to find ruins and shipwreck treasures, and can also control an eagle named Senu to look out into the distance. These open settings make the video game have great educational potential.

Real and detailed modeling has become a cultural feature of Ubisoft. As the company's signature product, the "Assassin's Creed" series of games has reached the extreme of the industry in this regard. For example, after the fire of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was destroyed, it was discovered that a complete model of the building was preserved in Assassin's Creed: The Revolution. This caused a wave of "game archaeology" and "game tourism", and also increased the popularity of games.

On this basis, it is natural to appear the educational version of the new game. Maxime Durand, a historian involved in the production, introduced the game's creative ideas and process: "We had already maintained contact with many educators when the first game of Assassin's Creed was released about ten years ago. Many of them had already used games to teach in their history classes, but they quickly realized that they needed an educational tool that was easier to accept and understand based on history."

The educational version of Assassin's Creed adopts a typical "purification" (Lite) transformation strategy, removing almost all the game mechanics in the original version.This brings two changes: first, it avoids violent attacks in the original version that are not suitable for minors (the original version has an ESRB rating of 18+); second, it makes the game operation dull and simple, not easy to indulge, and is more suitable for short-term teaching situation use than "Civilization".

To sum up, this game almost represents the limit that the current video game industry can achieve in the field of education - especially in terms of cost. However, relying on the profits of the entertainment version, the producers do not care about the sales of the education version, and even directly bundled it with the entertainment version. In the new version of the series' new game "Odyssey", Ubisoft continues to support the education industry - the game is tied to a new educational version: "The Journey of Discovery in Ancient Greece".

(II) Functional Evaluation

1. Knowledge learning function (level 5)

Knowledge presentation is the core function of the game, and its level can be a template for level 5 functions. There are 75 sightseeing spots in the game, such as the Great Pyramid, the Mummy or the Life of Queen Cleopatra. Each tourist spot focuses on showing the ancient Egypt during the Ptolemaic dynasty in different aspects

and. Players can quickly travel to their favorite sightseeing spots or choose to stroll freely to get here.

2. Emotional and aesthetic functions (level 4)

Providing a large number of intuitive artistic relics and related knowledge, with high aesthetic functions. The game restores a large number of cultural relics and historical sites with artistic value, so it has high aesthetic value. Players can observe and appreciate the grand occasion of the integration of three ancient Greece, Egypt and Rome in Alexandria from a close distance, and have a look at and display of literary works such as architecture, sculpture, painting, music and other artistic works of various artistic styles. Players can witness and even participate in some of these artistic creation activities. These contents are produced under the guidance of academic experts and can be directly used for relevant teaching presentations.

3. Cognitive promotion function (level 2)

The gamer can freely explore architecture in three-dimensional space. This game is more open to the climbing movements, and all buildings can be climbed as long as the player designs a reasonable route. These operations have a certain promoting effect on spatial cognitive ability. However, the game focuses on knowledge presentation and does not design a training mechanism for cognitive functions, which limits the performance of this function.

4. Functional efficiency evaluation (level 5)

Serious games designed specifically for educational purposes do not have unnecessary game mechanisms, and the game's functional efficiency is extremely high. There are a lot of fighting and gory content in the original game, which has been cancelled in the educational version. The player cannot perform any attack.

(III) Evaluation Results

1. Suitable for teaching activities in related subjects such as history, geography, and culture of ancient Egypt, Greece and Roman Empires, and have high aesthetic value. (Function level:5)

2. Features are outstanding, the content is compact, and there is no unnecessary or invalid game mechanism. It can be used safely for teaching activities in most school-age groups. (Overall functional efficiency level: 5)

3. Application suggestions: The in-game guidance system is very complete and does not rely on teacher guidance. It can be used for both professional teaching and self-study by interested enthusiasts. However, this game has certain requirements for hardware devices, especially when used on PC platforms, and the performance requirements for graphics card are high.