Melissa's-Design-Brief


 * 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 could make aserious game with Gamestar Mechanic by making the goal something that they need to help their population. I could have you go through or fight through the process of passing laws to help your country's population. Then you get the key that unlocks the door so you can get to the ultimate goal, the thing that will help you with the population. Also, every level gets harder and harder as it nears the final level or the final goal. you win by passing the last level and you lose by not passing it. Plus, the story would be told at the beginning of each level. It will tell you about why you are fighting and so on.

The goal for each level would probably be to get the key to unlock the door and reach the next level and getting closer to helping to lower the population when it is over populated. Then the final goal on the last level would be to get to the goal and defeat the evil people/avatars to help the people. I would present the issue by telling the story at the beginning of each level. I would explain the problem and what the player needs to do to solve the problem. The problems would be the reason that the player is trying to reach the goal and the bad people or avatars. There is the player's avatar and a few other computer controlled characters that will try to stop you from reaching your goal. All you have to do is shoot the bad avatars and reach the goal. The target audience is probably around 8 years old to 14 years old. This is a very fast paced version of what would really happen. The story would be told at the beginning of each level. It would tell what happened, and what needs to happen.

2. A Serious Game Mod for an Exisiting Boardgame that follows the design brief.

One board that would be good for this concept would be Life or maybe Monopoly. I think that these are good bases because hey have cards that could be easily changed to fit, they have spaces with problems and good things, and they are pretty simple to change. With these I could have the money as the amount of people, have different problems for you to face as you try to get laws passed, and so on. This would be easy because you would already have something to build off of. You would win this game by having a certain ( not too many no too little) amount of people and by reaching your goal. You would lose by having too many or too little people in the country and by not reaching your goal. The goal is to get to the finish without too many people and with out woo little people. The issue is that the county(China) is over populated so you have to bring the population down by the end of the game, but not too much. There could be spaces that add to the population or take away from it or just stop you from doing anything for a while. You and the other players are the characters. This would be a board game. All that happens is you roll dice and move the number of spaces that you rolled. Then you would just do that the space tells you to do and try to make it to the end with just the right amount of people in the country. There would be a maximum of 5 players minimum of 2 players. The audience would be 5th to 7th grade. The moral is to learn to save and make the right choices.

3. A Serious Game -- Free Choice that follows the design brief.

Another thing that could happen could be also a similar board game. In this game there is a new president needed because the old one was doing a bad job. You and a few other people are in the race to be that new president. In this game, you need to please the people and one big problem on their minds is that their country is overpopulated. In this game you must make the right decisions to get the people what they want so that you get elected and the problem you would solve would be the overpopulation. You win if you become the "new president" in the game and you lose if you are not. This game would be more off topic though. The goal is to get the people to like you so you win the election. The issue is that a new leader is needed. The problems would be some spaces or cards that say that you did something wrong to lose votes. The characters would be you and the other players. This would be a board game. You just roll dice and move that amount of spaces. Then you just do what the spaces say. The setting is China. The target audience is 5th to 7th grade. This would be to learn to make the right decisions. This would be a board game.