Educational game design - Flooded

Fall 2021 Gamified Experience | Soft Skill Training | Sustainability | Climate Change

In this project, I worked with 5 classmates to design a competitive-collaborative educational game that aims to increase people's awareness of climate change. Through the game experience, players can experience the harm of the flood and realize the danger of natural disasters. Our design embeds magical representations to address climate change issues, we want to separate players from real-life identities and prior beliefs to immerse themselves in the gaming experience and potentially transfer the knowledge.

In order to increase players' enjoyment and enhance the game's replay-ability, we add some competitive design elements, such as each player has two strategies to win - either put their resource tiles towards de-flooding their territory or build a rocket ship to escape. However, players can choose whether they want to collaborate or go it alone.

Video Link

"An Embedded design model intends to persuade people by triggering a more receptive mindset for internalizing the game's intended message. " ------ Geoff Kaufman

Climate change has become one of the most significant issues nowadays. As average temperatures rise, acute hazards such as heatwaves and floods grow in frequency and severity, and rising sea levels intensify. To make people more aware of this emergency, we designed an educational game that aims to increase awareness of climate change and evoke people’s notion of environmental protection. In our game, players experience the harm and intensity of the growing flood and realize the danger of natural disasters through the game experience.

Playtesting

Design Progress

• What can give the players a taste of the gradual loss of living space?

• How can I improve the effectiveness of educational games including players' academic achievements, problem-solving, and critical thinking abilities, knowledge, learning efficiency, soft skills?

• How to measure students' game-based learning outcomes?

• How to incorporate learning element without sacrificing players' enjoyment and game’s replay-ability?

• How to encourage them to solve the great challenge through cooperation?

How to solve those questions?

• To answer them, we spent quite a lot of time brainstorming different ideas, and after several discussions, we finally decided to start with those considered the best.

• A shrinking viable area mechanism like PUBG/H1Z1.

• A win goal that requires all players’ collaboration to achieve.

• The combination of cooperative and competitive elements.

Educational Theory

• Embedded Design

• The effectiveness of intervention with board games

• Cognitive Development within pervasive games

• Formative Evaluation

Scientific Background Research

• A Wake-up Call

“ The consensus among climatologists, glaciologists, and oceanographers is that our society should be prepared for a 3-foot rise by 2100. ”

• Joint hands

• An “epic win”

“When rockets are launched, the large number of propellants they require will cause abundant emissions into the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide, water, chlorine, and other chemicals.” - the Guardian

• The relationship between specific resources and the sea level rising

• Geographical layout of the resources on the terrain of each country - the latitude and longitude of different countries

• Real-world political (human nature) representation

Design Elements

Gee (2005) states that good games incorporate production, risk-taking, customization, and well-ordered problems. In our game, players are not just players but producers. Their actions and decisions will affect others’ behaviors, leading to different game results (Gee, 2005).

• Add randomness variables (Event cards) & uncertainty

• Decision-making

• Goal-pursuits

• Trading system

• Communication

• Soft skill training

Learning Objectives

• Raise players’ awareness about the global issue

• Develop scientific knowledge about climate change

• Learn the importance of collaboration to save our planet

• Let players develop soft skills - effective communication, cooperation, decision-making, risk-taking, etc.

Development Process

Initial Thoughts （Iteration 0）:

To create such a game, we first came up with three questions:

1. What can give the players a taste of the gradual loss of living space?

2. How to encourage them to solve the great challenge through cooperation?

3. How to keep the game fun but not preach?

To answer them, we spent quite a lot of time brainstorming different ideas, and after several discussions, we finally decided to start with those considered the best.

1. A shrinking viable area mechanism like PUBG/H1Z1.

2. A win goal that requires all players’ collaboration to achieve.

3. The combination of cooperative and competitive elements.

Once we decided on the core ideas of the game, the emergent issue became how we could build a platform to present these ideas. To make it efficient, we first discovered many well-made games that allow players to interact with those concepts. The inspiration came from the famous board game for four players - Catan, since its game board size and duration fit our design to build such a platform.

