Photo: 11-year-old Katariina Pänkäläinen from Jyväskylä has tried building the Talarius game at school. In Katariina's opinion working on the game has been fun and useful, too, even though she is not planning on a career in computers.
Electronic games have also awakened academic interest. At the University of Jyväskylä a new model of operation is in use - a game laboratory, which brings together the university's game experts.
The use of electronic games in teaching is the subject of particular interest in the scientific community, since games have a significant role in the everyday lives of children and young people. Games offer a multitude of potential uses, for example, for the prevention of reading and writing difficulties and for rehabilitation purposes a number of game-like programmes have been developed.
The University of Jyväskylä's multi-disciplinary game laboratory Agora Game Lab is an open community for both university people and other parties involved in the branch. A good example is provided by development work on the Talarius game development environment, which was completed in the spring of 2004.
The initial impetus for creating the application came from a primary teacher at the University of Jyväskylä's Normal School, whose pupils had designed board games linked to mathematics. The teacher in question asked for guidance on putting the games into electronic form.
On the basis of this thought the project team started to come up with ideas for a game development environment in which the pupils could themselves design games for learning purposes. The pupils were involved in development work from beginning to end.
In the opinion of docent Dr Marja Kankaanranta the Talarius story was the realization of an innovation chain, the likes of which are needed in future.
"The idea came from real life, technological expertise was tagged onto it, and the product handed back to the users. Further development of the product is possible when the next technology specialists take a run at it", Kankaanranta speculates.
In future Agora Game Lab will be even more on the lookout for business cooperation, too. Marja Kankaanranta holds the view that the university's main task is not product development work, rather the key thing is getting application projects under way and taking research forward to certain point. Thereafter it is the turn of companies to enter the picture. Ideally cooperation should be conducted throughout the process.
"Companies are also interested in usability analyses and user studies, for which the university can provide the necessary expertise."
By Pia Tervoja Photos by Petteri Kivimäki