educational game developer
Hanjamaru won the first prize at the “KGC Awards”
- The Business category award is one among the five new award categories established this year by the Korea Game Conference (KGC).
- Game business model’s horizons are being broadened by a new benefits structure linking on- and off-line material.
Innovative Chinese characters practicing system Hanjamaru (http://www.hanjamaru.com/), which NHN (Director: Sangheon Kim) provides service for, received the highest award in the Business category at the “KGC Awards”, a game developers’ festival which was held on the 9th of October.
“Innovation” was selected as the main theme for the 9th edition of the KGC Awards. For the first time this year, the award ceremony was split into 5 categories in order to award a variety of new technologies and original ideas:
- Game design
- Graphics
- Programming
- Business
- Open tracks
This time, Hanjamaru was awarded, jointly with “Audition English”, in KGC Awards’ Business category, among a selection of games about to be put up for sale, and presenting a creative and epoch-making public marketing plan for a brand new revenue model.
The award received by Hanjamaru acknowledges that its unique brand new revenue system, which merchandises offline teaching material linked to an online game, had opened new horizons for game business model.
Hanjamaru’s developing company Eduflo’s director Seongwoo Kim commented this award by saying that “because Hanjamaru had to define not only development but also business model, it was an extremely challenging task. The fact that we have a workbook team, which does not exist in other companies, is also a result of this concern. Korea’s game industry is ruled by a business model based on item purchase. I hope this award will be the signal that a new business model is born.”
Besides, since its early stage, Hanjamaru has been under the observation of both a scholar in Chinese pedagogy from SungKyunKwan University and a scholar in educational psychology from Harvard University. It has also received support from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, been officially awarded at the Ministry of Education’s Edutainment Competitive Exhibition, been ranked as “best game of the month” last June, and been receiving the best content’s prize far and wide.
(The original article in Korean can be seen here.)
Hanjamaru selected as best game of June
Hanjamaru is an educational online game developed by Eduflo (Directors: Kwangse Park & Seongwoo Kim) intended for learning 1800 Chinese characters.This 2D side-scrolling online game is designed for getting familiar with the Chinese characters in a natural way. “Audiovisual training” is performed by hearing and reading characters repeatedly while hunting monsters.
A professor in Chinese pedagogy from Sungkyunkwan University and scholars in educational psychology from Harvard have been specially working on this project for two years. Moreover, Seoul National University’s department of psychology’s “Language and Thinking Laboratory” has been inspecting the game since its early stage, and estimating its efficiency for learning the representative Chinese characters.
While hunting monsters, the meaning and sound of the character is identified. The monster drops Chinese characters on the floor as it vanishes. When the user has picked up the appropriate amount of characters, he can combine them to make shields or weapons.
This game uses the brain’s principle. Our brain remembers what has often been seen and heard. For example, most parents can read the “yong” (龍; dragon) character, because it often appears in movies or publications. Hanjamaru’s structure makes the learner’s eyes focus for a long time on the character which is written on the monster. When the player attacks the monster, both the meaning and the sound of the character are displayed, contributing to obtain a stronger learning efficiency than just seeing the character with the eyes.
Using Hanjamaru’s exercise books in addition to playing the game enables to multiply the efficiency rate up to two. Since their design is similar to game manuals, those books are child-friendly. By getting the mock exam corrected, children can prepare the actual Chinese characters skills exam. Also, as they read the comic strips, they get more familiar with Chinese characters.
Since last April, NHN has been providing service for Hanjamaru. After only two months had passed, the total number of members had exceeded 200.000 in June, and the sales average reaches 300 million won (about 260,000 USD) per month. Hanjamaru was acknowledged as having premium contents as it won the first prize in the official Chinese characters’ category of “2008 Edutainment Competitive Exhibition”, a contest organized jointly by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
Interview: Seongwoo Kim, President of Eduflo
- Opinion about the award
“Teachers say that the most difficult thing when teaching children is that they cannot stay focused on studying. By combining education and online game, in which children get easily immersed, even when one tries to prevent them from this immersion, we kill two birds with one stone: fun, and study. This award, by acknowledging the possibilities of educational games, shows that a new era, where children can learn in a cheerful way, is opening.”
