Today’s children are digital natives. According to Common Sense Media, currently eight to twelve year olds spend just under five hours with digital entertainment each day. If we cannot keep our children from the screen, we have to make sure that they spend their time with more meaningful entertainment. This is what Yaldi Games is all about.
Our mission is to integrate knowledge intrinsically into popular game genres, creating games that are both fun and educational. Our game design follows recent research on how to increase information retention in a video game, by considering principles of affective learning, behavioural learning, cognitive learning and social learning.
Bridging the gap between gaming worlds
I am not a digital native myself, but I have been playing video games ever since I was 11 years old. I found that games generally improved my critical thinking and problem solving skills. They taught me to recognise patterns, learn from mistakes, and be creative and experiment.
However, as a game designer I noticed a stark difference between educational and commercial games: the former focusing too much on education and the latter too much on fun. I always felt that it should be possible to create both, a fun experience with beautiful visuals and empowering narrative, and real information learned without effort.
Our first title “Wholesome - Out and About” belongs to the genre of ‘life simulators’, peaceful games that simulate everyday life, that are popular with players of all age groups.