New in the portfolio: Seven Ages of Britain – The Quest

by Antonio on 02/02/10 at 5:05 pm

Seven Ages of Britain is a new BBC show telling the story of Britain through its art and treasure. It’s presented by David Dimbleby and the first episode went out Sunday.

The Open University, who partnered with the BBC on its production, commissioned Six to Start to produce a game to complement the show.

I was kindly asked to be producer for the project, and this is the result:

Seven Ages of Britain: The Quest - Click to play!

How it works

Each week after the show we pose seven questions about the objects behind the show. Unlike a straightforward quiz, the questions are very tough – but you’re allowed to use any site on the web to answer the questions.

We even got David himself to do the links..

I’m really pleased with the results and our testers seem to have been having great fun trying to crack the answers.

A few specific things I like about the project:

It’s hard

None of the questions on this should take more than 3-10 minutes to solve – but each is a challenge and requires really reading into the subjects and in some cases clever web searches.

I always think difficult games are much more fun than easy ones. Even so, games and quizzes are often far too easy so they’ll be more inclusive. Cryptic crosswords aren’t inclusive. Nor is chess.

It gets people looking in new places on the web

To answer the questions, you have to look through (amongst other sources) the Domesday Book, Samuel Johnson’s dictionary and old copies of the Guardian. It’s been great seeing people’s excitement at finding these sources for the first time.

I’ve found that while people play they tend to get distracted by the things they find and occasionally have to remember to come back and carry on playing – in this context, this is a good thing!

It’s about searching, not knowledge

I think there’s a really serious point about new forms of education in all this. So much information is now available to us that knowing how to search for it, work out its validity and process it are going to be essential skills for the future.

I think games like this are a really fun way of teaching digital literacy.

So, have a play and let me know what you think.

PS thanks to Adrian Hon, exec producer for the project who asked me to be involved, and everyone else who worked on the project. More on the credits page.