Feed the Fidgits
Web and Mobile Game
2017
Company: WGBH Digital
Client: PBS Kids, Design Squad Global
Tools: JavaScript, CreateJS, Springroll, Flash
Role: Game Design, Programming
Awards: Emmy Nomination for Interactive Media
Goal & Requirements
PBS Kids’ Design Squad needed a new game to help teach systems thinking and engineering processes for ages 8-12. The goal was to create puzzles with open-ended solutions where a player could experiment, fail, and learn through feedback.
Approach
Ideation
We began with an open concept brainstorm to identify themes and premises in which to teach systems thinking. We engaged with a few classic systems-game archetypes, including cooking, gardening, and city simulation games. We landed on the idea of a hydroponic farming game as the premise was novel, contained visible and tangible mechanical systems, and provided a metaphor for growth. To gather more information and inspiration, we worked with Grove Labs, a hydroponic farming startup in Boston, to find digestible variables we could base gameplay mechanics around.
Prototyping
I built several prototype mechanics for building out the farm, which we tested with our target age group. Given the number of variables players were juggling during gameplay, we found that a hyper-simplified version of each mechanic gelled together more easily than more involved simulation. We settled on the most tangible trio of variables: number of plants, number of fish, and size of the water supply.
Players initially build their farm out of pipes using a drag-and-drop mechanic, and add water and fish to a basin. Then they would begin the water cycle through the farm, which would succeed or fail depending on whether they maintained an appropriate ratio of plants, water, and fish.
Designing a Feedback System
An important problem to solve was how to offer feedback to the player when a farm failed. We needed a system that would identify the particular failure conditions, encourage further exploration by providing relevant hints, but stop short of spelling out a solution.
In order to provide appropriate feedback, the failure conditions were sorted by a combination severity and how frequently those particular failure conditions had been met.
If the player met these failure conditions:
too many plants for the water supply (1 plant too many)
too few fish to filter the water (2 fish short)
failure to feed the fish (instant fail)
The feedback would lead with the most severe condition (failure to feed the fish) and follow with the second most severe (too few fish). If two conditions of equal severity were met, the system would check if those conditions had been met before in previous fail states and prioritize the repeated mistake.
Playtests of the game were followed by questionnaires, to assess if the player was retaining the curriculum from the game. We learned from these assessments that when we used this feedback method, players were more likely to retain the curriculum than when we did not provide feedback, or spelled out the answer.
Outcome
Proactively gathering knowledge and inspiration as a team in the early stages of the project synchronized our agendas and allowed us to work quickly towards a design.
Post-gameplay assessments with players confirmed that the experience equipped them with knowledge of how the systems worked together, and steps they could take when their experiments failed. The game was part of the Design Squad suite of interactive experiences, which was ultimately nominated an Emmy for interactive media.
