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)