Emma's-Game-Designs


 * IDEAS FOR SERIOUS GAMES**toc

Middle school students enjoy games but teachers don't appreciate that. Teachers feel that students should read and write to gain greater understanding about world issues. The problem to be solved is to make a serious game that is about a world issue.

**Requirements:**

 * 1) Game must be accessible to the intended players
 * 2) Game must be well-paced to be enjoyable
 * 3) Game must be challenging to the intended players.
 * 4) Game must have a clear goal
 * 5) Game must be winable.

** Constraints: **

 * 1) It must be possible to create this game with the tools available to middle school students (computers, wikis, blogs, cardboard, poster board, glue, colored pencils, markers, scissors, rulers, paper cutter, exacto knives, glue guns, found objects, dice, spinners, and other common items found in the home and school)

1. A Serious Game Using Gamestar Mechanic that follows the design brief. I will use the grass blocks on Gamestar Mechainc to create the "land" that the Israelis and Palestinians are fighting over. The goal of the game is to clear out all of the enemies in the game so the land will be yours. The killing between the avatar and the monsters in gamestar will be like the killings between the Israelis and Palestinains in real life. If you lose the game, you also lose the land and it goes to the enemies.

2. A Serious Game Mod for an Exisiting Boardgame that follows the design brief. The board game that I will modify is Battle Ship. There will be two battle ship boards, one for the Palistinians and one for the Israelis. The Palistinians have to send bombers to Israel and the Israelis have to send soilders to places they think Hamas and other terrorists groups are hiding. Instead of ships there will be cities and military bases. The ships will painted different colors to signify the different cities and military bases. The Palestinians and Israelis ships have different locations from each other. The Israelis have to try and hit their bombs on the Palestinians cities and the Palestinians have to hit their bombs on the Israeli cities. You win the game when you either bomb all your opponents cities or your opponent uses up all their bombs. The game will be played the same as regular battle ship exept that once you hit all of one of opponents city, the opponent must tell you which city was bombed. Also, every time someone hits a city, they recieve a numbered card with a fact on the conflict. The player must read the card over once put it face down. If a player misses 5 or more times, the other player must find the question card with the same number as the fact card and the opponent must be able to answer the question using what he/she remembers from the fact card. If the player answers the question falsely, he must give up several bombs. Also, there will be a chance card that creates obsticles for the player such as skip a turn and give your opponent 10 bombs or is good for the player such as get 10 bombs from your opponent.. You receive a chance card after you bomb a city.

3. A Serious Game -- Free Choice that follows the design brief. This board game will consist of a cardboard board, and a dice. Depending on which side you are on, there are positive and negative spaces to land on. The first person to move across the board game 3 times wins the game. There can be either 2 or 4 players because there are two teams, the Israelis and the Palestinians. The player rolls the dice and moves their piece that number and reads the event on space. For example, there may be a space that says "peace talks agreement, skip foward 2 spaces" or "Israel builds settlements in East Jerusalem, Palestinians move back 2 spaces and Israelis move foward 2 spaces.