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Review of Ayiti: The Cost Of Life

Monday, September 14th, 2009

ayiti-title

Review of the game Ayiti – the Cost of Life created by the high school students in Global Kids in conjunction with game developers at GameLab

Rating: star-rating-colouredstar-rating-colouredstar-rating-colouredstar-rating-outlinestar-rating-outline

Game Overview

Ayiti: The Cost of Life is a single-player simulation strategy game playable for free over the internet using a flash-compatible web browser. It is aimed at school students – although even adults will find the game challenging. The player takes on the role of managing the activities of the Guinard family – a family of 5 who live in the developing country of Ayiti. The player’s goal is to help the Guinard family get an education and improve their lives.

ayiti-family
Above: The Guinard family – Jean, Marie, Yves, Jacquline and Patrick. (SOURCE: screenshot from game, used for review purposes)

The game-play occurs over 16 rounds. Each round represents a season. There are four seasons a year so the overall timeframe represented by the game is a four-year period.

At any time, the player can click on a member of the family to view information about them. The information panel tells the player the character’s current level of health, happiness and education and also tells the player what the character is currently doing, the character’s current health status and the character’s current education status.
ayiti-character-statistics
Above: At any time, the player can click on a member of the family to view their vital statistics. This screenshot was taken at the very start of the game before the start of the first season. (SOURCE: screenshot from game, used for review purposes)

The game also keeps track of important information regarding the family’s progress as a whole. This information is always visible in a panel on the left hand side of the screen. Information that is stored includes:

  •  the total number of (educational) diplomas the family has collected
  • the amount of money (Gouds) the family has
  • the current living conditions the family is subject to – The living conditions can be changed manually but also change automatically depending on the level of income of the family
  • the items that the family owns (these are purchased from the store).

ayiti-left-hand-panel
Above: The panel at the left hand side of the game screen stores information about the status of the family as a whole. (SOURCE: screenshot from game, used for review purposes)

Money can be spent on school tuition, living conditions and items in the store such as books, bicycles, home remedy kits and chickens for the family farm.

The player’s goal is to keep the family happy and healthy for the four years. If both parents die, the game is over. If the parents survive, the level of success is measured by the amount of education each member of the family has.

Check out this Youtube video for a walkthru of one round of the game (Youtube video created by holymeatballs).

 

What makes the game compelling?

One of the reasons this game is compelling is that it is easy to learn what to do; but it is extremely challenging to master. The reviewer has played the game at least four times. On the most recent occasion, both parents and one child died of cholera. The remaining two children were scattered between different relatives and foster homes and lost all chances at a brighter future!

ayiti-all-died
Above: The game is compelling because it is difficult. (SOURCE: screenshot from game, used for review purposes)

Factors that make it compelling include:

  • the challenge and conflict within the game comes from the desire to accumulate resources so that they can help provide a better standard of living and education for the family, however, if only a resource accumulation strategy is applied to the game, the characters will become sick or depressed and will no longer be able to work to accumulate resources
  • a balanced strategy needs to be employed to take on the system effectively
  • it is free to play
  • the narrative is engaging
  • the 2D graphics are reasonably high quality
  • the game music and sound is reasonably high quality
  • the user interface is intuitive
  • it allows for differing player approaches – there is more than one way to “win” the game
  • there are no easy choices – every choice made within the game comes at the expense of something else
  • there is uncertainty – the player makes meaningful choices but is not certain how it will impact on the lives of the characters in the game.

Game Play

The gameplay bears similarity to Lemonade Stand style games and more complex tycoon games. The player starts each round (each round in this game is a season) with a certain amount of money. The player can use that money to buy things such as school books, home remedy kits, toys, a bicycle.

ayiti-store
Above: Money can be used to buy items at the store. (SOURCE: screenshot from game, used for review purposes)

The money can also be used to educate the family members.

ayiti-schooling
Above: Money can be used to educate family members. (SOURCE: screenshot from game, used for review purposes)

The player also has to decide what each member of the family will do during the season. Will they receive education, stay at home and rest, work the family farm, get a job, volunteer for a non-government organisation or go to receive medical treatment?

ayiti-work
Above: Family members can take on jobs providing they have the right levels of education and have appropriate transport. (SOURCE: screenshot from game, used for review purposes)

Once the player has decided where to allocate resources and what each family member will do for the season, the Start Season button is pressed.

Whilst most of the game’s decisions are made before the season starts, there are some decisions that the player can make during the season . Decisions that the player may have to make during the season include whether family members should stop working if they are sick, whether they should seek medical treatment and which level of treatment is most appropriate and whether to spend more money on hurricane-proofing their house.

