Xixi Wang

Introducing an epic puzzle adventure: Pandora’s Legacy!

Pandora’s Legacy, TED-Ed’s first physical game, is an unforgettable experience that combines elements of jigsaw puzzles, escape rooms, puzzle hunts, and legacy board games into 12 to 15 hours of immersive, cooperative gameplay for 1 to 4 players.

What is the game about?

The Gods granted Pandora many wicked and wonderful gifts. From Poseidon, a pearl necklace that allowed her to breathe underwater. From Apollo, the gift of song. From Zeus, a sealed and forbidden box. And from Hera, the insatiable curiosity to open it.

And so Pandora gave into temptation and unleashed chaos upon the world.

Senne Trip

That’s where the story usually ends. But it’s where PANDORA’S LEGACY begins. 

In this adventure, Pandora doesn’t just accept her fate; she is determined to set things right. That’s where you come in. Playing as Pandora, with the help (and hindrance) of your favorite Olympians, your mission is to corral the chaos you created when you opened the box.

How do you play Pandora’s Legacy?

Step 1: Assemble the first part of the jigsaw.

Putting the pieces together

But wait! Something’s missing…

Where’s the rest of the jigsaw?

Step 2: Solve the first puzzle-within-the-puzzle and enter it into the digital companion to unlock the next section of the jigsaw.

The digital companion

Step 3: Solving each puzzle means searching the jigsaw for what you need. Every piece has a number on the back. Find the right piece and you’ll solve a puzzle OR get more clues.

Another clue

Step 4: Solve the puzzles and unlock more boxes! Some contain physical artifacts that are themselves puzzles. Others will reward you with more jigsaw pieces, filling in more of the illustration and advancing the narrative.

Game artifacts

Step 5: Repeat! Many, MANY surprises await. All leading up to the climatic ending of Pandora’s quest to set right the chaos she unleashed upon the world.

Alexandra Panzer

Learn more about this one-of-a-kind gaming experience and get your copy of Pandora’s Legacy today on Kickstarter!…

Thoka Maer

One evening, I called my sons to come to eat — and got no response.

True confession: In anger, I marched into their room and kicked off the power button on their gaming console.

You’d have thought it was the end of the world. The boys were so mad and upset at me as their screen went blank. I brought them down to dinner, and my response to their behavior would typically have been: “You’re wasting away your life on video games.”

But that night, I chose to be curious instead of critical. I asked them: “Why is video gaming so important to you?”

I am so glad I asked. My boys were surprised, responding, “Mom, you really want to know?”

I replied: “Yes!”

They said: “Mom, everybody we know plays video games.”

They weren’t exaggerating. According to the Entertainment Software Association, 2.5 billion people on this planet are gamers. (“Gamer” simply refers to somebody that plays video games.) That’s roughly one-third of humanity.

My boys helped me discover an entire world that I knew nothing about, let alone knew how to parent. Gaming today is a connected, multiplayer, interactive entertainment experience. It’s full of competition, problem solving, puzzles, logic. Good stuff, right? It’s also full of conversations, culture, history, musical scores, art, dialogue, moral choices — stuff you actually want your kids to learn. Plus, gaming has philosophy, strategy, and amazing skill.

Imagine reading a really good book, or watching a great movie or sporting event — but this time you get to manipulate it, compete in it and interact with it. That’s modern video gaming.

The boys continued to teach me more things. For example, they told me that when I shut off the game, they get a suspension, explaining, “Mom, we have a responsibility and you keep asking us to pause the game. You can’t pause an online game. Seriously, Mom, you can’t pause a game.”

Then they said this: “You actually hurt us when you call us ‘loners’ and ‘losers’. We’re live on a headset in a multiplayer game with our friends, and we’re actually meeting new, real friends.”

That was the day I had an earth-shattering epiphany — I’m more alone in the kitchen cooking dinner than my boys are gaming upstairs. So I started embracing my kids as gamers, and this is what I yell out still to this day; “It’s almost time for dinner, where are you at in your game ?” I find out, I make the adjustment, and then we have that peaceful connected family dinner that I wanted in the first place.

One time, my oldest son Connor came to me and said “Mom, seriously, what do I need to do to get you to leave me alone after 3PM today?” I realized I could use his request to my advantage. So I made a list: Get your homework done and engage with Grandma at the table at lunch time (eye contact and all); I even added pulling weeds to the list. He got everything done. He said “Mom, this is so cool. All I really wanted to do this afternoon was rank up.”

