I was actually considering developing something like this myself. :-). Im a social entrepreneur with a focus on technology and like the education and game markets. Ill bookmark your site and try to follow the development.
SHOW HN: Take a look at my startup; Show off your vocabulary prowess
11–18 of 18 posts
Re: SHOW HN: Take a look at my startup; Show off your vocabulary prowess
#12I built something VERY similar (but not as slick) in 2009. It was a vocab game with scrabble like point scoring you played with friends via Twitter.
It basically just aggregated your twitter messages, and assigned points for uses of unused words within a "game".
I believe it's still "live" but since been decommissioned. http://www.playtwabble.com
Re: SHOW HN: Take a look at my startup; Show off your vocabulary prowess
#13Neat. I played enough to get 10k. It is much too easy to do that because one earns so many points on the highest difficulty setting and the buttons can be mashed. I found myself having to do this several times because the obscured letter was correct or a spelling I was not familiar with. Have to say that I am not interested enough to pay...
Re: SHOW HN: Take a look at my startup; Show off your vocabulary prowess
#14Neat. I played enough to get 10k. It is much too easy to do that because one earns so many points on the highest difficulty setting and the buttons can be mashed. I found myself having to do this several times because the obscured letter was correct or a spelling I was not familiar with. Have to say that I am not interested enough to pay...
@michaeldhopkins Thanks for the feedback. The game does get easier for native English speakers. Believe it or not, we've seen many non English speaking users aren't even willing to mash the keyboard. It's an intentional no-punishment approach that we leave in the game, hoping that could at least be a ramp for English learners.
Regarding your opinion on paying, did you mean that the game being too easy is a key decision criteria?
Re: SHOW HN: Take a look at my startup; Show off your vocabulary prowess
#15This is quite well made. I enjoyed playing a few rounds. I did get the feeling that some of the word descriptions were written by non-native English speakers. There were some very small grammatical mistakes or strange combinations of words. Regardless, quite a fun product. The hard part is going to be to stick in people's minds. Turning it into a Facebook game is one good way to achieve that, but you should probably…
Good point. Yes, more actions on Facebook are coming, stay tuned! =(G)
Re: SHOW HN: Take a look at my startup; Show off your vocabulary prowess
#16I built something VERY similar (but not as slick) in 2009. It was a vocab game with scrabble like point scoring you played with friends via Twitter. It basically just aggregated your twitter messages, and assigned points for uses of unused words within a "game". I believe it's still "live" but since been decommissioned. http://www.playtwabble.com
interesting
Re: SHOW HN: Take a look at my startup; Show off your vocabulary prowess
#17Neat. I played enough to get 10k. It is much too easy to do that because one earns so many points on the highest difficulty setting and the buttons can be mashed. I found myself having to do this several times because the obscured letter was correct or a spelling I was not familiar with. Have to say that I am not interested enough to pay...
@michaeldhopkins Thanks for the feedback. The game does get easier for native English speakers. Believe it or not, we've seen many non English speaking users aren't even willing to mash the keyboard. It's an intentional no-punishment approach that we leave in the game, hoping that could at least be a ramp for English learners. Regarding your opinion on paying, did you mean that the game being too easy is a key decisi…
It's not challenging enough for me, but more importantly I'm not convinced it's an effective way to increase vocabulary.
I should warn you I am probably not a normal customer: I enjoy reading the OED and I think the best way to improve in English is to learn Latin...so just take this as one data point.
Re: SHOW HN: Take a look at my startup; Show off your vocabulary prowess
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
@michaeldhopkins Thanks for the feedback. The game does get easier for native English speakers. Believe it or not, we've seen many non English speaking users aren't even willing to mash the keyboard. It's an intentional no-punishment approach that we leave in the game, hoping that could at least be a ramp for English learners. Regarding your opinion on paying, did you mean that the game being too easy is a key decisi…
It's not challenging enough for me, but more importantly I'm not convinced it's an effective way to increase vocabulary. I should warn you I am probably not a normal customer: I enjoy reading the OED and I think the best way to improve in English is to learn Latin...so just take this as one data point.
Outlier opinions are important! Thanks. Re Latin, the game today is a great tool to teach lexical structures, ie. prefix, suffix, word etymology in fact.