Do you remember the game Adiboo? This game was released in its first version in 1992 on PC for 4–7 year olds before a plethora of other games from this same license were released at the end of 90–2000. You could assemble shapes, colors, words and numbers, in a cute and colorful universe, all guided by a little alien, Adiboo, the child’s friend player. The particularity of this game lies in the fact that it is “edutainment”. The goal here is to
to learn while having fun.
Why weren’t we talking about Serious Games at the time?
The developers had the foresight to imagine Adiboo which, like all other educational games of the time, appeared before the notion of Serious Game.
To go further, it is appropriate to explain that a Serious Game is a game that goes beyond the simple notion of entertainment by its intention to instill aspects of teaching, training or awareness. The very first academic research book on the subject was written in 1970 by Clark Abt and is called “Serious Game”¹.
It was almost 30 years before the term Serious Game was democratized and the first rankings were published. Abt defines serious games as follows:
“Serious Games have an explicit educational purpose, are carefully thought out and are not intended to be played primarily for fun. This does not mean that Serious Games are not or should not be entertaining.”
Educational video games thus find their place in this definition.
Adiboo is undoubtedly a reference in educational games. Indeed, the revenue of this license is estimated at more than one million euros per country² and its titles have sold 250,000 copies³. copies. However, it is far from being the first.
This concept appeared in the 1970s in the form of video games. We can mention The Oregon Trail or Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? All both had pedagogical purposes, the first one taught the historical reality of the life of the pioneers in the 19th century and the second one to learn some geographical geographic concepts.
What about the educational scope of Adiboo games?
Edited and developed by Coktel Vision, a French video game company, the Adi franchise (Accompagnement Didacticiel Intelligent) was founded in 1990. Adiboo is the cousin of Adi, a character dedicated to children aged 10 to 14. He is thus in the age range between between Adiboo choo, his second cousin intended for the very young. Children from 4 to 7 born between 1985 and 1988 could blossom in its joyful and interactive environment.
First published in 1992 as a floppy disk on DOS, it appeared in its best-known form in 1996 on in 1996 on CD-ROM. The notoriety of this version was probably due to the fact that the CD-ROM technology allowed more colors, more fluidity and that it was accessible to all, unlike the previous version of floppy disks which did not work on all
not work on all platforms.
The game was broken down into mini-games in which children could practice various school subjects such as school subjects such as math, French and English. The universe was very graphic, that is to say very colorful, since the game was intended for children who could not read yet.
The game takes place either in Adiboo’s house or in his garden or surroundings. The child can click on the places that interest him to go there, always accompanied by his faithful friend, Adiboo. The activities were very varied: growing flowers in a vegetable garden, making cakes, drawing, listening to nursery rhymes… Many of them were clearly entertaining: they did not require the child to think about problems related to subjects learned in school. The goal, for most activities, was to click around to hear funny sounds and be entertained by the effect. The other mini-games, which were more school-related, were not very playful since they consisted of solving
problems of mathematics or exercises of French hardly dissimulated.
Nevertheless, the form of mini-games is not very immersive. Even if the player is directly addressed the player who is immersed in this cute universe, the heart of the game is, as for him, a little insipid. The game turns into a school exercise and the fun aspect is put aside.
Although there is a desire to teach children basic knowledge, there is some difficulty in keeping the difficulty in maintaining the course of the entertainment. The child was in a wonderful place with an abundance of games of all kinds, but was naturally directed towards but naturally gravitated towards pure entertainment at the expense of educational exercises. You don’t trap a child like that!
This game, at the time very innovative, did not yet use the arguments of gamification. It was sold as a “School Accompaniment”.
The reason for not including this playful aspect was probably to avoid scaring off the parents who were buying. A positioning that is understandable: at the time, video games were not yet democratized like today. In fact, according to the Baromètre du Numérique conducted by the Arcep Observatory⁴, 17% of French people were equipped with microcomputers in 1997, against 81% today (without counting smartphones which did not exist at that time). The parents of the Adiboo users were therefore probably not probably, for most of them, had never played video games or at least not educational. Nowadays, we see an improvement in the marketing of Serious Games by no longer neglecting the entertaining aspect of educational games.
This game has done the feat of bringing together many aspects that previously appeared to be irreconcilable: (very) young children, pedagogy, video games and new technologies. In the 1990s, computers were far from being aimed at this specific target. It was quite a feat to attract children to a computer in a friendly way a feat of strength.
Sources: ⚠️ Most of the sources are in French since it is a French game that worked very well on the French territory ⚠️
- 1 Serious Games — Clark C. Abt, 1970
- 2 The second life of Adiboo: https://www.strategies.fr/
- 3 The second life of Adiboo: https://www.e-marketing.fr/
- 4 The Digital Barometer 2019 — Arcep Observatory for the Ministry of Economy, 2019 (in French)
