An incredible journey to DStv Island Adventures 

Find out how DStv created the kids’ gaming experience Island Adventures on the MyDStv App

It’s time for an adventure! On Wednesday, 1 December 2021, DStv launched a gaming experience for children ages 4 –11 called Island Adventures. The mobile gaming platform, which is free to active DStv customers across all packages, is available to play via the MyDStv App.

Like a real-life Island, Island Adventures is set up with boundaries in place to keep your child from straying into the internet’s no-no zones, but still offers them plenty of space and independence so they can grow, with games and activities carefully geared to their specific childhood developmental phases.

“As a business, our strategy is to always enhance and to play with in the development space of these kids. We ensure that kids are not just watching TV, kids are learning and entertained,” says Thabisa Mkhwanazi, Executive Head of Marketing at MultiChoice.

“DStv is not a babysitter, we are an active roleplayer within the growth and development of these kids, from age 4 to 11, helping them to get to that next stage of their life. Screen time is not down time, screen time is learning time. And by using characters they love, it will make sure that what they are learning sticks. It’s fun and it’s colourful, it’s learning through play.”

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Parent-led

DStv’s development team started mapping their way to Island Adventures in late 2019 by talking directly to focus groups of South African parents and caregivers, including 300 parents with kids aged 4-11, who have DStv, about what they’d like to see in a gaming environment or their children. What came up in these forums directly affected how DStv shaped the games, so Island Adventures has been pre-tested and pre-approved by South African parents just like you.

The first phase of research between May and June 2021 was geared at finding out what determines how parents decide whether their kid gets to play a game or not.

“What is important for them to understand about what’s in the game so they can say, ‘Okay, cool, my child can go and play this game,’” explains Thabisa. For example...

• Because of 70% of parents reported using data to access the internet and under 20% had a fibre connection at home, DStv’s game designers at Red Oxygen made sure that the Island Adventures used as little data as possible. While it’s fun and colourful, the game animation is in 2D to keep data costs low. The formats for the colouring sheets also keep data needs low.
• Parents told us that they were happier with children playing casual games on mobile rather than online games because Mobile games aren’t open to the internet. “There’s no access to chatting. It’s a safe environment. The moment you open that up, kids are open to a whole lot more than you can control,” says Thabisa.
• Parents wanted strict security measures in place. “The game launches within the MyDStv App. And to make sure that the kids are playing the games and not going around the App making upgrades. We have a pin code. So parents go on, they add a pin code and then their kid can play the game. And then if your child wants to leave the game you enter that pin code again,” says Thabisa. And If you’re sharing devices at home, you can create individual, pin-locked profiles for each of your children, giving them access to the games that are right for them.
• Parents wanted the games to be educational and to teach children age-appropriate values outside of entertainment, like self-esteem and how to behave.
• Children are in Island Adventures to be entertained and educated, they’re not used as advertising targets. “There are no ads in the games. It’s just a place where people go to learn and play,” Thabisa insists.
• Children will be able to perform activities within the game that could earn them real life prizes that could include fun activities for the whole family. “It’s important for us to push family time and family viewing,” says Thabisa.
• The in-game currency – seashells, starfish and pearls – can be earned only by playing the games themselves, exploring the Island and performing activities. There’s no spending mom and dad’s real cash to buy your monster a virtual crown or decor for their Monster Den through the Mermaid Cove store.
• Using short videos on Island Adventures, the game will guide children to new and different series that they can watch on DStv’s School Of Laughter, which could come as a relief to parents whose children are shy about or resistant to trying new shows and get stuck watching certain series repeatedly. This will open kids up to new learning experiences and new characters. Colouring sheets will also gently guide children to explore different series, stories and characters.
• And when children go into the game, each game has a tutorial that visually shows them what to do, “We’ve ensured that you don’t need to know how to read to be able to play. There is text, but also visuals while you go through,” says Thabisa – an essential not just when children haven’t started learning to read yet, but when they are at different phases of learning to speak and read in multiple languages.

Backed by research

“We’ve done three phases of research into understanding how kids function and what they need to learn from a child development perspective. There’s a big difference between kids aged 4-6, 7-9 and 10-11,” says Thabisa.

This is applied within all of the games. “Kids ages 4-6, for example, still need to develop confidence. We can’t fail them too much or say they’ve lost. So if they get something wrong in a game it’s an ‘oops, try again’, if you get two out of six, it’s, ‘You almost got it right, try again.’ We consistently give kids a winning feeling. With whatever activity they do, nothing is ever wrong. They just need to know you can do better, and you can extend yourself more,” says Thabisa.

Based on how old they are, the difficulty of the game will be aligned to that. “That’s where Red Oxygen are so clear and have such amazing expertise creating games. They know what works and what doesn’t,” says Thabisa.

