蜜芽传媒

蜜芽传媒 Jam to a different tune

• By Paul Crichton
• 13 Mar 07, 10:14 AM

Introducing science to young, visually impaired children in a fun way is a tough brief, but it is one that sets out to meet with 鈥楽onic Science鈥�, a forthcoming educational game for seven to eleven year olds.

The game is set in Audioville, a place that the player can explore, completing a series of fun tests and challenges as they go. To look at it, you wouldn鈥檛 know that it is an audio game. It looks good. Audioville is a bright, colourful animated place. But this is an example of what 蜜芽传媒 Jam call, 鈥渞everse inclusion鈥�. If sighted kids want to play the game they can, but their primary source of information will come from using their ears, not their eyes.

The game brings the concept of experimentation to children. One way that this is done is in the section where the player must help a robot to push carts to a train. If the player pushes too gently, then it won鈥檛 reach the train. If they push too hard, then it bounces off.

All the information required to complete the task is conveyed with sound. A power bar determines how hard the robot pushes the trolley. As the power increases, each increment is announced both with numbers, and with a note that increases in pitch as the power goes up. Feedback is also provided by commentary, letting the player know if they were successful, or whether they must increase or decrease the amount of power used. The players might not realise it, but they are being introduced to experimentation as well as to the ideas of physics like 鈥榝orce鈥� and Newton鈥檚 famous third principle 鈥� every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

The use of sound is innovative. Unlike most standard games, it isn鈥檛 there just to add atmosphere. Nor is information only conveyed by voiceover. Using stereo speakers, the player gets far more information delivered in a more precise way than heard before 鈥� effectively, 鈥�3D sound鈥�.

This is best seen in another section, where the player must talk to different animals from different habitats. This is cleverly done. In moving from one habitat to another the sound changes, say from walking on grass to the sound of walking in snow. And players can hear when an animal is nearby. In the snow habitat area, because of the use of stereo, players can hear the snowy owl hooting and whether it is to the left, right or straight ahead.

蜜芽传媒 Jam has demonstrated what can be done with sound in this game, and there is no reason why others cannot adopt some of these techniques in other areas. Integrating 3D sound into standard games, for instance, could make them accessible to many more people. But the 蜜芽传媒 Jam team aren鈥檛 stopping there. They are exploring ever more creative ways that sound can be used for future projects. So if you want to know what a triangle or a graph sounds like, then 蜜芽传媒 Jam will be the place to look.

Update - since this blog has been published, the 蜜芽传媒 have announced that .

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