During class, we played Dumb Ways To Die, which was probably one of my favorites that we went over. However, I played this game when it became available on IOS in 2013 and I never knew it was a PSA for rail safety, I thought it was just a game not really spreading a message. I was like 10 at the time so I may have just missed it but out of all the games we played in class this was the most fun. The other games were really wordy; if we weren’t doing it in class, I would have never touched them. I enjoyed Cards Against Calamity, but we as a class seemed more worried about losing fish and gems than the message it was supposed to spread.
The Impactful Aspects of The Society Awareness Games
Dumb Ways to Die
It is a strategic animation game that illustrates the potential hazards each character will face and we as a player try to solve the maze puzzle to rescue them; when we utilize fast-paced action to prevent them to get injured from the upcoming dangers as much as possible — when one character gets an injury, the player’s health bar will drop (even though it is latent) and the player may suffer the risky level of loss that can approach to the game end. The game is impactful because it demonstrates quite a few consequences occurrence of ignoring safety measures when guests (whether they are riders, pedestrians, or tourists) seek their expensive possessions or show curiosity about strange locations and we as a witness should alarm them about the caution that will threaten them.
Fake it to Make it
It is the inside secret predictions about not only how the unverified and falsified info market audience quicker than official publishing but also demonstrates how monkey businesses are created through the mockup identification to simplify the process of startup and take advantage of the real id. The game is impactful because it symbolizes a precaution for news lovers and online visitors to be alarmed for unfamiliar promotions.
Cards Against Calamity
Equal distribution of the opportunity costs that will impact the environmental quality and also the life costs of the town community for the town planner; a player as mayor is responsible for selecting appropriate solutions in prioritizing sequences that minimize the risks other members are suffering as well as safeguard the biodiversity free of climatic damages. The game is impactful because it provides core concepts for securing the regional community with balanced financial amounts to cover life necessities and emergency measures.
Cast Your Vote
The brief overall explanation of the electoral procedure presidential candidates will experience about the current complex issues society will undergo and the options of the solution they want to proceed with; the player will serve as a voter to determine which candidate. The game is impactful because it illustrates the detailed map of the debating process of selecting the upcoming president.
5 Persuasive Game Ideas
- A game in which you choose a country to play as and try to colonize more planets in the solar system than the others. Loser faces oppression as a result of other countries being way more resource-rich than them.
- A game in which 2 players are the poachers and 2 players are the rehabilitation experts. The rehabilitation experts need to successfully repopulate endangered animals faster than the poachers can kill them off.
- A game in which players have to correctly identify whether particular foods are food-safe or not with the intent of educating people on the struggles of people with severe food allergies. Allergies could be randomly assigned to players perhaps with the roll of a die.
- A game in which players have to allocate resources to build as much green energy as possible. Maybe another player has to try to stop them from advancing the green-tech.
- A fishing game but themed around the great coral reef; except as the game goes on the reef gets smaller and less fish are able to be caught. Players try to get the most fish without being the person to endanger the fish population.
Thoughts on McDonalds Game & Monopoly
I personally really enjoyed the mcdonalds game. I like that it is fast paced and over-simplified in terms of running a business. I found it was really easy to be successful because I have played a lot of resource management games in the past. But overall it was a good satirical game and I think it got it’s point across effectively.
Monopoly was another story; I don’t like Monopoly in the first place, but it was a fun twist to have conditional rules that were different for everyone playing. It didn’t really have any specific purpose, aside from a social commentary of how marginalized groups could feel in the economy. So overall I would say that the added rules made Monopoly more fun, but not that much. lol
Class 1/30
Today in class we talked thoroughly about “games for change”. It was definitely an interesting topic and I had some strong input on what I thought. I explained how I think “games for change” can easily be misconstrued depending on your definition of “games for change”. If you interpret a “game for change” as something that inspires action related to large political issues such as climate change, voting, or inequality, that is one thing. However, if you are defining a “game for change” as something that simply makes you change the way you think or feel (empathy as we discussed), then I feel that every game regardless of topic or the message behind it does that effectively. Whether you like or dislike the experience you have when playing a game, you effectively come out of that experience with a new opinion of that game specifically or that genre of game.
