October 2009

This week we had to invent a persuasive card game (one that uses either hard fun, easy fun, serious fun or people fun). We had to briefly describe the game including AUDIENCE and SERIOUS GOALS. Here is my response:

Managing Chronic Disease (Manchrod)

Fun: Serious fun

Serious Goals: Persuading people to better manage chronic health conditions. In chronic diseases, that are spread across many years, the challenge is not just information but taking preventive measures at regular intervals, to check it. People get bored and tend to overlook measures. This game would serve as a reminder and a persuasive agent for better healthcare.

Players: Children or adults with chronic diseases such as Diabetes I, Diabetes II, Obesity, Hypertension. People without these conditions can play it too to understand the complexities of the disease and thus prevent themselves from getting into it. Two or more players are needed to play the game.

Cards: There are four types of cards.

• Diabetes I, Diabetes II, Obesity, Hypertension

Each series has 13 cards marked from 1-13. These numbers speak about the severity of the disease. Stage 13 is the last stage where the disease is unmanageable. Each card depending on the stage of the disease would carry a message that deals with precaution, motivation or preventive measures. One 52 card deck for two players, two decks for three or four people are required (people should have enough cards).

Game: This game is a variation of Rummy. It has eleven rounds. The first dealer is chosen at random and the turn to deal passes to the left after each round. In the first round three cards are dealt to each player, in the second round four cards are dealt and so on until the eleventh and last round in which thirteen cards each are dealt. The remainder of the cards are placed face down on the table to form a stock pile. The top card of the stock will be flipped facing up and put beside the stock pile to start the discard pile.

Goal of the Game: The goal of the game is to form all the cards in your hand into combinations. There are two types of valid combinations: A set or group of three or more cards of the same rank, such as Diabetes5-Hypertension5-Obesity5; A run or sequence of three or more cards in the same suit, such as Diabetes 4- Hypertension 5- Obesity 6

Wild Cards: In each round there is a wild card. It is the card equal to the number of cards dealt on that round. Wild cards can be used in place of any other card in making a group or sequence.

The Game play: The player to dealer’s left begins, and players take turns clockwise around the table. A turn consists of drawing one card – either the top card of the face down stock or the top card of the discard pile – and then discarding one card face up on top of the discard pile. Only the top card of the discard pile can be taken.

Going Out: You can go out at your turn to play if, after drawing the top card of the stock or the top discard, you are able to arrange all the cards in your hand except one into separate sets, and then discard a card. In this case, when discarding, you announce that you are out. Each of the other players is allowed one more turn. When the turn to play comes back to you the round is over and the scores are calculated.

Scoring: At the end of the round, each player arranges as much as possible of their hand into sets and runs. Any cards that are not included in a set or run are counted as penalty points against the holder. The scores are accumulated from round to round, and whoever has the lowest score at the end of the eleventh round is the winner.

Twist: At the end of each round, the losers can ask the winner about the message displayed on the cards of his sequence. For e.g. if the winner got a sequence of Diabetes5-Hypertension5-Obesity5. The opponent can ask about the message displayed on Hypertension5. Suppose the message displayed on that card was ???Avoid Red Meat??? and the winner is not able to recollect it then 5 points will be added to his score of that round. The crux of the game is not just winning it but taking the message home. The players should realize that one disease condition is easier to control than multiple. Thus a combination of Diabetes5-Hypertension5-Obesity5 will add more points to your score as compared to Diabetes6- Diabetes7- Diabetes8. Different combination points will be written on the back of the pack as twist rules.

This week we had to invent a serious university micro-game for health or corporate training, playable in 30 seconds to 5 minutes (max.). Our target audience should be some specific group at MSU, a specific subset of students, faculty, maintenance workers, administrators, parents of freshmen, etc. Here is my response:

Serve well!

Human resource in the University campus for various food outlets are students who work part time . These students are actually too busy in their own academic schedules and being part time they do not have much commitment to the work. They work to earn their monthly expenses, which is critical to their survival. Presently the training given to these workers are in the form of videos that they have to watch (which they generally sleep through). My game will allow these part time workers to learn the tricks of the trade by playing an interactive digital game.

Audience: Part time restaurant worker in Food Court (International Center) namely, Subway, Villa Pizza, Panda Express.

Serious Goals: Teach Food workers to serve clients at respective stores during peak Lunch Hours.

