Impressions: The Reading Game

Do you love unlocking Xbox achievements? How about trophies for Playstation 3? Well then you’re going to get a kick out of The Reading Game.

The Reading Game isn’t as much of a game, as an encouragement to read more frequently. The concept is quite simple, you insert the title and page count of the book you are currently reading into The Reading Game on your iPhone or iPod Touch and then input the amount of pages you’ve read during a given session.

For instance, if you were assigned to read Shakespeare’s Othello for school and needed some incentive (besides a good grade on the exam) to push through it until the end, The Reading Game can help. After you enter the title and number of pages into the App you begin keeping track of how many pages you read. Each page is worth 1 point and when you’ve read a certain percentage of pages a reward will unlock.

The awards are nonsensical and childish. A dancing squirrel with googily eyes and an animated surfing graphic were among the awards I unlocked while tracking my reading progress of Brian James’ Zombie Blondes.

As a gamer, English major, and student in the midst of obtaining a teaching certificate I can not recommend this application more. It is a great tool for both struggling and avid readers alike. The page tracker is an excellent resource for visual learners who can really benefit from physically seeing their progress in percentage form and the rewards are a great way to motivate young readers to not only read school assigned texts, but to read outside of school as well. If The Reading Game catches on, in game reading awards could be the next Silly Bands.

The Reading Game is a good concept, but could benefit greatly from a few tweaks. For one thing, The Reading Game is for children, there is no denying that. The rewards only work as incentives for a very select group of readers. If a teen to adult version was released, paired with eReaders like the Kindle, and featured incentives like coupons to Borders and Barnes & Nobles a whole new market would open up for The Reading Game. The second and most tragic flaw The Reading Game suffers from is its platform. As I just mentioned, The Reading Game is for elementary and middle school children and I don’t know how many of them necessarily own a device to play The Reading Game on. If this game was somehow ported to a cheap plastic device that solely ran this App it might have a better chance at invading school classrooms and becoming a fad.

With all of that said, if you are a parent with grade school children and own an iPhone or iPod Touch The Reading Game is one App that you should own. Reading skills are the most crucial aspect of learning and if The Reading Game gets children involved and excited about reading it is your duty to download this App.