- Main design concept
“Eduflo’s next goal is to develop educative contents that can export from Korea, which has the best educational market, all around the world. We had estimated that after 10 years, the current one-way education programs will have undergone a change. Also, as feedback and communication increased, we were worrying about which educative tools would be needed. Moreover, we wanted to try to make a game that parents would encourage their children to play. To fulfill this goal, game designers, university scholars in Chinese characters’ pedagogy and in educational psychology gathered and developed a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) exclusively dedicated to Chinese characters’ education.”
- Future plans
“Our goal is to become the Megastudy for preschool and kindergarten pupils. Megastudy controls most of the flourishing online education’s business for middle and high school students, but Eduflo’s plan is to take charge of the preschool and primary school students’ market. Eduflo’s vision is to “establish a qualitative transformation of studying by taking advantage of new media’s interactivity”.”
The original article by Insoon Kim (insoon@etnews.co.kr) can be seen here. (2009-07-08)
Minister Inchon Yu gives a try to Hanjamaru
Minister Inchon Yu and Busan’s mayor Namsik Heo giving a try to serious game Hanjamaru, in the Hangame booth.
The original article can be seen in Korean here.
The Korean Government Now Supports Online Games
Cultivate the market for functional, educational games and to raise awareness of them. The ministry of Science and Technology has decided hereafter to change the negative recognition that games receive and contribute to the creation of a market for them.
A copy of the article with the original report in Korean can be found here.
NHN has announced the results of the CBT
On Monday, February 2nd, NHN announced the results of Hanjamaru’s closed beta test. In total, 26,000 people tested the game and were exposed to an average of 13 Chinese characters in the span of an hour. According to the results shown through administering one test before playing the game and one test afterwards, game players can naturally become familiar with these 13 Chinese characters. Vast improvement was especially apparent for those testers under 10 years old.
Before the test, in the second half of last year, 6th grade students were tested at Seoul National University's psychology department’s language and thought laboratory in order to ascertain the effectiveness of the game as a learning tool for characters.
During the testing period, as users played the game, at the time when monsters attacked, the sound of the Chinese characters was heard repeatedly and the effect that the size of the monsters and the effect that the style of their attack had upon the subject’s gaze was measured to test for learning and recognition.
Among the elementary school students that were tested it was found that during the period when monsters attacked, the children’s vision focused mainly upon the Chinese characters and they were listening to the sound of the characters. According to the analysis of the educational effectiveness of the game, in terms of auditory and visual senses, a sort of Pavlovian condition is created in Hanjamaru as the shape of the Chinese characters and the sound of them are combined and associated together by the users.
Furthermore, the Chinese character’s appearance and Korean pronunciation for every vocabulary word are simply combined for the user. In order to acquire weapons, the composition of different elements of the characters is broken down and the player must construct them in order to understand the principles and process of character formation. As a result, the game attains good educational results.
During this round of testing, one 3rd grade student, Minseo Lee, said, “Every time I grab a fat monster with a Chinese character on its body, the character’s sound is played and I feel like I’ve learned the character. While I play the game, my parents praise me so that I feel really good”.
Suyun Gwan (43, white collar worker), a parent that played Hanjamaru with her children during the test, said that, ”Through the game, interest is held and through repetitive learning educational results arise that aren’t those of a craming session, but that are natural. Since the children are able to happily and voluntarily study Chinese characters, I’m excited for this new educational method.”
We've entered final CBT and we've got a demo video!
Above, you can view the nifty, new demo video we've created for our game Hanjamaru!
The beginning of the video displays the process of setting up the character's account, managing the items that the character has collected, and a map of the levels that the character has progressed through. The video then features clips of gameplay throughout different levels.
We've officially entered closed beta testing (CBT) for the game and the responses we've had from parents and children that have tried it out have been overwhelmingly positive. The parents love the new educational method and the children love the game.