Also, I felt that topic in general because of this lack of clarity on definition became ambiguous, as do many conversations in class. I do understand the principle surrounding discussion and sparking conversation, however there’s always going to be two sides to an argument and with my experience in these conversations no one ever comes out on “top” in these conversations, it simply goes in circles, especially with the unique characters we have in class. Not that that is an issue, I understand the conversations’ point: making us think about new things and scenarios or questions we may not have asked. I guess it is just an opinion I have with the open-discussion style that comes with the topics we speak about. It has its pros and cons.
Games for Change
Don’t Diss My Ability: Starting at one point on campus, you have to get to a different predetermined destination on campus via certain paths. Each path has both a point value and a time value. You are trying to get to your destination in the least amount of time while maximizing your point value. These values change depending on what disability you have. The types of disabilities would be deafness (cannot go on any of the sidewalks by the roads, must communicate via ASL), ADHD (time values increase when you encounter friends, easily distracted to take the ‘wrong’ path), and mobility issues. Mobility issues would be split into two subcategories: canes and wheelchairs. Cane users can go up/down up to 5 steps before their time increases a lot (due to pain slowing you down). Wheelchair users can not do stairs at all.
Game 2: All players get a pair of noise cancelling headphones making everyone essentially deaf. Working together as a team, you have to solve a puzzle. As you cannot hear other people, you must use a combo of gestures/signed language to solve the puzzle. This would raise awareness of deafness, difficulties faced, and the lack of ASL teaching in American school systems.
Game 3: You are a villager in a village located at the bend of a once pristine river. The river has become polluted through the addition of a factory on the other side of the river. Your food, work, and life have been severely stunted. You must sneak into the factory each night to try to do as much damage to the factory operations before you must be back in the village in the morning. This is a commentary on pollution, climate change, and corporate greed.
Changing Players Minds
generate 5 new game ideas that explore changing players minds about … (climate change, energy, politics, etc.)
- GoFundThat – Each player, similar to Monopoly, is given an amount of money to start the game. Rounding the board, each spot is a designated government funded organization that the players have to choose to or choose not to invest in. If you choose to invest, you take the card that aligns with that spot. Once your money runs out, you flip your cards and see your fate. The point of the game is to show that politically not everyone can get what they want and you can’t make everyone happy, but that there ARE certain things you as the government should invest in in order to prevent detrimental things such as unions forming and other revolts from the population.
- Journey to Rebuild – a video game journey with multiple paths, inspired by story games such as uncharted, the last of us or others where there are many cinematic scenes, but also many puzzle or interactive parts. In this game the goal is to restore the worlds environment after recent natural disasters. You are Rory, a recent college graduate who studied environmental science, trying to get back to your family across the country. Along the way, you face multiple challenges including flooding, wildlife, and cities destroyed. As Rory, you have to complete the tasks to fix the environment. You must complete the tasks in a certain order or else you fail and must restart from the last checkpoint. However, you may pick the direction you want to go in at the start, with each of the paths leading you to different challenges.
- Daily Climate – similar to wordle, Daily Climate is an app on your phone that once a day gives you a word to figure out. What makes this different to wordle is that once you get it, it gives you a definition and some ways to improve your environmental friendliness.
- Voter – similar to temple run or pepsiman, you are a voter running through the city, dodging obstacles to reach your destination, voting. Each levels gets faster and faster, starting with a low level voting position, going all the way up to world leaders. When you level up, you can customize your character and show your friends how far you’ve come, all meanwhile spreading the word to vote.
- Planter – a first person shooter game, you are shooting liquid at monster weeds to kill them and plant fresh flowers. Similar to changing between guns, you can shoot the liquid to kill monster weeds and then switch to your planter tool to plant seeds.