In gaming, there are levels and leagues and rewards to be earned, so I figured if it’s important to him, it needed to be important to me too. This is exactly what Dr. Chris Haskell, associate clinical professor and esports head coach from Boise State University, says about his esport scholar-athletes. He is looking for gamers that have goals and are willing to improve in their game. In fact, many colleges now give scholarships for esports, and both the military and other industries now use video-game-type simulations in their jobs.

I started treating gaming like a sport with practices and everything. Would you go to your kid’s soccer practice or their baseball game and start yelling at the coach, “Stop everything, my kid needs to take out the trash now”? Of course not. I chose to let my kids game uninterrupted as long as they first took care of their responsibilities.

Gaming brings the entire world together with its common language and its team dynamics. Young people are watching others play video games. I used to criticize them for doing this. Well, my husband also watches other people play games — he’s a huge San Francisco 49ers fan. This past season, a game went into overtime and ended up lasting for four-and-a-half hours. Did I go lecture my husband and say, “You’re rotting your brain away and you’re wasting your life”? I chose to let him enjoy watching pro sports. When a gamer is watching another person play video games, they’re usually watching the pros and they’re trying to get tips and tricks for the games that they play.

Since I began talking to my sons about gaming, I’ve had a chance to interview some professional gamers. One of them remembered a time when he was with his extended family, and they were all going around sharing about their lives and trying to catch up with one another. When it was his turn, he started talking about video games and his love of playing. One of his aunts rudely announced to everyone: “Why don’t you tell us something that people are actually interested in?”

Everybody had a good laugh at his expense, and he’s hardly talked to his extended family since then — and that was over a decade ago. I wonder what would have happened if that aunt had chosen to be curious instead of critical?

By now you may be thinking, “Well, she didn’t bring up about any of the bad stuff about video games.” You’re right.

It’s true — there are concerns with online communication and other issues, but that’s why it’s even more important to be involved in a gamer kid’s life. In my own home, my sons and I have maintained an open dialogue about online behavior and balance. Now, years later, I know my younger son still games with his older brother, even though they’re over 300 miles apart. This melts my heart. Gaming has kept their connection close.

My advice isn’t just for parents. It’s also for grandma, grandpa, aunts and uncles, godparents, good friends, school administrators and other relatives: Be curious.

Here’s a simple solution. Start a conversation with your gamer kid by asking them these three questions:

What games do you play?
Why do you enjoy playing those particular games?
Can I watch you game sometime?

If we don’t embrace gaming, we might lose connection with the people that we love the most.

This piece was adapted from a TEDxIdahoFalls Talk. Watch it here:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cara Lane is a trainer, a motivational speaker, communication coach and author.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

BIO

Pen-Pen Chen, M.S. CCC-SLP, TSSLD is a bilingual speech and language pathologist at PS 503 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and a speech evaluator on the Central Speech Evaluation Team in the NYC Department of Education. She is also an English language instructor at the United Nations, an adjunct lecturer at Hunter College, and a professional voice over artist. (Listen to Pen-Pen narrate TED-Ed Lessons, including The benefits of a bilingual brain and The myth behind the Chinese zodiac.) Previously, Pen-Pen also taught Chinese at Columbia University, Teachers College and China Institute. As a TED-Ed Innovative Educator, Pen-Pen is passionate about inspiring a love for life-long learning in children, with a focus on English language learners and students with special needs, in low-income communities. Below, learn about her innovative curriculum, codenamed Game Changing Kids.

IDEA

Games, by their very nature, encourage active learning. Making games lets kids take charge of the learning process by engaging their passion and vision to create a tangible, playable end product. By designing a board game together, students take initiative, construct knowledge and grapple with problems, and learn design thinking and how an iterative process works. They also work collaboratively to share ideas, give feedback and succeed as a team.

INNOVATION PROJECT

The Game Changing Kids board game design project curriculum fosters a collaborative student culture of:

• creativity and innovation
• sharing and respect
• learning and growing

Through this project, students learn to take an idea from inception to execution, and to collaborate with their peers in meaningful work that is fun and engaging. Want to try it out with your students? Download the Game Changing Kids board game design project curriculum here.

Pen-Pen’s tips:
DO reach out to some colleagues for help. You can also do Game Days together, which makes it more fun.
DO give students time and space to explore their seemingly fanciful ideas.
DO get students to share their work with family, friends, and other teachers.
DO trust in the process. You will learn and grow with your students, and you’ll be amazed at what their creativity can achieve.

This article is part of the TED-Ed Innovation Project series, which highlights 25+ TED-Ed Innovation Projects designed by educators, for educators, with the support and guidance of the TED-Ed Innovative Educator program. You are welcome to share, duplicate and modify projects under this Creative Commons license to meet the needs of students and teachers. Art credit: iStockPhoto.

