Learn Something...Go Play Online

     Social Issues are not a game. Yet they can be turned into games. This can be figurative nowadays but also literal. There are games today that teach different age groups about social issues....about anything really. I had played 4 educational games found online.

• Climate Change
• Stop Disasters
• MedMyst Original: Mission 1 Orientation at O.R.B.
• Engineering - Design a Cell Phone

The first three deal with social issues while the last game is also educational but deals with business and design. 

Game 1: Climate Change

     Climate Change is a role play game where the player is the President of the European Nations. As President the player must make policy decisions regrading the nations as a whole, local communities, agriculture, trade, and environment. 

• Target age group: Late teenagers to adults

Younger children would not understand all the policies. Late teenagers and even adults may not but they understand that leaders make these decisions.

• List three specific concepts/things the designers are trying to teach the player:

1. World policies
2. Outcomes of leader actions
3. Importance of carbon emissions 

• What is successful (or not) about the game. What could you do to improve the game?: 

     It is successful that it gives real life decisions that a world leader has. I would improve the rounds that player must go through due to the fact the options did not change much but good to see that a previous option is no longer available due to a previous decision. Present decisions affect the future. 

Game 2: Stop Disasters 

     Stop Disasters is a game where the player can pick a natural disaster scenario and try to save lives. This is done through building housing and defences. 

• Target age group of this game: middle school to high school students 

Adults would already know defences against natural disasters and I feel would be bored with game. To middle school and high school students it would be more of a challenge so they would play the game all the way through. 

• List three specific concepts/things the designers are trying to teach the player.

1. The effects of disasters
2. How to protect an area against a disaster
3. The cost of disaster protection and aftermath

• What is successful (or not) about the game. What could you do to improve the game?:

     It is successful that there are many available options to protect the island that would be used in real life. I would improve the way a player can move to see all of the island. It would have been easier to have a pan out option. 

Game 3: MedMyst Original: Mission 1 Orientation at O.R.B. 

     MedMyst Original: Mission 1 Orientation at O.R.B. is the first game in a series of games where the player is a NCDC (Neuropolis Center for Disease Control) agent in 2254 after the Great Plague that kills millions. 

• Target age group of this game: Late elementary to high school students 

Adults would find this game childish. High schoolers may also find it childish but would learn from this game.

• List three specific concepts/things the designers are trying to teach the player:

1. Types of infectious agents & how to defeat them
2. How infectious agents are spread & how to prevent getting disease(medicine, vaccine, soap)
3. How to identify a germ 

• What is successful (or not) about the game. What could you do to improve the game?

It is successful this game gives a large amount of information throughout several short games. I would improve the going back option in some games and shorten the number of different games. I feel like younger players would get bored after awhile. 

Game 4: Engineering - Design a Cell Phone

• Target age group of this game: Middle School to High School

This game is too simple for adults. 

• List three specific concepts/things the designers are trying to teach the player.

1. Research is needed to understand product
2. Important to reach out to target market wants
3. Design and testing of a product

• What is successful (or not) about the game. What could you do to improve the game?

It is successful that a player can get feedback and go back to research and/or design to improve the cell phone. I would improve the options for designing a cell phone. The basic options are fine but there is not much room to change the phone after feedback for there are only so many options. 

Build a Straw Tower with Meaning

     One plays a game to win, to lose or just play. Whatever the reason there is always an outcome even if the game is left uncompleted. Playing a game involves a series of actions. These actions can have a player gain something in the end or all effort falls to the floor like a leaning straw tower. Random...yet it is an example. Building a straw tower does have meaningful play. 

     Actions have meaning in a game or at least for successful game design the goal is meaningful play according to Rules of Play by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman.  

The book describes meaningful play as descriptive and evaluative. 

• Descriptive - relationship between player actions and system outcome 
• Evaluative - relationships between actions and outcomes in a game are discernable and integrated into larger context of the game. 

source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tsmall/3506616038/

     
     Back to building a tower out of bendy straws as experienced in class every straw added to the tower affected how the tower would respond. For some groups, like mine, the tower would lean and for others the tower would continue to rise. This would be descriptive meaning play. A player would add a straw and the tower, the system, would respond. Support is needed to build a tower and thus straws were added for the intention, meaning, of support. As well as the meaning of adding height. 

     The building of the tower would also be evaluative meaningful play. This description of meaningful play maybe easier to distinguish. 

     Discernability details when a player is aware of the outcome of their action. Grab a diamond theres a sound. Add more straws add more length to the tower. 

     Integration details when an outcome of an action affects the game as a whole. The outcome is not immediate. One can not know how tall a straw tower will be until all straws are added. How a straw is added or the decision of how to add a straw affects the way the tower will look and if it will lean or stand. 

     Actions in a game have meaning to be a successful game. One should think before they act in a game. One should think before they act in life. Every action has a outcome thats immediate and/or intended for a later outcome.