If the money gets low or the health of a family member gets really low, some decisions are automatically made by the game. For example, if a family member gets really sick, they will be no longer able to work and will be forced to go home. If the family runs out of money, all family members receiving medical attention or education will be forced to return home.

Larger Culture around the Game

The game provides some extra ways to engage with the game content. These include lesson plans for teachers and other supporting information such as maps of Haiti (the country which the game is based on) and links to other supporting materials. Check out this page on the Unicef – Voices of Youth website for more information.

Why was the game created?

Goal 1.

Ayiti: The Cost of Life was developed to educate people around the world about the complexity of the issues facing people living in poverty in developing countries. Its key message is that no single factor can account for success.

Goal 2.

The game development process itself was used as a tool to promote digital literacy and career awareness for underserved youth as part of the GlobalKids Program. This game was designed by high school students in collaboration with a professional game development company.

Did the game achieve its goals?

Goal 1. 

Whilst there were some shortcomings in the evaluation of the game, it does appear that the game’s goals were achieved at some level. The evaluation conducted suggested that individuals playing the game had a fuller understanding of the complexities associated with living in poverty than they did before playing the game.

Goal 2.

The evaluators conducted two separate focus group meetings with six students involved in the program. These focus groups revealed that as a result of their involvement in this project students learnt many lessons including:

  • respect for each other and other people’s ideas
  • how to share their ideas and listen to the ideas of others
  • how to work as part of a team
  • increasing their computer skills
  • understanding what goes into making a game.

Watch this youtube video created by students who made the game.

Shortcomings of the evaluation

A large-scale survey was conducted with players of the game to ascertain whether it was useful in educating people about the complexity of the issues facing people living in poverty. The survey took the form of a pre-gameplay question and a series of True/False post-gameplay questions.

Shortcoming 1. The pre-gameplay question

The pre-gameplay question asks players to identify a strategy that they intend to use to play the game as depicted below.

pre-question-ayiti
Above: Before playing the game, the player is asked which strategy they will choose. (SOURCE: screenshot of game, used for review purposes)

The problems with this pre-play question all centre around the Happiness option:

  • the text describing the Happiness option is chopped off mid-sentence
  • the heading used for this section does not match the content of the answer. Many people choosing an answer to this question would be so keen to skip to the actual game that they may read the heading and not look at the rest of the text.

Even though the happiness descriptor is probably the most balanced strategy, players probably would not select it based on the incompatible heading and the fact that not all of the text for the descriptor is not present.

Interestingly, even in the game evaluation, the evaluators chose to replace the heading happiness with the heading survival stating that “although the survey instrument referred to the theme of happiness, we refer to survival in our analysis as it is a more accuracte reflection of the content of the corresponding statements”. The reviewer believes that survival is also not an appropriate heading for the description. In fact, this heading really is about having a balanced game strategy. It is likely, though, that if the word “balanced” were used as a heading on the screen pictured above that most people would choose that option. The reviewer believes that this evidence is enough to question whether a valid strategy has been used to evaluate the success of the game.

Shortcoming 2. The post-gameplay questions

The post-gameplay questions were a series of eight true/false questions as depicted below.

 post-question-ayiti
Above: After playing the game, the player is asked a series of 8 true/false questions. (SOURCE: screenshot of game, used for review purposes)

There was a technical glitch in the version of the game that was evaluated and the final question did not appear. This problem was subsequently fixed, however, no data was included in the evaluation that contained responses to the final question.

The evaluation split the statements into pairs around the themes money, health, education and survival and classified each statement as an absolute or a relative statement. See the image below for more details.

themes-comparison-table-ayiti
Above: Table used in Nudell, Brunner & Pasnik’s evaluation report 2007. (used for review purposes)

The percentages of users who chose to check each statement was then calculated and compared with the percentages that chose the initial game playing strategies. It should be noted that a player is able to mark both the absolute and relative statement in each category as being both true, both false or one true and the other false.

 ayiti-evaluation-analysis
Above: Table used in Nudell, Brunner & Pasnik’s evaluation report 2007. (used for review purposes)

Whilst this does provide some useful data and it would seem to indicate that those who played the game demonstrated  some level of understanding of the complexities associated with living in poverty, given the issues with the questioning techniques used how valid is the data? Could other statistical methods been used to further prove the association? Is using a survey as the only means of assessing player understandings useful? Should other methods of evaluation such as focus groups have been used? 

 

 

Image Attributions

http://www.unicef.org/voy/images/costoflife_banner_180×150.gif (Used for review purposes. If you are the copyright holder of this image and wish it to be removed, please add a comment to this blog entry.)

Other images are from the game’s evaluation report and are screenshots of the game. All are used for review purposes. If the copyright holder of this information wishes it to be removed, please add a comment to this blog entry.

