Animal Class competing for European Championship

Harri Ketamo, Senior Lecturer of Social Media at SAMK, and Marko Suominen, Researcher at the Tampere University of Technology, have together created an innovative game series called Animal Class. Now the newest game of this series, named European Map, has been nominated as one of the finalists for Innovative Games Award to be held in Frankfurt, Germany. European Innovative Games Awards are presented in three classes, i.e. Technology, Design and Methods, with Animal Class belonging to the last one.

In the Animal Class game series each player gets his or her own virtual pet who wants to learn mathematics, biology, languages and music. The task of the player is to teach the pet and the pet will learn, depending on the skills of the player, i.e. also wrong. The innovative character of the game becomes evident in the artificial intelligence of Animals which simulates the learning process in compliance with the theories of neuropsychology and cognitive psychology. This game is meant for children aged 10-15 years. The preceding series of Animal Class have won for instance the Nordic Serious Games Award in 2008.

More information:
Harri Ketamo, Senior Lecturer
mobile +358 44 710 3803
email
www.gameminer.fi