Math game more effective than paper exercises

The quality of experience was also measured and showed that pupils found Monkey Tales more enjoyable (which was confirmed by a parent survey), that the game was described as being 'fun', 'exciting' and 'fantastic' up to 80% more often than the paper exercises, and that 60% of the children wished to play more, while only 39% wished to solve additional exercises. Broadly speaking, it can be concluded that the game showed better results both in terms of motivation and learning efficiency. Further research should reveal how these additional learning outcomes are achieved by the game. Possible reasons are the continuous feedback players receive during gameplay, that the game is more motivating, that it adjusts the difficulty level to the player or -- more generally -- that it trains additional cognitive skills such as working memory and attention.

Serious games

Serious or educational games are becoming increasingly important. Market research company iDate estimates that the global turnover was €2.3 billion in 2012 and expects it to rise to €6.6 billion in 2015. A first important sector in which serious games are being used, is defence. The U.S. Army, for example, uses games to attract recruits and to teach various skills, from tactical combat training to ways of communicating with local people. Serious games are also increasingly used in companies and organizations to train staff. The Flemish company U&I Learning, for example, developed games for Audi in Vorst to teach personnel the safety instructions, for Carrefour to teach student employees how to operate the check-out system and for DHL to optimise the loading and unloading of air freight containers.

Games in education

The interest in serious games is also growing in education. The underlying idea is that children often have to acquire large amounts of knowledge and master complex skills to be able to play "entertainment games." If educational games could be equally enjoyable or "intrinsically motivating," children would be learning for pleasure. Monkey Tales is a game that was developed according to this philosophy by the educational publisher die Keure and game developer Larian Studios. This three-dimensional adventure game exists in different versions for children from the second to the sixth grade and is designed to practice mental math in a playful way by solving puzzles and mini-games. Until now, no independent scientific research had been conducted into the effectiveness of Monkey Tales however.