 

References

Nudell, H., Brunner, C. & Pasnik, S. 2007. Playing for Keeps Evaluation Report. EDC | Center for Children and Technology. Accessed from  http://gamesforchange.org/resource_uploads/c1c5600b0026a083e5b3f67beea27040/21219805895P4K_Year_2-Report.pdf on 14/9/2009

Unicef 2009. Voices of Youth – Game: Ayiti: the cost of life. Unicef. Accessed from
http://www.unicef.org/voy/explore/rights/explore_3142.html on 14/9/2009

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Review of Re-Mission game

Monday, August 31st, 2009
re-mission title graphic

Review of the game Re-Mission created by Hope Lab

Rating: star-rating-colouredstar-rating-colouredstar-rating-colouredstar-rating-colouredstar-rating-outline

The Story

The year is 2027. Due to significant improvements in Science, nanobots are used to fight cancer. The player takes on the role of Roxxi – a humanoid nanobot who is charged with fighting cancer cells, protecting the good cells and being involved in managing the treatment -related adverse effects.

Roxxi - the miniscule humanoid nanobot Roxxi – the miniscule humanoid nanobot

Play begins by porting Roxxi into a cancer patients body for her first mission.  Once the cancer has been defeated, the mission is complete and the player can play another mission. There are 20 missions in total. Each mission takes place inside the body of different cancer patients. The cancer patients are male and female, from different parts of the United States and have different types of cancers and therefore require different forms of treatment.  All patients are adolescents and young adults. 

Why has the game been created?

Research indicates that adolescents and young adults are less likely to adhere to self-administered cancer treatments such as oral chemotherapy. The game aims to help young people with cancer feel like they have power over the disease in an effort to increase treatment adherence. It was created with support from medical staff with knowledge of cancers and their treatment.

Did the game achieve its goal?

According to the research study that was conducted alongside this game, an increase in adherence to self-ministered cancer treatments of the adolescents and young adults who played the game increased. Self-efficacy and knowledge of cancer and its treatment also increased.

Interestingly, there was no increase in self-reported measures of adherence, stress, control or quality of life.

This indicates to me that when evaluating the effectiveness of serious games, subjective self-assessment by the player may not be the best measures to use. This may be because the game player is not always aware of what they are learning within the game – the learning is implicit. If the learning were overt, maybe the game would not be quite as fun? If it is important that the learning be explicit to the player, perhaps extra activities need to be conducted outside of the game as a supporting mechanism to the game-play?

After having played the game myself, I think it would help you feel better about your treatment and give you a better understanding of the side effects and their treatments. I don’t think the game alone would effectively educate you about your cancer treatment – however, this is not the main purpose of the game. The game would be a good reinforcer for concepts introduced by the doctor.

About the Game & Game Play

Re-mission is a 3D, third-person shooter PC game developed for adolescents and young adults with cancer. The game is made available through hospitals and can also be downloaded for free from the internet.

The game is a one-player game. However, there is limited two player functionality. Two players can play simultaneously using one computer. When playing in two-player mode, there are two arcade-style missions that can be played. The two-player functionality seems to be an after-thought and as such is not as immersive as the rest of the game.

Check out this youtube video for an introduction to Re-mission.

Culture built around the game

In an effort to embed the game inside a larger culture, there is a supporting website with information about cancer and a large amount of user-created content. Sections of the website featuring user-created content include:

  • What’s up doc? – a space where kids with cancer can have their questions answered by professional medical staff
  • Top 10 lists created by members  - top 10 lists are compiled after kids with cancer share their responses to a variety of stimulus questions like “When you visited the hospital, what are some nice things the hospital staff did for you or other patients?” and “What foods made / make you nauseous during treatment?”
  • Art & Poetry  - below is a sample art piece
    art work sample from the re-mission website user-created art work sample from the re-mission website

This community to share user-generated content was an excellent addition to the game although it looks like it is no longer being maintained. The most recent entry in the Art & Poetry section was Feb 2008. The community section of the site looks as though it was be fairly carefully moderated – which can stifle creativity but given the age group the game is aimed at and the sensitivity of the subject matter – this was probably both wise and necessary.