Pokémon Go is a free, location-based, augmented reality game — but why is it so popular? To understand, let’s look at the neuroscience behind Pokémon Go. Here are 4 ideas that can explain how it became such a phenomenon:

1. The augmented reality approach leads to an amplified focus on Self. Humans are narcissistic beings. Research has shown that we pay more attention to things that relate to ourselves, and that when we talk about ourselves, the dopamine reward circuit in our brains is activated, which is why it feels good. So, by giving the player complete control, you make the game about them. You might have control of your player or character when you play other games such as Call of Duty, but the augmented reality of Pokémon Go gives you the ability to self-generate the experience literally whenever and wherever you wish, provided you have your phone on hand. You can catch Pokemon in the park, in the office, or in your apartment, day or night. You get a little boost in self-efficacy every time you open the game and something happens, because you recognize that you govern this virtual layer on top of your existing environment. This achievement is reflected in both self-image and product appreciation, which keeps you coming back for more.

2. The game is one continuous novel playscape. Our brains love novelty, and the same dopaminergic reward pathway that’s accessed when we talk about ourselves is also activated when we experience new things. Activation of this pathway directs individuals to repeat what they just did to get more rewards. In the case of Pokémon Go, you’re experiencing new things every single time you play the game — and that drives you to go to new locations, so you can find new Pokemon.

3. The emotional impact is layered. Research has shown that virtual responses activate the same neural networks as real experiences, in the same way that images of rewards and real rewards are perceived almost identically in the brain. Pokémon Go takes cues from the actual environment and couples them with the virtual world for greater impact. For example, if you’re near a body of water you might catch a Magikarp, and if you’re in the subway you might catch a Rattata — this water/land congruence increases your sense of delight and accomplishment. Bundling emotions strengthens the positive association with the game and keeps you hooked.

4. The game promotes social connection. Social needs are some of the most powerful drivers of behavior. We are influenced by what others around us do, so if everyone is playing Pokémon Go, we’ll be encouraged to do the same. Currently more than 90% of Americans ages 18-65 have heard of Pokémon Go. The mobility of the game as a result of augmented reality also allows for collaboration among players locally and virtually. If the guy you see pacing around the corner is catching Pokemon, then there’s an instant connection there, a recognition that you’re part of something bigger — not only through conversation, but through in-game collaboration and competition.

The big takeaway? Pokémon Go employs techniques commonly used in video game design, but the augmented reality approach has enhanced and magnified these effects to capture and distract us on a whole new plane.

Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya is an art director at Primacy and founder of The Leading Strand, an initiative that shines a light on scientific research through design. She was part of the first-ever TED Residency and holds an MFA from Pratt and a neuroscience degree from Columbia.

For more articles at the intersection of education, art and science, sign up for the weekly TED-Ed newsletter here >>

Images credit: Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya/TED-Ed Blog

Lilian Chen, aka Milktea, grew up playing Super Smash Brothers Melee. But when her love of the game led her to compete in national tournaments, she noticed a big gender imbalance that brought with it a troubling social dynamic. In this TED-Ed Lesson, Lilian talks about her experiences with sexism in the Smash community and how she tries to raise awareness for this topic in a way that doesn’t shame male gamers. To learn more about Milktea’s experiences and the topic of gaming, read this article — and the interview below with Milktea, conducted at TEDYouth by teen gamer Isabel Yehya.

At TEDYouth, you talked about how the Smash community helped you find your voice and use it to combat the sexism you encountered. And I loved that you brought up sexism amongst girls. Can you say a little bit more about that?

I feel like a lot of people are quick to point fingers, but sexism is not just an issue amongst males. Everything is connected. For example, men feel sexism too. A lot of patriarchal beliefs just came from our culture, and the entire world is working to get over these things.

Do you see sexism within the actual video games?

I think there’s definitely a lot of innate sexism embedded within games. I don’t know if it’s deliberate or meant to be malicious, but it’s definitely there and you see that everywhere.

What do you think about “fake gamer girls” being bullied for liking a certain form of media?

A lot of girls get accused of being “fake gamer girls,” but I think that accusation is really toxic. There are a lot of guys who play very casually too, but because of their gender will never be accused of being a fraud. For them it’s just assumed that they like games.

It probably comes from just the unfortunate mindset that gaming is a boys’ club only. You see that in a lot of different communities — you see it in tech, you see it in science, in any areas that are initially male dominated. I hope we overcome that.

How do you think that mindset will change? At some point will it stop?

I’m really hopeful! Especially as people stand up and become more vocal on the issue. I’m optimistic that with enough explaining — and showing why certain things are not okay — we will move forward.