Thoughts on McDonald’s Game/Monopoly 1/23/23
The McDonald’s game, designed by people to make fun of McDonald’s, was very hard to play. It probably would have been easier to play had I read the entire 30 page tutorial booklet. But come on, it was 30 pages of half serious tutorial. The jokes got old quicker than actual tutorial was happening. This made playing the game very hard. I bankrupted the whole company 3 times in approximately 10 minutes. It was unclear how to farm, turn the farmed material into food, and sell burgers. I don’t think I ever even clicked on the corporate tab to see what actions could be taken. I would not recommend this game if you were actually looking to play a game (unless you like and are very good at fast paced collecting games). I do recommend it to notice the commentary on McDonald’s and corporate greed.
We played modified Monopoly where some people were the wealthy 1%, ‘regular’ white guys, women, and minorities. Each character strata had different rules. Ronan (1%) started on top and very quickly got to be the best. I (a ‘regular white guy’) started pretty well off and was not really affected by Ronan’s buying up all the properties. I think Max was a woman, and he struggled to get anything going. Clay and Ethan were minorities who spent most of their time in jail and couldn’t really do anything. As a queer disabled female-appearing person, I am well aware of the real life systemic oppressions that I and other people faced. It was nice to be a ‘regular white guy’ and not be affected by the System for once.
Week 2
My Thoughts on the games played in class:
The McDonald’s game does a good job at being entertaining and easy to understand. I found myself engaged rather well in maintaining a business. The point is gotten across rather well as well in some regards with a bit of thought. The limited land represents limited space, and the bulldozing of rainforests and displacement of native populations is a bit in your face, but not quite over the top. Some of the satire comes across a bit heavy, but I think that is the point to some degree, and it is implemented just enough to get a chuckle out of you without just making you roll your eyes. It’s tough to get a lot of people to engage with ideas they may not agree with and entertaining them is a surefire way to at least open them up.
The monopoly game was monopoly with a twist. Each player was assigned a socioeconomic role before the game, such as minorities, single women, the 1%, and white middle class men. The white men played the game as normal, minorities had to roll below a certain number to stay out of jail and had economic penalties. The single females had a lot of economic penalties and could only collect half rent, and the 1% had a slough of benefits. I understand what the game was set up to illustrate, but there were certain elements that just made it difficult for me to take seriously, namely the way the two “lowest” classes were represented. Our minority player was unable to stay out of jail for more than even 1 turn for the entire game, and myself and the other single female player just made about as much progress as the standard rules player with half income from rent. Perhaps it was because our game was short. I understand the purpose of the game is to put people in other’s shoes, but I feel like I was put into a bad caricature of someone else’s shoes rather than an accurate depiction. I will say that it made me think more on the issues of inequality in society, even if I have my criticisms of the implementation. In that regard, it certainly succeeded.
Game Ideas
- Pollution
I love the forest, and I love the mountains. God’s creation is glorious, and our treatment of it is atrocious at times. Every time I pass a new suburban McMansion development, I cringe nearly inside out. With that said, my first idea is a game about building one such plan. The player will be presented with many beautiful natural landscapes teeming with life, and can choose one to build on. They will then bulldoze and prepare the land, then flatten the terrain, leaving them with a large flat dirt plot to build on. Next, they will be shown a wide variety of houses to build in the plan. These designs will all be the same house, but maybe with different facades to make them appear unique. Once the houses are built, the player will get to manage the waste collection and disposal as well as the maintenance of the neighborhood, illustrating how much trash comes from each household and how poorly it is disposed of.
2. Farming
A little known fact about farming is that Soy farming is incredibly destructive to the ecosystem. Soy is a crop that requires absolutely no other living things to be in the field with it, so farmers have to kill every animal in their soy fields to get a good harvest. This game would simply involve getting a soy crop planted and harvested, requiring the player to remove every animal in the fields or suffer penalties to their harvest. If enough dies, they will fail and their farm will go bankrupt. They will also need to irrigate the field and make sure to tend the crop correctly, which will show how much water and how many other resources go into the process.
