====== Educational/ecological games ======

//Notes from a session held at the Luminous Green Retreat, 29th of April 2007//

Angelo Vermeulen




===== Examples =====

  * Darfour is dying, http://www.darfurisdying.com/
  * Darfour live role playing game, Bart was involved
  * Make your own Bush speech, [[http://www.razoric.com/games/Make-Your-Own-George-W-Bush-Speech|here]]
  * Escape from Woomera: controversial due to its stance on detention of immigrants and its funding by the Australian government, http://escapefromwoomera.com/
  * Climate Challenge, http://www.red-redemption.com/press/ 


===== Different types of educational games: =====


  * short (Flash) games: viral nature through internet distribution, disadvantage: oversimplification of the actual problems
  * more complex games: most NGOs prefer this, disadvantage: should not be overdidactical
  * virtual worlds (Second Life): games but also protests etc.
  * physical games, extra games 

> Question: not everyone plays games, isn’t that a problem? 
>> Not really, games simply address a gamer audience which is a large 'target' group

===== Tools for creating educational games: =====


  * modding as an interesting option: advantage: known game environment, disadvantage: hard to twist into a completely different experience
  * Flash is not available for Linux
  * Processing (programming language) offers interesting possibilities 

Good educational games only come out of teams with an adequate combination of different skills: apart from educators, people with a good understanding of gameplay and game culture are also needed; they need not necessarily to be aware of the specific issues addressed in the game.

==== Project Bart: ====


  * Darfour live role playing game with different types of characters, objects and possible interactions
  * even for 16 year olds, the game was rather complex
  * the youngest participants never wanted to pick up the role of victim
  * there was a lack of knowledge about the actual conflict
  * the included book and cd-rom were too elaborate
  * suggested solution: create two games, an intro game providing information, and a second game reflecting the actual complexity 

==== Project Tapio: ====


  * India
  * video arcades with a lot of broken machines
  * use these to program new games with local content
  * collaborating with local programmers# 

===== Promising prospects: =====


  * extra games: games incorporating activities in the real world (running, GPS locations etc.)
  * ecology in games: day/night cycles, animal behavior, etc. (STALKER) 

==== Some factors that make an educational game successful: ====


  * compose a TEAM with different skills, include game enthousiasts, preferably also people without knowledge of the specific problem
  * decide from the onset what TYPE of game you want to make
  * AESTHETICS are very important, often most of the time is taken up by content creation and visuals are rather generic
  * easy LEARNING of the game mechanics, quick intro, can become more complex during the course of the game
  * good REWARDING system, gratifying, could be a score but also a visual
  * concise but adequate BACKGROUND information
  * BUZZ (people talking about it), viral (= not necessarily the same)
  * “Rules of Play”, Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman, reader on all sorts of games and gameplay