Tag Archives: games

Head-to-head matchup: HD Quiz vs. Quiz and Survey Master vs. Quiz Maker

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
October 8 2020

I’ve been blogging the last week about various options to run trivia quizzes on my website, ranging from basic plugins to premium plugins or even embedding quizzes from external platforms (either dedicated to trivia like Kahoot or generic forms with a quiz option like MS or Google Forms). In my last post (Considering different trivia managers), I covered a huge list and while some of them were awesome in their own right, I have a very specific goal in mind with five criteria.

I narrowed it down to three free plugins for WordPress and for the head-to-head matchup, I am ONLY considering the basic plugin, not the premium options.

Setting up my criteria

For scoring/results, I’m looking for something other than just a score, all of them do that obviously. However, some of the full list of plugins added extra clicks to see the results, immediate answers per question vs.  » Read the rest

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Considering different trivia managers

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
October 4 2020

As I’ve mentioned in some recent posts, I am starting to get re-interested in trivia games online, and since I’ve always wanted trivia games on my site, I decided to do a shallow but extensive dive into various tools that will let me run trivia games on my website. Since I run my site with WordPress, I started with plugin options, and various lists of the top quiz plugins to consider and then branched out to other options.

While the idea of a really advanced quiz plugin sounds appealing in theory with power out the wazoo, the reality is that my needs are actually quite simple. I need:

  • Scoring
  • Basic but decent styling.

In other words, I need it to automatically calculate the score AND not look like it was programmed in MS DOS. Beyond that, my “nice to have” list includes:

  • Different types of question formats, although almost all will be multiple choice;
  • A timer so people can’t simply Google the answers; and,
  • Some way to track results over time.
  » Read the rest
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Today I choose to play with Kahoot (TIC00067f)

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
October 2 2020

For those reading the post yesterday about my love of trivia, you already know that I am helping out with a trivia game for our Charitable Campaign at work. The exact FORMAT of that trivia game is still to be determined.

I have a few options, and a number of variables that complicate the game. First and foremost, it has to be fully bilingual. We’re a bilingual workforce, anglophone and francophone players may both want to play, and I need to have a game (*) available they both (*) can play. I put asterisks in that sentence because one of the variables is that I could simply run a game in English for anglophones and a separate game in French for francophones.

Second, since we can’t do the game in-person, I need an online option. That basically divides itself into three options:

  • By email like I used to do — people would get the questions by email, they could respond, and I would score them…heck I think I even still have the scoring spreadsheet that helped me format things!;
  » Read the rest
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Understanding Video Games – Week 11 – Serious Games

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
June 1 2018

For the last week, they note that there are lots of types of games that are supposedly “serious” i.e. aimed at serious purposes. In the history, the longest running example are wargames, but there are also “tycoon” games that are about business simulations. However, the largest sub-genre are education games, such as the Oregon Trail or Carmen Sandiego. Over time, the educational starter series have moved into mobile apps, virtual environment, and training simulations.

Stepping back from the genre, I can see how they are dividing things. For example, there are:

– games used in instruction, where the game is an added medium (for processes or procedures); or,

– other games are used as a construction tool, and thus the game empowers the learning style of the individual student (explore and discover).

Games often have to walk a fine line between learning and fun/engagement, but while constructionist tools are often more “fun”, they are also ripe to be subverted by emergent play.  » Read the rest

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Understanding Video Games – Week 10 – Race

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
May 31 2018

The first video for the week notes that “colour” is frequently used as a way of showing race, even when it is two armies — one red, one blue. As you go through the next four videos, it is expanded to show how race is used to indicate “the other” — an opponent, for example. Some examples for the week include:

  • Choices may often reflect external racism i.e. “black dwarves” are more evil than light dwarves, often as proxies for more complex situations;
  • Race serves as the basis for conflict, and conflict can serve as the basis for a narrative arc;
  • What is present is as important as what is absent;
  • Default characteristics can serve as “indicator” of what a “normal” character should be;
  • Character race representations look at cultures and roles within games, including options around protagonist or antagonist roles;
  • Fighting games often include game mechanics framed through a racial lens to control player attributes (strength, intelligence, etc.);
  » Read the rest
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