The majority of 2011 was spent promoting the game and getting it in the hands of educators and learners across Canada. A HUGE thanks goes out to everyone that assisted us with promotion and everyone that took the time to check out the game!

You know what they say about assuming though. It makes a donkey out of you.

I never saw this movie, but I can only assuming these kids were making some wild assumptions in this scene

People come to this blog for the showmanship and grandeur of another big reveal, and that’s what they will get! Drum roll please…

We made several trips to the studio in December to record English voices for all of the characters in Summer in Smallywood.

After seeing silent characters for so long, it’s a real shock to finally hear their voices!

 “Take your stinkin’ paws off me…and learn all about Oral Communication”

I know what you’re probably thinking right now, and “yes”, we have plenty more tricks up our sleeves. Did I say “plenty”? I meant exactly ONE more trick up our sleeves.

Stay tuned.

OMG, super exciting right?!?

Rather than just coming right out and telling you what that feature is, it might be more fun to play a petite guessing game.  Take a look at the following images and see if you can’t guess what we are about to unveil…

Getting warmer…

Ok, you’re getting MUCH warmer now…

 You’re burning up! Stop, drop and roll!

That’s right; Smallywood will be available in French by late 2011.

We just couldn’t sleep at night knowing there was a whole group of Canadians unable to experience the game that some people are calling “the greatest thing since poutine”.

Ok, ok. That’s the last reference to French Canada. It was just so hard to resist.

Stay tuned in a couple of weeks when we speak up about the next exciting feature coming to Summer in Smallywood.

Smallywood pajamas were a decent idea, but we felt Hello Kitty was monopolizing the market.

Well, you asked for ‘em, you got ‘em. Thanks to the continued support of the Government of Canada’s Office of Literacy and Essential Skills, we are pleased to announce that some of your (and our) most requested features are coming soon to Summer in Smallywood!

I’m no magician but I sort of like that whole “a magician never reveals his secrets” sort of attitude.

Spilling all of our secrets now might get us kicked out of the Magician’s Alliance.

So, over the next few months we’ll trickle out news about the upcoming features bit-by-bit until excitement reaches a fevered pitch!

Then we’ll go back to writing normal blog posts about video games again…

Jeff: “I don’t understand how you can finish ‘Contra’, it’s so hard!”
Billy: “Use the Konami code to get 30 free lives.”
Jeff: “…What’s a Konami?”

Boys and girls would all huddle around on the playground and talk about video games for hours. Well, actually, however long a recess was. Fifteen minutes? Anyway, that’s not important. The important thing was that when you got stuck in your brand new video game, you had to rely on your friends and their solutions. You know, the stories that would usually started with a vague qualifier like, “a friend of a friend’s younger brother told me…”

Sometimes this collective video game playground knowledge worked out for you, other times it didn’t. There were honestly some things in video games that seemed so…obtuse, you wondered how the designers ever expected players to figure it out on their own.

Without ‘The Wizard’ in 1989, would anyone have known to fly on top of the roof to get the first warp whistle in Super Mario Bros. 3?

As video games got more and more complex (and your friends’ solutions got more and more unreliable) players had to turn to something a little bit more in-depth to assist them with those tough games: the strategy guide.

Strategy guides were these amazing books that showed you how to complete a game, find all the secrets and not break your controller out of frustration by avoiding that 30^th consecutive loss to the Final Boss. They gave expert players a reason to go back and explore every nook and cranny of a game, and they helped novice players simply enjoy the game and get to the end.

Not everyone that plays Summer in Smallywood will be as good at video games as Jimmy Woods (if you are counting, that’s two ‘Wizard’ references in one blog post), and for those people we’ve updated the Facilitator’s Guide to include a complete, step-by-step solution to each of the three Essential Skills modules.

Click on the link below, or click on the “Facilitator’s Guide” link on the right-hand side of the page to download a PDF that includes the solutions to Summer in Smallywood.

http://summerinsmallywood.ca/Resources/1.Facilitator’s%20Guide.pdf

But remember: with great power comes great responsibility, so only use the Summer in Smallywood solutions when absolutely necessary! Oh, and yell out “SPOILER ALERT” before you do. People love that.

“Uhhhh, are you sure about that?”

Alright, alright. While that definition might have been made up, you probably understood what I was trying to say, right? Gamification refers to the application of game mechanics to things that are not games.

The same thinking that drives you to obsessively collect frequent flyer miles or Shopper’s Optimum points stems from the same psychological hooks that game designers have been using for years to engage players. It’s all about a system of tasks and rewards, where completing a task or moving along a linear process nets you “points,” real or virtual. It’s not just customer loyalty programs though; gamification is popping up in all sorts of non-game application. From that little progress bar that encourages you to complete an online survey or LinkedIn profile, to new ways of looking at employee training programs and staff scheduling software, gamification is all around you.

“Stay perfectly still Melanie, the games are everywhere”

Now, Smallywood isn’t a great example of gamification because, well…it is a game. But the great thing about gamification is that you don’t have to develop an actual video game to transform the classroom into a game.

To increase attendance and encourage participation from youth-at-risk enrolled in a 10-week career exploration program at The Centre for Skills Development & Training, staff from the Get in Gear program created a gamification system in which they handed out virtual badges upon the completion of different employability-themed workshops.