3.Firearms
I know I have a different take on this one than a lot of people. I will admit I am quite pro- gun, and this game would illustrate the importance of firearms in our society by taking the player through a few different historical events. The idea would not be to persuade them to purchase or use firearms, but to show how they can be used both as tools of oppression and of liberty depending on the hands in which they lay. The first event would be the American revolution, namely, the Boston massacre. The player would be in charge of controlling a soldier for the British Empire, and would be present when the massacre occurred. Following this, the player will be transported forward in time to the American Revolution, put into the shoes of a Continental Army soldier during the siege of Yorktown. This section would end on the capture of General Cornwallis at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War. Next, the game would flash forward to the Wounded Knee Massacre, which occurred in 1890, and was a massacre of nearly 300 Lakota at Wounded Knee Creek by the United States Government over a form of peaceful protest. The player would be forced into the shoes of one of these United States Soldiers as the event unfolded. The game would continue to flip back and forth like this, skipping across history until we reached the modern day, where it would put the player into the shoes of a Ukrainian man defending his home against invading Russians.
4. Writing
Another unpopular opinion of mine is that art can be objectively judged for quality, including writing. This game would be an attempt to show how contrivances, plot holes, and a lack of cause and effect is as damaging to a written work as poor technique can be to any other work. It would also attempt to illustrate the difference between objective and subjective criticism. The game would start with the circle analogy. The circle is your work of art. If you are trying to draw a circle and you draw an oval, you have failed to draw a circle(assuming we are acting within human limitations to draw a circle.) The same goes for a triangle, square, or other shape. Objectively speaking, if you draw a square, it is not a circle. If, however, you drew two circles, one with a thick stroke and one with a thin one, then people could comment that the thick stroke is more bold and stands out better, or that they think the subdued nature of the thin stroke is more representative of the circle’s infinitely sharp edge. These are subjective criticisms. This circle is our art, or our story, and is also the whole game. The circle will have a small story written beneath it, and the player will have the option to change elements of the story. Changing things so a large plot hole exists will depict the circle with a missing segment, thus breaking the circle. Introducing contrivances will slowly add more line segments in place of parts of the circle, gradually transforming it into less and less of a circle. Changing things like major events or characters in ways that maintain the story would alter the nature of the circle while preserving its glorious roundness.
5. Afterlife
This game has a player go through a simulated life after picking a faith. It tells them about that faith through their life and according to how well they lived that faith, when their character dies, they will be sent to a corresponding afterlife. This little simulation would run until the player force closes it, just to hammer the eternity angle home. This game would just be to persuade people to learn more about different faiths and ways of looking at the world while also giving them that first step into the pool.
Game Thoughts 1/23
McDonald’s Game
I’m not going to lie, I don’t think I ever even figured out how exactly to beat this game or if I even have the mechanics down correctly. I played like 5 more times after class, and just couldn’t beat the system. Maybe it’s because I truly just hate capitalism and not because I’m just really bad at a game. It obviously frustrated me enough that I played in my free time, but when a game infuriates me I will just quit (this quitting attitude does not apply to all areas of my life, just with things that waste my time). I would like to also add that this game did not in any way sway my attitude towards McDonald’s and that I did in fact have a Big Mac just last night.
Mo-not-poly
I played this game as the character in the 1% tax bracket, and I hated it. I felt horribly guilty for every action I took, and the obscene amount of money I acquired throughout the game. I hated the limited player interaction because I was the only one who was able to enjoy playing the game at all. It’s important for games to make individuals uncomfortable like that. Not everyone who played as my character would have had a problem with that, and I think that says a lot about a person. I thought it was an absolutely ingenious way to make a statement using a game we hate to love already.
Brainstorming Games for Elements of Persuasions (W2 – Benjamin Zou)
Environmental Submarine — Rescuing the Undersea Pollution Deeper
THE IMPACTFUL ELEMENTS OF THE ENTERTAINMENT:
There is a submarine that is not only generated by a clean motor but also has the superpower to restore the exuberance of the ocean floor layers and implement a reversible solution to eliminate climatic disasters.
