Posts in Category: content and technology
Casting A Wider Net
Local Press & Recommendations
Since releasing our first educational game, we have received excellent press from local sources including the KHTS Radio Station, the San Fernando Valley Business Journal, Santa Clarita Magazine, SCVNews,com, and the Santa Clarita City Briefs. We are very thankful for this; good press, recommendations, and reviews are so important for a startup.
A Small Fish in a Big Sea
But, even though we are a local business here in California, receiving mostly local press, our goals are global. We believe that we make the world a better place the more kids play Bubbly Primes. For the first step, we can thank the App Store; we sell worldwide. But now, we’ve got great news. We’ve made international sales, to customers on 4 continents, including Oceania!
Bubbly Primes features a small fish named Pepper. Animator Alex Bozman drew these character design sketches.
A Math Game for (Almost) Everyone
Although we originally designed the game to help kids, we believe that playing Bubbly Primes is both a productive and pleasurable use of time for almost everyone. Almost? Who is the exception? Someone who doesn’t know multiplication can’t really understand factoring and prime numbers. Once the times-tables are learned we believe anyone can benefit from the game, no matter their age. We are well aware that the parents who are most likely to see the value of the game are the ones who are willing to go out of their way to support their children’s education.
Recommended to Parents
That’s why it’s exciting that we have received mention from slightly different quarters this time. Bubbly Primes was recently recommended in a parenting podcast: Parenting Beyond Discipline (Episode 7 “Media Guidelines by Age”). The producer of the podcast used to be in the same business incubator where we are located (there’s that local angle again), which is how she knew about the game, but she recommended it in response to a parent’s question about kids and technology. There’s a wide audience of parents for the podcast, and there’s parents all over the world watching their kids interaction with technology.
Make Kids’ Time Productive
Most parents probably worry about the impact of spending so much time using phones and tablets on the young generation. Some however, see all that energy lavished on technology and think, “How can this be focused in a positive direction?”
That’s the way we think about it, and that’s why we make the kinds of games that we do. We hope that parents and kids find more good educational games. We put our hearts into making conscientious, forward-looking educational games.
Too Much Time
Kids spend too much time playing on their phones and tablets.” Heard that before? And, even though I try not to say things like that, sometimes I do anyway, and I’m certainly guilty of thinking it. All too often.
I’m someone who doesn’t believe that technology is inherently good or bad. To me, what matters is what content the technology presents. Alas, people, whether adults or children, like to be entertained with mindless content. The producers of that content have found ways to build profitable businesses on it. It’s not always bad, although sometimes it is. It tends to be formulaic and predictable. And, although it appeals to us, when we think about it, we often don’t like that it appeals to us.
However, people of all ages also like mindful content. We like to think, to learn, to gain useful skills and abilities. And, when we stop to think about it, we tend to feel good about ourselves that this kind of content appeals to us. This is the kind of content that we want to present at Nuhubit — educational games: math games, music games, games that help people learn things that might take a lot of effort to learn. The aspects of human nature that enjoy and appreciate mindful content are the ones we would like to appeal to.
Among adults who agree with all of that, it can still be hard to cheerfully embrace the large amount of time kids spend on their phones. One reason is that content that is both beneficial and enjoyable can be rare and hard to find. Another explanation is that each generation is naturally comfortable with how they grew up, and suspicious of the environment faced by the next generation. It’s probably always been that way.
When I was a kid, people used to say almost the same things they do now, except the villain was television. Back then, it was “Kids spend too much time watching TV.” It was probably true in many ways, but, in my opinion, that was also a question of content. Recently, I had the chance to watch Schoolhouse Rock, a show that was popular when I was a kid. What a good show! I sincerely hope that we can develop games that follow in those footsteps.