Not shown: “Don’t Give the Instructor a Headache” badge

Not only were program participants asking facilitators if they had successfully received their badges at the end of each workshop, the Get in Gear program has been handing out more “Perfect Attendance” awards upon program completion than ever before.

Even the simplest applications of gamification can make a huge difference in education and employment, and I would encourage everyone interested in engaging their students, employees, and customers to ask yourself one question: how can you make it more like a game?

Already using gamification techniques? We would love to hear about it in the comments section below.

 [SPOILER ALERT – ending of Smallywood ahead.  You’ve been warned.]

 Untold Entertainment programmed in this gutsy (and hilarious) ending to the game that tricked our player into thinking they would receive a certificate that they could proudly display to all their friends and family.

However, once the player clicks “Next” they realize this is just a clever ruse.

Psych!

Wellllllllllll, a funny thing happened. Once we started showing Smallywood off to educators and employers the requests to supply a printable certificate came pouring in. Heck, even young people that finished the game asked if they got any sort of certificate!

So, we made the executive decision to provide you all with an OPTIONAL certificate that you can print and download in celebration of finishing Summer in Smallywood and learning about Oral Communication, Working with Others and Thinking Skills.

“But, but…they said that certificates were lame, and now they are just going ahead and giving us certificates!?”

Smallywood is for the people, and if the people want certificates, well, the people get certificates! You can find the downloadable Smallywood certificate under “Facilitator Resources.” We’ve even provided a box where you can type in the student’s name and a signature line for the facilitator to sign so that it’s super, ultra official.

A WINNER IS YOU

Even though it is important for us to provide you with the tools needed to use Smallywood, we aren’t going to do anything crazy like change the ending to the game or anything. Now excuse us while we hang our heads in shame for going back on our original stance of “certificates are lame.”

I love you, you love me, let’s start a Smallywood Family.

If you click on the “Educators & Employers” tab at the top of the site you’ll be taken to a page designed to easily help people integrate Summer in Smallywood into the work they do with young adults. Scroll to the bottom of the page and you’ll be able to “Leave a Reply”. 

This is your chance to give the Smallywood community a piece of your mind! Notice how I didn’t write that last sentence in ALL CAPS? That’s because this isn’t some soap box for you to discuss your anger about pineapple on pizza, the latest contestant kicked off Dancing with the Stars, retailer return policies, or whatever it is that people complain about on the Internet these days.

“I don’t care what you say! COOL RANCH ARE WAY BETTER THAN REGULAR!!! SHUT YO MOUTH!!!!!!!!! I’M SO ANGRY!!!!!!!!!!!!”

If you are using Summer in Smallywood we would love to hear about your experiences with it. Did the young adults you work with enjoy their time with the game? Did it spark a meaningful discussion about the importance of Essential Skills in the workplace? These are the types of things we encourage you to share with the nation-wide community of Summer in Smallywood users.

If you want to stay up to speed on all things Smallywood, make sure to check out our Twitter (@smallywoodgame), Facebook (Mr. Small E. Wood) and YouTube (summerinsmallywood) pages.

“We’ve invited you here to get your feedback on the new spring clothing line from Banana Republic.  You are familiar with their clothes right?”

After providing the students with a bit of a background on Summer in Smallywood they were asked to load the game and start playing. Very little instruction on how to actually play the game was provided to the students because it is important to find out how many of these non-gamers could actually learn how to play the game on their own.

Driving Instructor: “Nobody can teach you how to drive.  I’m not going to say anything and just let you FEEL the road.  You’ll figure it out on your own.”

As the students started to play, some funny things happened. They started working together to get through each game. Some of them started asking their neighbours where they found certain clues. A few students asked for paper so they could write out the clues needed to solve the morning schedule puzzle from the Thinking Skills game. The computer lab was filled with laughter and the periodic sound of students reading out lines from the game they found funny. Were these non-gamer students really diving head first into an educational video game designed to teach them about Essential Skills?  Surely Twitter would have the answer.

Thank you.  Your cheque is in the mail.

Witnessing the students playing Summer in Smallywood was proof of the educational properties of video games.  After completing each game the students were able to identify abilities within each Essential Skill that they learned – which was a huge deal because before playing they couldn’t even recall hearing the term Essential Skills.

If you need further proof of why Summer in Smallywood is the perfect tool to teach young adults about Essential Skills, listen to what those very same students had to say about their experience:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=swrM6h92mHw

Ingredients:

1 cup (250 ml) – over the top voice-over
2 lbs (908 g) – gameplay video
1 (free range, organic) – pretending-to-play-but-obviously-isn’t guy
3 cups (750 ml) – information about Summer in Smallywood
1 tsp (5 ml) – project funder logo

Directions:

1. Marinate: 1 free range, organic actor in caffeine overnight
2. Combine: 1 cup voice-over and 2 lbs gameplay video in medium-sized video editing software. Stir thoroughly and allow to settle
3. Shoot: actor in front of green screen before he comes off caffeine high
4. Fold in 2 cups of information and a pinch of the project funder’s logo
5. Edit until satisfied with the results

Congratulations, your students/teachers/literacy practitioners and employers will all love the 80′s inspired Summer in Smallywood promotional video you’ve created. If it doesn’t look like the video below, you messed it up.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlAVBkw_NT4