Likes and dislikes summary

 

Game Aspect What I liked What I disliked
Wider culture of the game The provision of a companion website to provide more support for adolescents and young adults with cancer. Unfortunately the companion website appears to be no longer updated.
It attempts to relate to both genders by:

  • Avoiding stereotypical images of women. Both Roxxi and Dr West (the inventor of the nanobot technology) are female.
  • Using a shoot-em-up game mechanic (FPS are most popular with boys).
  • Providing cancer patients from both genders and a variety of ethnicities.
Statistics are kept of hit rates. Some players may replay particular missions in an effort to increase their player statistics.
Game play The keys to be used in the game could be configured. Not all keys were necessary when learning how to play the game although they would probably be used to master the game. The keys to be used on the computer keyboard to control the character are reasonably complex to remember (more than 10 keys on the keyboard as well as the mouse can be used in gameplay).  I think this game may be easier to play using something like an Xbox controller.
The game has some cheat codes embedded for people (like me) who don’t have great hand-eye coordination. Whenever I played, I turned on invulnerability and unlimited ammo.
There are some two-player missions. Two-player features are tokenistic – they seem like an add-on after the fact.
There are two optional tutorials and 20 missions which provides quite a bit of gameplay. Each time you complete a mission for the first time, a new mission is unlocked. You have to complete the missions in order. In a way this is good, as they get harder the further you go. However, if you are looking forward to playing out a scenario inside someone who has the same cancer as you, it may take you a while to unlock this mission.
The game is a third-person shooter (as opposed to a first-person shooter). This helps you identify more with your character, Roxxi. The game is a third-person shooter (as opposed to a first-person shooter). Having the back of the character at the front of the screen can make it more difficult to aim at targets correctly.
It is easy to know what you are expected to do:

  • Each level lists a small number of clearly defined goals. These usually consist of:
    •  destroying a certain type of cancer cells in the patient’s body.
    • Releasing some sort of treatment such as relaxation tap to help the patient cope with the side effects of the treatment.
  • Arrows show you where to go.

Smitty provides verbal advice throughout the mission.
If your sound is off, you can still play the game as all text is subtitled.
Voiceovers, sound effects and graphics are high quality. The game is played inside the human body and you can definitely tell that it is inside the human body but it also has a similar feeling to being in space. I guess, for a miniscule nanobot, the human body would feel like outer space.
The game gives good aural and visual negative feedback for both positive and negative occurrences.
The main decision systems at play are about ammo and energy conservation versus destroying the enemy. If the player doesn’t stop and get a power-up or an ammo top up at the required times, the mission will have to be restarted. However, every second the cancer cells are not destroyed, they keep multiplying thus making the player’s job more difficult.   Decision system is not complex – for 90% of the game, you mostly  just have to go and shoot cancer cells (this is to do with the game genre).
Game provides challenge – cancer systems get harder to fight ad require greater accuracy as the player progresses through the levels. This encourages the player to pay attention to the current micro challenge with the macro challenge being at the back of the mind. Type of challenge used within the game:

  • MOSTLY physical coordination (speed & reaction time, accuracy & precision)
  • A LITTLE: Exploration (spatial awareness, locked doors & traps)
  • A LITTLE: economic (accumulating resources)
  • SOME: time pressure- if you don’t shoot clusters they keep multiplying
 Only small amount of conflict (ammo / multiplying cells).
Narrative The cut-scenes within the game were high quality (great graphics, audio and script) and humorous. The cut-scenes always took place between Roxxi and her mentor, Smitty. Although the cut-scenes are reasonably short, you cannot escape out of them even if you’ve entered the mission before.
No patients die in the game.  If you do not manage to defeat the cancer before the Roxxi’s power runs out, she will power down and give you the opportunity to play the mission again. There is little uncertainty in the game – you know that if you keep shooting the cells, eventually you will defeat them.
The characters are easy to identify with as the game follows a typical super-hero narrative structure. The characters featured are:

  • Roxxi – the hero
  • Smitty – acts as a mentor to Roxxi (the wise old man)
  • Dr West – the inventor of Roxxi & Smitty
  • Cancer patients – the inside of the bodies of a variety of adolescents and young adults provide the settings for the game’s action
 The game is USA-centric – all cancer patients are from the USA.
Each mission mixes treatments with ways to combat the side-effects of the treatment (eg. Release 8 relax taps to facilitate deep breathing)
Narrative structure – follows typical super-hero narrative structure but has the right balance of gameplay and narrative.

 

References and Links

Kato, P.M., Cole, S., Bradlyn, A.S., Pollock & B.H. 2008. “A Video Game Improves Behavioral Outcomes in Adolescents and Young Adults with Cancer: A Randomized Trial” in Pediatrics 122 (2): e305. (2008)
Accessed from http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/122/2/e305 on 1/9/2009

Straylor. 2009. Re-Mission – A video game for kids fighting cancer (youtube video).
Accessed from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBfKo3FsC-Q on 1/9/2009

Hopelab. 2009. Re-Mission: a game for young people with cancer (website)
Accessed from www.re-mission.net on 1/9/2009

Image Attributes

http://www.flickr.com/photos/musigny/148258023/ (used under Creative Commons Licensing)

http://www.re-mission.net/site/community/ap.php?sid=61&id=2 (Used for review purposes. If you are the copyright holder of this image and wish it to be removed, please add a comment to this blog entry.)

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