Brief Info:
Environmental Submarine is an action and strategy game in which each player needs to come up with a lifesaving procedure that will prolong the ocean’s sustainability and be aware of extreme weathers unexpectedness that will destroy not only the damaging progress of restoring but also striking hazardous incidents for the secured submarine.
5D BIN (Box Interactive Nook) — The Incredible Knowledge Becomes A Broader Library Collection [Inspiration from RMU SAYS At Academic Media Center (home of Sentry Media) & Library of Babel Novel (Chapter Section of “The Garden of Branching Paths”)]
THE IMPACTFUL ELEMENTS OF THE ENTERTAINMENT:
The knowledge of our daily thoughts will become each chapter of the library’s empty book which will lead everyone to answer life questions with their creativity.
Brief Info:
5D BIN is a multiplayer’s puzzle trivia (entertaining knowledge game); “BIN” contains a theme for four seasons each may also include special holidays and festivals with popular cultures and “5D” is 5 difficulty levels of each theme(effortless to challenging) in sequence are line (the single word), plane (compound words), cube (sentence or phases), pace (time limitation of answer each question combined with words and sentences), and heaviness (miss and wrong answer of any words and sentences will result sinking or erasing the book chapter contents fillings).
Game Sequences and Rewarding Systems:
For each question, there will be a start alphabet on each vocabulary and sentence that enable each player or team of player to guess what the answer is, there will be journey progress indicators once the player answers the correct answer that will proceed into the image collection that will sculpt the book for each seasonal bookshelf; harder stages generate more elements for the book production than easier stages.
Venonous Haunting — Eliminating the Traditional folk’s Belief in the Ghost
THE IMPACTFUL ELEMENTS OF THE ENTERTAINMENT:
The supernatural incidents are not unsubstantiated scientific evidence; it is a natural chemical reaction of poisonous gases; these substantial effects even could be created by laboratory elemental combinations, and there are some chemical solutions to resolve the dreadful consequences.
Brief Info:
The game is a roleplaying between two subject roles as a landowner: protagonist – the problem-solver of restoring the precious property, and antagonist – the experimenter who will occupy the legal land purchaser for the hazardous substances’ synthesis field. Who will win/lose will depends on the damages to the landowner’s infrastructure and the failures of the experiment.
Spray Sub-Seaplane — The FLYable, Floatable, and Sinkable Hybrid Plane Motorboat
THE IMPACTFUL ELEMENTS OF THE ENTERTAINMENT:
The imaginative interactivity of the upcoming obstacles the speedy powerboat will encounter needs an unharmful (not a threat to organisms) spray weapon to control the attitude of elevating, depth of droning, and beating the hazardous barriers that will randomly occur. The expected outcome of the game is to enhance the eye reaction and identification of the object’s resistances for water athletes so that they can perform better at racing velocity and special skills demonstrations.
Brief Info:
The Spray Sub-seaplane is a strategic puzzle and board game in which the player uncovers the situations they will face and come up with a solution by rolling dice to move forward and flip over the solutions decks.
Multi-Instrumental Coordinator — Where All The Musical Instruments with Beats In One AI (Artificial Intelligence) Robotic Controllers
THE IMPACTFUL ELEMENTS OF THE ENTERTAINMENT:
The two pairs of robotic arms control both the melodic and rhythmic structures of the whole song to enhance the musician’s multitasking of following the correct musical tones and beats and display how the power of collaboration skills of the tech robot will affect song production in the music industry.
Brief Info:
The Multi-instrumental Coordinator is a multitasking musical game combined with rhythmic and sync musical instrument game elements to inform the player must follow the animated direction ruler to hit the exact place and time without missing beats and tone scale.