Game developers Red Oxygen have drawn on years of experience building games specifically for the South African market, along with producing investigative television like Carte Blanche and developing digital material for e-learning on behalf of the Department Of Education for the entire curriculum from grade 4 upwards to matric, including social and distance learning capabilities, and interactive classrooms.

“When we first started to make the game, they were the ones who guided us. They were very strict on, ‘You can’t do that, guys, these are kids, it’s not going to work.’ They work within this kid space and they know what works for kids,” says Thabisa.

Research: “We do a lot of research into what's out there,” says Konstantinos “Costas” Tzingakis, CEO of Red Oxygen.

“We read white Papers, we read what psychologists have written, what other game companies are doing, what's trending in the world. There are core global organisations that research everything, from kids’ help organisations to game development forums, to white papers that have been released at the United Nations to UNICEF. And a lot of these professors and writers are more than happy to field the occasional question.”

Reward: “We apply what's relevant based on the genre and the game that we're building, and the demographic. For ages four-six for example, we try to avoid things like words and language, and you need simple movements, so we try to avoid things like drop downs, and navigation level. You need a lot of affirmation and approval.

In context, a lot of it is really around reinforcing the sense of achievement, that they've done something successful. You want to bring that in fairly quickly, within three to 10 seconds, because attention spans are short. There needs to be some sort of affirmation coming through to the kids.

It can be something simple like visual cues, like sparklies happening on the screen or a little cheer sound coming through. You can use multiple senses with regards to that. It's not necessarily telling the child, ‘well done’, it’s just creating something that triggers a sense of reward and achievement so that they would want to do that again.”

Progress: The same research into child psychology guided Red Oxygen’s strategies for how each age group would progress within the games. “We try to create activities and games that are focused on three different categories. So with age group four-six, there will be more activities, per se, and games that are designed specifically for them, because the concept of completing a game or length of commitment is not really necessarily something that a four-year-old will appreciate.

So did a child progress to the 50th level in a game? To a four-year-old, that's probably wasted. But did a child complete this specific puzzle and get all 5 pieces to line up nicely and have a little scene play off before them because they've completed it? That they'll understand. We create activities and games that can cater for different things. A game designed specifically for the young children might be like matching up matching pairs, for example, where 100-level, time-based match-three kind of Candy Crush vibe would be something more at the 10-year-old level.”

“Younger children do more activities than games. So with one game can keep an older child entertained for hours. Younger children would need to finish lots of different activities to engage at the same amount of time, they want them to engage for that long from a child development point of view.”

Games to grow on

“The games are interactive, so they will consistently change, they will consistently grow. And we will be consistently adding more games,” says Thabisa, who’s already busily plotting the next phase, which will see kids being able to decorate their Monster Den with bedding and posters related to some of their favourite shows.

• The standard Island Adventures games include memory games that encourage children to focus, think, plan and remember, puzzle games (like a match-3) that reward perseverance and strategy, logic puzzles that teach kids to figure out where a monster is hiding, and the colouring book, which will even allow parents to print their kids’ favourite works of art.
• There are also quizzes in three categories: Content discovery (introducing new series and characters), conceptual learning, targeting the slightly older children. “We ask things like, ‘What is self-esteem?’ ‘What does it mean to be a team player?’” says Thabisa. And there are education quizzes that ask foundational maths and science questions. “These quizzes are constructed by communications company Studio Zoo in conjunction with a child learning strategist,” reveals Thabisa.

Creating characters

Characters from the kids’ favourite shows like Tom And Jerry will arrive with their own games. They’ll come onto Monster Island around 15 December, to bring the worlds of the kids’ TV and their games together, encouraging active viewing of their shows and bringing some of their own flavour and excitement into the game world.

But there will be some permanent friends for the children, too. Island Adventures will launch with five monster characters who’ll guide children around the island and encourage their progress. More characters will come onboard as time goes by.

“We deliberately avoided characters that are culturally specific,” reveals Costas, “That’s one of the reasons that we went for monsters. Monsters can be all-inclusive and any culture can identify them. Of course, because of the younger kids, our initial set of monsters are all cute and cuddly kind of Monsters Inc vibes, no werewolves and vampires and things like that.”

“Then when it came to cultural specifics, the naming of the characters and their histories and everything like that, we added in a lot of South African flavour. They have South African backgrounds and names (like Phutu, Kwaady, Chaka Chaka, Ndlama and Lankie). We try to keep them specific with regards to names that children would identify with. And then a lot of the accessories and outfits that we have designed for you (kids) to be able to collect and earn are culturally specific. But there will be the universal tropes – everyone knows what a fireman is or what an astronaut is.

Curious? You can hop over to DStv’s School of Laughter on YouTube to see some of the Island Adventures monsters at work, or download the MyDStv App now and head over to try some Island Adventures for yourself...

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