Robert Williamson

RHIT BIO491 - Milestone 3

The goal of this milestone is to polish the instructions, show that you are testing the game and thinking carefully about the science communication it does.

This milestone requires some coordination and planning, don’t put this off until the last minute.

Instructions

  1. You need to draft a full set of instructions for your game. Read this article to consider how to write good instructions. Longer is not necessarily better here, you might consider parallels to writing effective methods in research papers. Your instructions manual might need to include graphics, pictures, boxes, or other kinds of communication.
  2. You should be updating and modifying this document iteratively. I expect the git history to demonstrate this, that is there should be several versions uploaded over time and edits made.
  3. You should keep a document describing the decisions and changes you make over time.

The science

  1. You need to write a short essay describing how your game represents the science of the conflict system you are demonstrating.
  2. What are the 3-5 main scientific messages you are trying to communicate with your game? Write one question for each of these that a player should be able to answer after playing the game (e.g. “How does a transposable element cheat meiosis?”).
  3. What are some parts of the system your game simplifies, or even misrepresents? (Misrepresentation isn’t necessarily bad here, as long as you recognize it: “all models are wrong, but some are useful”.)
  4. What are the tradeoffs you made between game design and scientific communication? Would you do things differently next time?

The playtest

  1. You should have someone test your game for this milestone, have them read the instructions and play it.
  2. Watch them play the game, try not to interfere, you are trying to see where your instructions/mechanics are confusing for other people. Keep notes of what they are doing.
  3. Ask the players to answer the scientific questions you laid out in the previous section. Do they get the right idea about the biology?
  4. Based on the playtest feedback you should update the instructions or game mechanics.
  5. Write a brief description of how the playtest caused you to modify the game.

Turning it in

You should submit one pdf to the “milestones” folder that contains all the info above (instructions, science-reflection essay, and playtest-reflection).