Updates
We spent this week working towards a build for our first formal playtest. We also connected with WQED Pittsburgh to help us with our playtesting. WQED is running a program where they are reaching out to several schools in Pittsburgh to get them involved in the development community and put them in touch with universities like CMU that are working on software that impacts the students. We created a playtest plan and shared it with them so that they could understand our requirements and assess how they could help us.
We mainly wanted to test for
- Engagement in the narrative
- Engagement in the gameplay
- Success in teaching a topic
- Language accessibility – is it easy for students to understand
- Fictional news topic relevance
Design
On the design side, we created a plan to teach Currency in the second level.
Approach 1: Only Currency
Students’ Claim:
The school is replacing fried foods to reduce the cost.
Students’ Reference:
An article listing the schools’ cost of preserving fresh food with in-house cooks < the cost of sending food to processors to be fried
Issue:
The article was 10 years ago.
Investigate:
Up-to-date evidence shows that nowadays the cost of sending foods to processors has dramatically decreased because of better flow line production; and the cost of having in-house cooks actually surpass the cost of having food processors.
Problems with this approach:
- There are very few real life examples of websites which have only Currency as an issue.
- Difficulty in finding web pages that have different levels of correctness for this credibility issue.
As a result, we decided to teach Currency and Accuracy together.
Approach 2: Currency + Accuracy
Students’ Claim:
School can use air fryers to make healthy fried food.
Students’ Reference:
A promotional article from 2010 about a home electronics manufacturer introducing their air fryer that reduced 80% of fat to make fried foods healthy.
Issue:
Currency: The article was published 10 years ago.
Accuracy: Is it accurate? It was not published on trustworthy websites.
Investigate:
2018, 10 air fryers were tested by making french fried and 4 / 10 surpassed the Acrylamide standard of Europe.
Up to 2019, there is no evidence proving Acrylamide is a carcinogenic to human, even though it does cause cancer to animals.
Acrylamide is just a 2A probable carcinogen, so is hot water over 65 degree and all cooked red meat. Acrylamide generated by cooking over 120 degrees, especially for foods with starch, like potatoes.
2021, Healthline, Air fryers indeed can make fried foods less fat and healthier, but it is still frying, and still not as healthy as fresh green foods.
Problem with this approach:
Our client, as well as our colleagues pointed out that the investigation is too complex for a middle school student to perform. So we decided to use the second approach, but with a less complex investigation.
Narrative Motivation
A conspiracy brews…
Ryan
- The student that started the #deep-fried trend.
- His father runs the food-processing company that supplies fried-foods to the school.
Hans
- The author of all the sensational comments under Official Replies of student government
- Lost the election for president of the student government last year
- Trying to overturn the current student government and obtain student support by stopping the replacement of fried food with salad.
- Incited Ryan to start the #deep-fried trend.
Art
Tech
Meowts(tweets) can now be added easily as they read from a simple JSON file. And example is shown in the image below.
As is common with all the tech in the project, every new feature created is programmed in a way that makes it easy for content to be added quickly.
The next week will be an important one as we would be playtesting our first chapter with players from our actual target demographic.