We first designed a 6x6 game board with each tile representing a coordinate to achieve the first mechanics. Each turn, the player rolls two dice, which will generate such coordinates connecting to a tile to be flooded (player can no longer acquire resources from it). We initially designed a quite sci-fi idea for the second core mechanics to save the planet, a “climate stabilizer” that can stop the sea level rise, which requires 3x4 component types (12 in total) to construct. Gaining components requires players to move around the map to collect resources in order to build them. Once players have completed constructing the stabilizer by donating components assembled from map resources, they will win the game. Finally, for the competitive part, after the game finishes, players will be ranked based on how much they contribute to the construction of the stabilizer.

Development In Heuristic （Iteration 1）

Wrapping up our initial ideas, we came up with our first simple prototype. However, right after just a single playtest, problems and challenges emerged, that was, the game was NOT FUN! In order to identify what caused this, we reiterated our core mechanics and did more research, which helped us to analyze the poor design/implementation parts. We figured out the following detailed information that could have been contributing to it.

1. The allocation of resources lacks randomness. This means players don’t really rely on each other to build components needed for the stabilizer, and there are only very limited options for the players to move around the map.

2. The roll-dice-flood mechanics is the factor that drives the game flow, however, mathematically, it is flawed. Since the probability for getting each combination is 1/36 (independent), it is very possible to roll the same combination in several consecutive turns, which makes the game flow not steady.

3. There is absolutely no competitive spirit during the gameplay, which leads to a lifeless atmosphere.

Attempting to address these problems, we first tried:

1. Changing the required resources for each component, adding some randomness to the map resource allocation, for example, the most required resources for components for each player are always in their opposite direction. This guarantees that all players must move around the map.

2. The flood tile will no longer be selected by the exact coordinates of the dice, instead it will be selected by the player whose country is where the coordinates fall, prioritized from exterior tiles to interior, which ensures there will always be at least one tile flooded per turn, pushing the game forward.

3. We added an alternative plan for players to win the game, which is to fire a rocket for themselves (for each player, constructing a rocket requires each unique combination of 3 components), however, this will only lead the one who fires it to win the game and it will increase the flood to 2 tiles per turn. This new rule makes collaboration and competition coexist, giving the players freedom of choice to decide whether they should only take care of themselves or contribute to all.

Initially, we strongly opposed adding the rocket plan, since we believed that it makes our game lose its main focus, that is to save the planet together. However, with further in-depth discussions, we found that, in fact, this idea can even increase the real world meaning. The German philosopher Georg Hegel famously said “The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history”, which accurately reflects our past and future. When a global issue emerged, in most historical cases, people were not interested in working together at the very beginning. For example, the great financial crisis of the 1920’s and 1930’s didn’t bring countries together to collaborate, instead, it brought on World War 2. Even very recently, when Covid stormed the world as a global pandemic, at the beginning, global powers instead of preventing it from spreading further, instead spent quite a large amount of energy on flaming each other. Therefore, adding such a plan doesn’t impact our game’s main focus which emphasizes the importance of collaboration, but it even satirizes and helps people to reflect upon humanity’s real world actions.

Iteration 2:

With relatively robust core mechanics, based on more play test results, the game still remained flawed in several ways. One major issue was that it still lacked player interactions.

To address it, we introduced two other systems binding to our core mechanics, the event card system and the trade system. The event card system allows players to get an event card per turn to interact with resource cards, components cards, other event cards, player movement, and more, which not only increases the interactions between players, but also gives players more strategic options to play the game in their styles. The trade system is similar to the one in Catan, players can trade any amount of resource cards with other players in their turn.

Adding new elements is exciting, but it always creates more work in terms of game balance adjustment. To ensure the new systems wouldn’t drive the gameplay out of control, we proceeded with another two to three play tests to see the result. Fortunately, the new play test results showed that the new systems brought only a minor impact to the game balance, and in fact, they really made the game a lot more fun than expected!