The Impactful Aspects of The Property Realization Games
Mcdonald’s Game
The inside structure of fast food is like Mcdonald’s production process; this game displays the agriculture (farmland planting and farm animal feeding) for fast food manufacturing. Tight guidelines and deadlines for each production phase is the key feature of this game, during the gameplay, there will be strict regulations and paces that need to be obeyed for preventing bankruptcy. The game is impactful due to the mockup reality that displays the business model of the McDonald’s supply chain development despite the challenging complex instructions and directions to remember.
Monopoly
The multi-roleplay of seeking and owning desirable objects through random dice rolling; the game displays the C2C (Customer to customer) marketing strategy as the key feature and the hazardous greed which will temporarily suspend further proceedings like Jail during the investment that is unexpected incidents the prospective landowner will face. The game is impactful because it demonstrates how finance flows when people consider purchasing potential land properties.
Week 2- Thoughts
I unexpectantly liked the Mcdonald’s game even though I failed multiple times. It wasn’t exactly what I expected, I thought it would be like a food simulator or tycoon but it was kinda dark. I mean from growing cows and killing them, to overlooking a restaurant and even being in a corporate office. At one point while when I went to my cow field, they were just dead, bones all over the ground and I could no longer use that land. Then my employees wanted to go on strike and have to promote them to keep them happy. Also in the corporate office, there were options to bribe nutritionists, and politicians and so many shady options. I could definitely tell that this game wasn’t supposed to persuade you to get Mcdonald’s but to not eat it. Another game we played was monopoly but the rules were changed for every player. I played as the blue-collar white male, they had females, minorities, and the 1%. It was really interesting how much it changed the game and really brought to light many issues we face with inequality.
Week 2- Game Ideas
Gun control- To invoke change and to persuade players the game I thought of is for gun control. In this game, you play as a student in a middle school and have to go through a school shooting. The player’s main goal is to survive. However, in each game when you load it up it can happen at random times. Your character might be going to the bathroom or switching classes or being completely left in the halls.
Luxury brands- Luxury brands are ultimately unethically sourced and should be brought to more people’s attention. In this game, the player will play as a worker for a luxury brand. You will go through each step of the process. The game will teach how the materials they use are unethically sourced, the treatment of workers, animal abuse, heavy carbon emissions, and polluting materials.
Barista- In this game, you play as a Starbucks employee that is making drinks and food to order. This game is just supposed to persuade you to buy more Starbucks drinks by promoting their brand in a game form.
Serving Life- Since tipping has been a topic of interest lately, this game will take you through being a server. You are a server making $2.50 an hour and have to go to work. In this game, you will play shifts on Monday-Friday 8hrs a day. At the end of each week, you will have certain bills to pay and maybe even some inconveniences that may occur either with your apartment, car, pet, or even yourself. When working some customers are going to be mean with either not tipping, dining and dashing, and or tipping under 20%. This game is supposed to persuade you to tip your servers at least 20% when eating out and show you the importance of it.
The life of an object- In this game, you get to pick an object and see the life span of said object. For example, if you pick a water bottle, this will take you through the process of making, packaging, consuming, and where the bottle ends up after were done with it. At the end of each object’s life span, there will be a screen that pops up giving you facts and information on how many water bottles end up in the ocean and how to prevent it. This game is supposed to persuade you about the environment and to be more aware of how trash is disposed of and treated.
Class 1/23
In today’s class we continued to explore the many kinds of games, more focused on adver-games such as Pepsiman and Chex Quest. I personally had never heard of either of these, so brainstorming persuasion examples for my 5 game ideas began to get interesting. I don’t think I quite grasped the true concept at first of what was meant by the concept of persuasion. At first I thought of it more as a reason for someone to play said game, but soon realized it was more of a reason to keep on playing, continuing with the theme of endless games.
For my example of an OCD game, I think this can be a way to spread awareness for a disease many people suffer from. This can become a way for those with OCD to be at ease and also enjoy a game. Similar to games such as tetras or solitaire that you play when you are bored, people with OCD can use this game a way of easing the compulsion to organize or any anxiety that may fall over them during the course of the day. I plan on prototyping and providing more graphics/concept art in the near future.