- Inflation – no one actually knows how this works
- Animal Rescue – save more cats (unless your Ames)
- Prostitution – give sex workers a union
- Retirement Homes
- Addiction
Problems that can potentially address with games
- Urban sprawl
- When people press the close door button on elevators
- Campaign financing & lobbying
- The opioid crisis
- Unsustainable animal agriculture
5 Issues To Be Addressed
Physical disability access (hello stairs to the TV studio)
Rent gouging
Food deserts
Captions (wrong/incorrect captions or captions that don’t line up. What’s the point?)
Feral cat colonies (cats not being spayed/neutered)
Five Issues
- Love
- ACL Tears
- Baby Formula Shortage
- The Two Party System
- Racial Prejudice
Possible Human Concerns that can be interpreted through logical elements of entertainment
Musical Fidelity Assurance (During the Recorded Productions)
It will be annoying if there are audible distortions during the compressing of musical files (which the majority of streaming produce), so there must be better awareness and approach to this concern most melodic songs have: reduced volume, filter signal, (audio) frequency crossover, and increasing maximum gain.
Diversifiability of Buddy Pair [Ex: Best Buddies (Globalized Social Cause Nonprofit)]
Current society provides not have adequate opportunities for the society to identify the struggle of special ability with extraordinary skills several populations owned; we should provide pavement of the bridge that opens for them to demonstrate their worldview.
Solar Hydrogen Limited Distribution (Innovative Environmental Preservation)
The fuel combination of organic power is everywhere because light and clean air never went to extinct so far; however, current technological aspects of utilizing them in secure efficiency are still under investigation. Maybe a game designer who has interested in a science experiment can brainstorm environmentally chemical solution strategies to recycle the daily garbage to generate them.
Occupational Proper Postures [Subject Topic: Human Factors (Comfortable Health Zone)]
Quite a few workplaces never satisfy employees’ ability to perform tasks effectively without harming their muscle-skeleton systems whether it is in an industrial mill or a common small business operation like fast food restaurant food runner. The workplace should be adjustable for their preferred effortless postures according to height and history or current pre-existing physical conditions.
Climatic Disasters [Each Pollution Effects on the globally seasonal patterns — Similar Game Example: Deemo II (publisher: Rayark)]
Almost everyone feels several days the weather is not just their expected each season because they feel distressed because of the terrible temperature effects on them. They may not know that some forms of energy sources can speed up the global warming consequences due to the limited control our planet Earth has; besides, there are still solutions available for each member to follow.
Week 3- Potential Problems/issues
Gun control
Climate change
Animal cruelty
Food desertsÂ
Fast Fashion
Week 3- Thoughts
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.Â
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.
