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Discussion about entry: Ace's Adventure: Shifting the Impact of Injury
This is discussion about Ace's Adventure: Shifting the Impact of Injury.
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Thanks for your very compelling and well-presented entry, Dr. Knudson. I wonder: what is game-play like? what exactly is the (narrative) mechanism by which you hope to change player behavior? While the attached video offered a glimpse of what it might be, it was only a glimpse, and I'd like to understand it better.
I look forward to hearing from you,
Diane
Changemakers
I wanted to take a moment to respond to your question about the gameplay in Ace's Adventure. It is primarily an action adventure game interspersed with mini-games that contain the actual educational content.
In the action adventure part of the game, the player controls Ace as he runs through his neighborhood on the way from his house to school, along a predetermined path. The player can move Ace forward, left, or right, but not backwards, in a fully immersive 3D environment. Gameplay in this mode includes picking up homework pages and avoiding detractors such as radio-controlled cars, bouncing balls, and kids running around. Ace will lose homework pages if he runs into one of these things, and the player tries to get as many pages as possible for a high score.
While Ace is on his way to school, he encounters traffic safety situations (for example, walking behind a backing-up car, entering a crosswalk, and waiting at a street light), which trigger mini-games. The game transitions from third person (looking down at Ace) to first-person (looking at the world through Ace’s eyes). The traffic safety lessons are taught in voiceover, and are then slightly abstracted into more traditional gameplay patterns. For example, instead of just looking left, then right, then left to cross a street, the player needs to time button presses as a pair of eyes floats back and forth across the screen, looking to the left and right. In this way, we emphasize the situations in which the player must be careful, but add a more whimsical gameplay pattern to keep interest high. After succeeding in the mini-game, the game returns to the action adventure, and Ace continues on his way. Overall, we have found this to be a satisfying blend of fun factor and educational content.
To illustrate how this works, we have added another thirty seconds to the end of the video clip. (And, I agree, this was not well covered in our initial presentation!)
Thank you for you feedback and I hope this makes more sense to you. Please let us know if you have any further questions.
Best regards –
David Warhol
President, Realtime Associates, Inc.
(Developer of the prototype for the San Francisco Injury Center)
Thanks to both of you for your responses and for having altered your video presentation. Indeed, the new version of the video provides a clearer presentation of game-play; but it does leave me with a few questions. Am I to understand that what triggers Ace's trip across the street (after the first light) is not hitting the blue ball 3 times but the change of the streetlight from red to green? If so, does that mean that every time Ace gets to a corner with a traffic light, he'll have to wave his hand (for as long as it takes) until the traffic light turns green? Second, when Ace gets to the intersection with a stop sign (where he watches eye balls go from side to side), will those eyeballs ever extend to, or placed on, vehicles in the street itself?
As I've been in several other entries, I'm intrigued by how you've chosen to manage penalties or mistakes. I wonder why, for example, you've decided to penalize a kid who steps on a radio-controlled car (mislaid on the sidewalk) by having him lose his homework rather than, say, fall and skin his knee (and, maybe, lose points). I ask this because I've been intrigued to see a number of game makers opting not to expose kids to the real consequences of ill-chosen actions.... I don't mean to be a killjoy or too much of a literalist; but couldn't the kid learn something helpful from seeing real effects of ill-chosen actions?
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Best,
Diane
Changemakers
Dear Ms. Tucker: Thank you for your kind comments. Dave Warhol (Realtime) and I discussed your questiion and decided to alter the You Tube clip to better describe the action and the mini-games. If you would, please look again at the edited YouTube video above. In addition to the introduction of the concepts at the beginning of the game, we intend to add a voice for "Ace" so that the first time any of the pedestrian challenges are encountered (i.e. the car backing up), the player will be able to hear Ace think through his options. As you can tell, we have only done the pilot for this game. The first Phase, which will be the complete pedestrian game, is currently under development and will be completed before the end of this year. We are very excited about getting it into the schools and testing its effectiveness in delivering our messages. Please let me know if you have other comments or questions and thank you again for the consideration.
Dr. Knudson
Hello Diane - to answer your questions -
The mini-games that teach the lessons are triggered as Ace encounters places where traffic safety lessons are required in the real world. This is under player control, i.e., when the player reaches an intersection they need to cross, the mini-game starts, or as the player walks up to a car backing up, the mini-game starts.
The mini-games themselves have abstracted gameplay mechanics. It is not apparent from the video, but in the car backing up game, for example, the animated hand moves from button to button; the player must press a button on the interface every time the hand is over the button (the player is not moving the hand). This is to simulate waving your hand to make sure the driver sees you, but at the end of the day, it is a button timing mechanic. And, specificially, in the look left-right-left game, the game is not teaching the player to look AT cars, the game is teaching the player to look left, right, and left FOR cars. (That being said, we are working on new mechanics including being able to judge distance and speed, which is very difficult for children of that age.) The required response speed of the mechanics increases as players move through the level.
As far as representing failure, we (and perhaps others) feel it is not a good idea to literally show the consequences of real-life failure in a game where physical safety is the goal. In this case, for example, in the extreme sense, it would entail getting hit by a car. We don't even want to see the player in jeopardy, like having to run back OUT of the street having advanced into it incorrectly. Therefore, we have another mechanism entirely, collecting and losing homework pages, which is more typical of the videogame genre into which we have set the game. It keeps it a little more light-hearted. Though we could have a light-hearted skin-the-knee graphic, imagine a player exploring the extents of the game (which they do!) - "let me see exactly how bloodied I can get my knee"; in our existing implementation, they can see what happens when they lose their homework. (In another game we did, Re-Mission, if the player failed a game objective, the patient they were treating didn't die, the treatment session was over.)
Thank you for keeping the dialog going. I can see that many of the mechanics and objectives are more clear in actual gameplay than in the demonstration video, and am glad to have the opportunity to bring this level of detail to light.
Best -
Dave / Realtime Associates, Inc.
Thanks for your responses, Dave. They prompt a few more thoughts.
I'd asked the first question (re looking left and right) because I noticed, in watching your video, that while looking at the eyeballs prompted me to look at the left and right sides of the screen, they weren't helping me to see whether any cars might be coming. In other words, they were not helping me look AT cars and they weren't helping me look FOR cars. On the other hand, I was watching the video (rather than playing the game), so perhaps game play will enable players to have a different experience...
re showing real-life failure: as it's a subject I've wanted to address for a while (as it's come up a number of times in the entries) I'm going to do so and place it in the general discussion. (it might take a bit of time to get there, since I'm finding it tough to address; I hope you'll be patient and engage with it once it's there.)
Best,
diane
Changemakers
Hi Diane -
Regarding your first comment - you have put your finger on the exact point of abstraction in our game. Our aim in this game is to point out situations the kids need to be aware of, but we aren't emulating the exact techniques that they will use in real life. In these situations, Ace as the narrator chimes in succinctly telling them what they need to do in real life, then describes the mini-game mechanic. When the mini-game is over, Ace follows up with a quick comment confirming the real lesson.
Regarding the second, I'm looking forward to being part of the conversation.
Best -
Dave