Gameplay: It is a web based flash game. Actions are restricted to point and click, drag and drop. Your goal is to earn maximum satisfaction points. You begin by creating your avatar. This is your first day at work. It is Lunchtime and there is a huge queue outside the shop. Time is very critical. No Client wants to wait for more than 2- 3 minutes. Your job is to prepare the lunch for the client within the stipulated time with best satisfaction scores. You have to listen the order carefully. Whether it is a meal to-go or if they want to eat it there. Once you get the order , carefully prepare the Lunch as per the specification. While doing so your hands needs to be clean and gloves need to be proper. You lose points whenever there is a hygiene violation. While preparing food, you need to make sure that you replenish the different items as and when they are over. If the client has to wait an extra minute for your callousness of refilling, you will lose points and the satisfaction score given by the client will be less. You also have to take care of the garbage bin that fills up during the process otherwise there will be flies and cockroaches in the shop. This will heavily mar your score. You have to make sure that you maintain hygiene standards while you shift between your tasks in hand. If you touch the food after you have handled trash, you lose points. You must make sure that your hands are washed before you touch food items. All these tasks are to be done without making the customer wait. Once you deliver the order, you will get marks based on the satisfaction scores that the customer gives and hygiene blunders that you might have committed in the process.

Theories: Simulation and situated learning is the main backbone of the game. Fish tank and sandbox is incorporated in the game. The number of parameters that the worker has to deal with in this game are far less. No adverse consequences for making mistakes. You just lose points, but in real life you might lose a job. Repeated action helps in cognitive processing of the information.

Assessment: The effectiveness can be measured once the worker is in the real life situation. An experiment can be conducted where a participatory group is assessed against a control group. We can measure the effectiveness of workers who played this game verses workers who went through video tutorials. Results would help us know if the game was effective.

This week we had to make use of a brainstorm technique of mixing and matching. We had to select a few of the serious goals from a game already presented in class. Then we had to invent a game that addressed those goals, and used some of the magic of the board game we choose to analyze. We had the freedom to make it an electronic game, so that you had the benefits of things computers and programming can do. Here is my response:

Game Title: Finding Shrimps

Serious Goals: Teaching the importance of community and shared resources. Building on the concept of Real Lives where you face challenges and thus you make difficult, high-stake choices that lead to your success, or failure. This also takes the serious goals of Wolfquest and teaches about Sea Ecology and how the fisherman are effecting the balance of it. You get a peek of a fisherman’s life, his community and also deal with larger problems of global warming and pollution of sea.

Story: You are a Fisherman in a small fishing community in Bombay. You have very few resources to yourself and it is a question of your survival against large fishing trailers and fishing companies with the state of the art technologies. You have a daily fixed quota of fuel which allows you to go only 5 miles into the sea to fish. You do not have GPS or Satellite phones. But you have hundreds of years of knowledge of the sea that is possessed by your community only and it is your duty to now grow your community by making correct decisions.

Player objective: The objective of the player is to grow as a community. So the objective of the game(LUDO) has been changed a little. Now your objective is not to finish the game by reaching “Home”. Instead, you would like to reach the center of the board by traversing the whole distance so that your community grows. Each time you reach “Home” you add one more person to the community and thus add to the growth.

Description: This is a combination of real-time strategy game on a board. The basic structure of LUDO is retained. There are four players with 4 pawns each to begin with. They can team up or play as 4 individuals. There is some addition to the props. There will be an addition of a stack of cards that you pick up when you step on the respective room. There will be additional objects like Extra fuel, Satellite phone, GPS, Range of boats from semi-specialized to super-specialized trailers. The game progresses by rolling a dice and is turn based.

Goals and Gameplay: The crux of the game is to realize the dramatic arc. They need to realize that “Unity is Strength”. You can only compete with stronger opponents when you are united and act as a group. In a city, people come together to share some basic amenities and resources. When you carpool, you not only save money but you are saving the environment too. Similar concept of carpooling and city life has been incorporated to make people realize that you can grow as a community by sharing resources and in turn help the planet.

The game mechanics are designed in a fashion so that you are stronger when you move in a group. Mechanics of chinese checker has been fused in LUDO. Now you can kill a person by either stepping on the pawn or by jumping over. When your pawn is moving in isolation, it is easier to jump over but when a group is moving together , you will need to get a higher number on your dice to jump over and the probability of higher number is less. You can only jump over weaker opponents and not stronger opponents. For e.g., a player with a small boat cannot jump over a Catamaran or Fishing trailer. So when he crosses over stronger opponents, he gets to buy extra equipment that would add to his resources. On landing on designated stops, you get to flip cards and can either be rewarded with shrimps, tools or be penalized in the form of loss of equipment or pawns. So not just strategy but fate comes into play too, similar to the lives of fishermen. You can strategize but the sea might have a Tsunami planned for you (concept from Real Lives).

Through all these uncertainties, you have to grow as a community. More pawns added to your community will make you stronger and you grow as a community like in the case of Rise of Nations and thereby suppress other communities (i.e fishing trailers). The game does not have a definite end. At any point of time the player with largest community and equipment wins.

Visibility: The game is completely visible except fate, reward, penalty cards. This allows for equal opportunity for all players to win the game and a balancing act takes place.

Board game OR Digital: I would like this to be a board game as well as a flash based game. But there are some disadvantages of both and each media can compliment other. The board game is tangible but the back-story in print form might not gel well with the game. The flash game can have a good focus on back-story but the tangibility of the game would be compromised. So ideally I would like a digital board game, something like Microsoft Surface.