This proposal
describes the basic game structure by describing its key elements. It is
concluded with a motivation for this proposal.
The game is structured
in turns (in in-game time), with no (“real world”) time restriction on
completion. The latter is meant to give the player time to retrieve (in-game)
information and contemplate on the decisions that have to be taken. In other
words, the player is not rushed and thus can take any time they need to play.
Within each turn, events occur, and the player chooses the decision(s) he/she
wants to take.
Events occur at the
beginning of a turn, so that they can be considered when making decisions.
Two types of events
can be distinguished:
-
Randomly
generated: not, or in very minimal terms related to underlying
parameters/previous decisions of the player
-
Contextually
generated: directly related to underlying parameters/previous decisions of the
player (e.g. a decision has had positive or negative effect, or more loosely
the previous decision provides a context for a next event)
Events provide:
-
A possible
reason for action (e.g. decision making based on knowledge)
-
A
possibility for learning from provided contextual information (when presenting
the event)
Decisions are the way
in which the player influences the underlying model/parameters (e.g. the
environment). For reasons of consistency, and thus learnability, we propose
using a “standard toolkit”. This toolkit consists of a small number of
categories in which decisions are grouped. The availability of these decisions
varies, depending on the current state in the game.
It would be preferred
to have one or two decisions per turn. This helps the player in seeing what
influence his/her decisions have on the environment. More decisions would
contribute to a mix of influences and thereby a lesser understanding of
decision – reaction (see for example our notes on the BBC Climate Challenge
game).
A second point is that
the influence of decisions should not be directly shown beforehand, i.e. in
status bars etc. If a player directly sees a preview of what a certain decision
would change in an overall score/status bar/parameter, he/she is tempted to skip
the content for the sake of focusing on getting a better score (in numbers, not
due to knowledge based on provided information). (This is also noted in our BBC
Climate Challenge analysis). For the game this means that the player cannot see
the direct results of his/her decisions in advance, because otherwise it would
be easy to choose the best answer. It is possible (e.g. by reviewing content)
to provide information about the decision. Direct manipulation of resources
leads to the problem that the player will only focus on the resources and not
on the information, so the player does not learn as much from it. In short,
this means that there is no direct resource management.
As hinted above, a
limited number of parameters (either shown or not), based on an underlying
model, should provide the user with feedback on decisions taken and provide
thresholds in a number of areas. This can be divided in:
-
An overall
score (such as “power” in Haroen’s document), and
-
Parameters/factors
and related weights based on which the overall score is computed
Onscreen, this means
showing a number of indicators to support decision – reaction feedback and the
recognition of certain important areas that make up “the climate”. This asks
for a sound underlying model!
Example:
overall score = f1*w1 + f2*w2 + f3*w3 + … + fn*wn
fx is factor influencing overall score
wx is weight of the factor in model
Climate sensitivity
influences all weights (or a subset of these), and can be seen as a difficulty
setting (see notes on meeting
The player follows a
storyline that is created with the building blocks mentioned above (turns,
events and decisions). As opposed to using an unrelated (temporal, thus in
time) sequence in time, the “storyline” is supposed to immerse the player in a
context in which he/she is contributing (implying that everyone can contribute
to climate change). This would ultimately create a sense of involvement.
Scenarios
A set of scenarios
provides for different starting and ending points, and possibly influence the
events that take place. The initial idea (from Haroen’s document) is to present
different regions of the world as different scenarios. A scenario would
typically start with a dramatic event, to stimulate the player to take action
immediately. One could also think of choosing starting points as scenarios: for
instance by starting out as a local politician, working your way up to being a
world leader, or starting as a world leader immediately. Another idea is to see
possible strategies (sequences of decisions) as different scenarios. An example
could be the choices between mitigation and adaptation. This has to be discussed.
An important part from
a knowledge/learning perspective is the role of contextual information in the
game. The foremost “compulsory” form of presenting information is when
presenting an event (short text, video, image). The reason is twofold: firstly
it enables the player to partly and possibly base a decision on this
information, and secondly it draws the player into the storyline, by providing
a culminating amount of contextual information (purely by the fact that over time,
the player has seen an increasing amount of events).
However, it also seems
important to provide additional, optional information. A lot of information is
held back when “short and understandable” events are presented, which might be
far from sufficient for the (more than averagely) interested player.
A short note on video:
this (accompanied by explanatory text) seems to add to the feeling of personal
attachment to the issues at hand, more than images and text alone. Long texts
should be avoided, as people tend not to read these onscreen.
Apart from providing a
basis on which to build knowledge by presenting reactions (events) on the
decisions taken, concrete knowledge testing could be done with a quiz element
and possibly small mini-games.
A quiz would test
knowledge about a certain topic, providing a bonus of some sort upon successful
completion. Within the game, a number of quizzes could be provided, i.e. when a
decision has to be taken, or when an event occurs (for example, comments on an
decision in a quiz presented as a press conference). This might also be a point
in the game in which to optionally provide extra information, so that the
possibility for complete failure is rather limited (players rate/like a game
that is positive about them better than a game that is negative about them). An
important point to be discussed is whether or which quizzes should be optional
or compulsory.
Another idea for
knowledge testing is to provide a number of mini-games. In such a minigame, the
player has to perform a “simple” task (which will, if made correctly, not be so
simple), with only minimal information provided beforehand. After task
completion, feedback is given on what should have been done (if not completed
successfully). Think of building dams, heat proofing a house, etc. The idea is
to derive knowledge from solving practical problems, of which the effect is
directly visible (within the minigame).
The main draw of the
climate game is based on making decisions. This allows the player to
think and learn about the specific topic of climate control, in different
contexts. The different contexts are provided in the form of so-called
scenarios. Each scenario places the player in a certain role. For each
scenario, the decisions taken have different effects.
Another important
aspect of the proposal for the climate game is its modular approach.
This makes it possible
to start out small by initially providing a limited number of scenarios and
events and a limited amount of media (text, images, videos etc). The game can
eventually be expanded by adding new scenarios, events and media.
Finally, involvement
is very important. Involvement is the way the player is drawn into the game
through interaction. Customization (in one form or another) and providing
relevant and interesting information (text, photos, videos) are the main ways
to realize this.