I had a meeting with Hyunjee Koo, a student in Anezka’s Major Studio II, about a game she is making for her final. It is about raising awareness of crimes specifically targeting women who are commuting late at night.
Her second iteration has great potential to be a fun serious game. Her research brought a few interesting elements into the mix. She found a color-coded alarm system used by the military to acknowledge different states of awareness for the soldiers in combat. She put together amazing assets of different sites to stage the potential crime scenes. She has information about the crime and how to prevent them. Her attempt was simple and straight forward. When the game starts, a potential crime scene is shown. The player has to pick what state of awareness does the potential crime scene implies. However, the moment of meaningful choice is broken here because what the scene implies is really up to the player’s interpretation but there is only 1 correct answer for each scene.
The quickest fix is to define the meaningful choice better by switching a few elements around and maybe bring in a timer. She has information about the possible threats and how to eliminate them in potential crime scenes – underground parking garage, household, shopping mall, and late-night park. We can design each scene with these threats embedded in the graphics. The player has to circle these possible threats out under a timer, the original mechanic but with a kick, to prevent the crime from happening. Here is the next iteration.
05/20/2013 stop the time when player find all threats before time is up.