Iteration 3:

In the last phase of development, the major task was to polish the game in detail. We decided to first work on the game data, the numeric parameters of the game that affect the game balance. With another play test, we decided to remove some event cards that are overpowered, modify some event card data, and add some new event cards. Also, during the play test, we identified another big issue, which is that players always intend to build their own rocket in the early stage of the game but not work on the collaboration path (isn’t that ironically accurate as what Hegel said, LOL!). Therefore, to encourage players to really treat the stabilizer as an available plan, we first decreased the number of components required for the stabilizer from 3x4 component types to 2x4 types, then to 8 components of any variety. However, further test results show that even though the stabilizer is now much easier to construct, players are still willing to build their own rocket no matter what. To make these two winning conditions balanced, after doing some research, we realized that we might need to add direct in-game rewards to the construction process of the stabilizer so that it attracts even those players who are not willing to make contributions at the beginning. Specifically, we set the reward for donating to the stabilizer pool to be 2 free event cards initially, and later on, we found 2 was just not attractive enough, so then we increased the number to 3. Since there are many super powerful event cards in the stack, they can potentially be game changers in certain situations if they are played properly. Therefore, donating components to the stabilizer pool is now not only something collaborative and good, but also a strategic move, even for players whose ultimate goal is firing a rocket. As long as players start to donate, the construction of the stabilizer becomes more and more achievable, therefore, more and more attractive.

Design Process

Conclusion and Reflection

A shared vision between team members is essential to developing a comprehensive game system. To promote a collaborative environment, we generated people's ideas to create more game-able features, such as the game's goals and its rules.

We set up meetings several times in the game design process to playtest the prototype. Playtesting is an essential element to maintaining the quality of the game. "Gameplay becomes the focal point of creation" (Rooney, 2012). We analyzed the problems we encountered while playing this board game and adjusted based on the playtest results. Past experiences of failures expanded course offerings and enhanced the learning experience that records our learning process, reviews past learning activities, and displays insights into the design process. We modified our game four times in the quest to a completed version.

"The actual game design itself happens during the iterative process, not the concept process that proceeds it" (Ma, 2013). We advocated our design as an iterative design that incorporates the results of several playtesting rounds into our games, especially creating the event card. Our game strives to separate players from their real-life identities and prior beliefs to immerse themselves in the gaming experience and potentially transfer the knowledge by incorporating a fictional game world. The event cards add restrictions and random events to make the game more attractive. In addition to the playtest, a good design requires critical questions. The zoom meeting with an expert, Dr. Lee, made us realize the shortage of our design and the lack of learning objectives and educational theories.

Our design model intends to persuade people by triggering a more receptive mindset for internalizing the game's intended message. We embed magical representations to address climate change issues and make players realize their role in preventing climate change as human beings. More importantly, it teaches players how to use resources better in the long run. It encourages us to think about the educational purpose and the problem we want to address with audiences. Our game aims to address environmental safety due to rapid changes in the environment.

In order to increase players' enjoyment and enhance the game's re-playability, we added some competitive design elements, such as each player has two strategies to win - either put their resource tiles towards de-flooding their territory (and the planet) or build a rocket ship to escape. Players can choose whether they want to collaborate or go it alone. However, we always encourage players to work together to build the stabilizer, which seems the easiest way to achieve the joint success of the game. Our playtest results show that players are more willing to work together to solve environmental issues than personal success (fire the rocket), which is our desired outcome. On the other hand, our game reflects the positive impacts of cooperation. Collaborative efforts help players in developing because they work in a team and understand different approaches to solving problems.

There is still plenty of room for the game to be revised and polished in the future. For example, we can add additional event cards, give each player a unique ability, and further promote climate change issues. Different features can be added in the game like Eco Lifestyle mode where players could learn about human impact on climate change and interact in the game to observe the result of their actions on the environment.