Playpower.org: Designing 8-bit Learning Games for a $10 computer

Derek Lomas · Jeremy Douglass · Daniel Rehn

Wed., June 10, 2:00–3:00, Class of ’24 (4th floor, East Central)

Playpower.org is creating new 8-bit learning games on a $10 home computer, which is already widely available in emerging markets, such as China and India. The “world's most inexpensive home computer” uses a TV for a screen and comes with a full keyboard, mouse, game controllers, and several game cartridges. This platform is directly affordable to “bottom of the pyramid” consumers, who own a television but do not own a computer.

The computer is based upon the 6502 Nintendo Famicom, hardware now in the public domain due to expired patents. Dozens of Chinese manufacturers are producing these in large volume with significant economies of scale; the computers are then distributed to low-income marketplaces around the world.

Playpower.org seeks to enhance the educational value of this 8-bit computer both by developing new learning games and by providing tools that can enable global participation in the creation of new games for this highly accessible platform.

In this workshop, Playpower.org members will lead a hands-on demonstration of the platform and help interested participants begin to engage the 8-bit game design process. We will explore the history and future of 8-bit learning games. We will discuss the value of 8-bit design constraints while seeking to design effective learning games. We will demonstrate some of our initial attempts to create an interactive fiction development framework that lowers the barriers to creating multilingual learning games by requiring minimal programming. We will also demonstrate GameBASIC, a programming language that comes with existing models of the 8-bit computer, which teaches programming concepts through videogame programming.