Player Experience Goals

Rationale

In 2006 CNN did a survey about Americans and Geography.  It stated that despite U.S. troops being involved in combat in the region, two-thirds of Americans ages 18-24 couldn't find Iraq on a map (cnn.com, 2006).  The same survey also showed that in the first six months after hurricane Katrina, 33% of Americans couldn't find Louisiana couldn't find Louisiana on map (cnn.com, 2006).  This is a sad commentary on most Americans' understanding of the world, but that's why I made Round Route.

Round Route was created because I read something on James Gee's website where he told conference attendee about how an average child couldn't name the 195 countries of the world but could name most of the 151 original Pokémon.   My own experiences as a Substitute School teacher mirrored that statement, so I decide a game aimed at middle school children that teaches Geography and plays like Pokémon would make an interesting project.

When the game made it to the planning phase it was about collecting birds.  It was about collecting birds because each state has a state bird it is associated with and that would create a compelling in-game reason to travel around the country.  Then I started to look at how Geography was taught here in Michigan and realized the bird metaphor wasn't going to work.  It turns out, that in Michigan Geography is combined with history at the middle school level.  If the game was to be useful to Michigan educators history content would need to be included.

In an effort to become more familiar with how Geography is taught, I spoke with a few locale teachers.  Theses teacher all confirmed that after 6^th grade geography is taught with U.S. History.  One teacher even commended the idea of the project, telling me how Geography is taught by giving student a copy of a map to label and color.  This teacher followed up by telling me about how the student "check out" mentally and how anything that could engage the kids had to be better than giving them another map. 

The idea is that games are already engaging, and when the game content is combined with the learning content the product is definitely better than giving them another map.  So, I looked through the content standards to find out exactly what students were expected to know about Geography and History in middle school.  I found that the History at that level centered on the foundations of America, from the settlement of the original colonies to the Reclamation.  That was to wide a time span for me to cover in the amount of time I had to complete my project.  The make thing more manageable I chose to focus on the period right before the American Revolution.  I settled on this time period because understand the Geography of the colonies is helpful when trying to understand where battles took place and why certain areas were more significant to the Americans or the British.  This time period also allows the player to concentrate on wondering around the colonies freely without being distracted by famous battles of the war.  In short, the year 1760 lets players interact with just the Geography of the time period.  The time period where most of the History middle school students are required to takes place.

Goals as a Serious Game

Round Route was created to help bridge the gap between receiving Geography knowledge through typical academic channels (lecture, text books, instructional videos, etc.) and real world application of that information.  This game offers content based on Michigan social studies middle school grade level content expectations through a simulated environment to let students interact with the material in a fun and engaging manner.

Below are the educational impacts that Round Route is intended to have on the player.  The list contains the goal, detailed by the content standard, which is further detailed with how the standard is used.

• Reiterate general K-12 National Geography Curriculum Standards (Michigan Dept. of Education, 2007).
  • Spatial Thinking
    
    • Understand how to navigate Colonial America
    • Recognize the colony in which towns are located.
    • Physical and Human Characteristics of Place.
    • Recognize the landscape and geographical structures of Colonial America, emphasizing the relative locations of major towns.
  • Economic Interdependence
    
    • Understand how the location of a town and its major resources influences its local economy.

• Reiterate 8th grade Integrated U.S. History curriculum (Michigan Dept. of Education, 2007).
  • Expansion and Reform time period 1754-1800
    • Recognize the layout of Colonial America just before the revolution.
    • Understand the differences in the economies of different regions.
  •  Recognizing the organization of towns and territories of Colonial America.

Theoretical Justifications

Over the years educators have used a number of methods to enrich their content for learners.   Audio recordings, film strips, news reels, television, and other media have been used to help ensure that students have a more complete understanding of the material than could be delivered by lecture alone.  Now this mix of products and media includes digital games, designed to teach and train.  This medium utilizes the method of play inherent to games to more fully engage the learner (Van Eck, R., 2006).

Round Route gains most of its value from being a game first and an educational tool second.  During the design and development, extra time was taken to ensure that the games style and gameplay mirrors practices from some of the more well known geography games and map-based commercial games.  This helps ensure that Round Route benefits from as many of the twelve elements of "Why Game Engage Us" as possible.  In addition to facilitating the methods of engagement that exist in all games, Round Route allows the player to interact with curriculum content in an interesting way.  This allows the game to function as a learning tool (Prensky, M., 2001).

Why Games Engage Us

Games are a form of fun. That gives us enjoyment and pleasure.

Games are a form of play.  That gives us intense and passionate involvement.

Games have rules. That gives us structure.

Games have goals.  That gives us motivation.

Games are interactive. That gives us doing.

Games have outcomes and feedback.  That gives us learning.

Games are adaptive.  That gives us flow.

Games have win states.  That gives us ego gratification.

Games have conflict/competition/challenge/opposition.  That gives us adrenaline. 

Games have problem solving.  That sparks our creativity.

Games have interaction.  That gives us social groups.

Games have representation and story.  That gives us emotion.

--Source:  Prensky, M. (2001). Digital game-based learning. New York: Mcgraw-Hill.

In Round Route, the player controls an avatar that is traversing the colonies in search of good to trade with local towns.  The player, acting through the avatar, interacts with the game environment more than they would a traditional map.  This places the information (relative and geographic locations, physical characteristic, etc.) that the game environment is trying to teach in "meaningful context" (Young, Schrader, & Zheng, 2006).   Meaningful context allows for situated cognition, which has been shown to be more useful than the out of context learning that (Van Eck, R., 2007).  So by allowing the player to navigate the map-based environment of Round Route they are more likely to retain details about the locations of Colonial America, which feed directly into the curriculum for geography.  The same approach works the historic details of the games environment to reiterate history curriculum.  By experiencing landscapes and places in their historical context information is more likely to be retained.

Forms of Fun

There are 16 different types of fun named described in the paper Fourteen Plus Two Forms of Educational and Commercial Fun that are intended to describe all of the basic ways a person can enjoy an activity (Heeter, Chu, Maniar, Winn, Mishra, Egidio, & Portwood-Stacer, 2003).  Round Route concentrates on delivering fun from four of those categories: Beauty, Advancement and Completion, and Learning.

Beauty

The main character in Round Route (Cuddy) was design to be interesting and fun in a way that can compete with commercial characters.  His clothing is period accurate, but clean and bright.  The lines to create his form are smooth and curved.  He is roughly three heads tall.  This help to create an approachable, child like character that appeal to a wide variety of people (Lidwell, Holden, & Butler, 2003).  The other game elements present have a similar design.  The only elements of Cuddy's design that do not follow this principle are his torn hat and his frown, which give the character style, realism,  and interest.  These small contrasting elements also tone down the cuteness of the character.  The elements come together to create a world that is fun and playful while being interesting to look at.

Advancement and Completion

At the start of the game the player has a small amount of money, and all of the towns are without labels.  As the player buys and sells his/her way toward the goal, their bank account increase and all of the towns become labeled.  Each increase allows the player to see how far they have progressed through the game.

Learning

 Along with the steadily increasing bank account, the player is given hints from the town's people, and useful information about the colonies.  This information is not only useful in the game's context, but expose the player to information about the real life U.S. history.