Education and quiz sites from purposegames.com

Some months ago I stumbled upon the excellent quiz site purposegames.com. It is a site that adheres to the web 2.0 principles of letting you all add games to the site and build a community around it, and it is also made by a single person. The site was started in 2006 by David Andersson and now has 13,768 games, 124 groups and 29,201 members. When I played around on the site there were 3 registered members and 87 visitors around.

The biggest difference is the kind of quiz games you can play on purposegames.com. The site specializes in very engaging, visual games where you have to point and click the right answer on an image. To give you a flavor: here are two samples I enjoyed and are typical:
- Game on the national flags of Africa,
- Game on the animals,
- Game on the cartoon, etc

You can play these games registered (then your score is stored) or anonymous, and when you play them again, the order of questions will be different.

Here are some of the things I wrote down:
- The main menu is games - create - community - leatherboard. Except for the last one that is similar to the quiz zone, author zone and club zone we have. The leatherboard is where you find the latest scores on the tournament. Purposegames has tournaments that spread over time. That is actually a good idea.

- Registration is easy : just one page, and the password is send to you via e-mail. You don't have to wait to be able to have access to all parts on the site, including creating new games. Only when you create games for the first time you need to agree with the terms and conditions.

- Games are flash-based. I like the clear and soft site design and looks. Wish I could do that :-).

- The community has players of the week and the month, and a history of players of the month (I like that idea very much.) It also has a member directory and you can see who is online and who are the top 5 contributors. Furthermore there is a discussion forum.

- There are a few Google advertisements on the site, but they don't bother at all.

- The home page has a game of the day.

- The site is only in English.

- There are two kinds of games: image-based games and multiple choice games. Games have a high score tab, rating, comments but you can also add a game as a favorite. Games can be marked as public or not.

- The help section is very limited, just a minimal FAQ. But when you create games, you do get clear instructions.

- The editor is easy and intuitive with clear instructions. They also use a concept of making - preview - publish. And the editor is actually a combination of a form-based screen where you need to fill in the boxes, and a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) at the same time. Very impressive. You cannot add feedback to questions or extra links, and for some reason my first question wasn't saved, but otherwise it went very smooth. Check it out:
http://www.purposegames.com/game/02d5832aac/info

There's three thing you can do,

1. Create, purposeGames.com is host to educational quiz and trivia games created by its members. In just a few minutes, you can create your very own game to share with your friends!.
2. Play, play games and tournaments to compete against your friends, co-workers, and classmates! Become the reigning champion of your community!
3. Learn, he easiest way to learn something is to have fun while doing it! Geography, Science, and Languages, any subject is easier and more fun to learn by playing a quiz game!
   

My end conclusion: very good site, worth checking out!