Help out at the shelter is an online game developed for the iCivics website, an educational project aim to teach the kids about the civics and how to become active participants. Help out at the shelter, is part of the Activate section of the games.
The game starts with asking the player to select a character. The character options look alike hence player won't feel the ownership of the avatar that is representing him.
On the next screen, the player sees his character at his room with arrows pointing at: the tasks the player should complete, the current objective, and player himself. Once clicked on the player, the options for what the player should do next pops up and the first and only option in the beginning is Volunteer. Volunteer takes the player to the task page, where the player can see the tasks he can select. There are locked tasks which will be unlocked as the player completes others. There is a personal task, which can be achieved by the player only. At first, this is not that clear but as the game proceeds, some friends join the player and help complete the tasks.
One of the tasks is taking care of a shelter. First, there is information on the screen about how many dogs need what and tools to tend the dogs' needs. This information screen comes on for every task if it is the first time playing it. The needs are water, food and cleaning. As the game starts, the player needs to pay attention to the exclamation marks appearing above the dogs. Then the player should take action according to the need in a given time. Once the time is out, a white box with text shows how many needs the player had met.
Next, the player appears back in his room, the home screen, where he can choose to volunteer for a new task. If the first task was successful, the player can go to the next task. If not, then the player has to play the same task till he can meet some amount of the needs. A task gets 100 % if completed successfully, and then next tasks become unlocked. If the task is not achieved, then the percentage can raise by 25 with every trial.
One problem with this game is that, the player does not need to care about the outcome of an action he takes. He is not attached to the outcome which results in no conflict or challenge throughout the game. The player can choose a task and repeat it over and over without worrying about the consequences. As a result, the player forgets the goal of the game, which is learning how to be an active participant. This makes the game almost just an interactive simulation that the learner steps through tasks and completes them.
Another problem is about losing the learning part of it. The “game” part surpasses the “learning” part and it becomes chocolate covered broccoli. A task example for this is where the player has to do bake sale. He has to give the appropriate baked goods to the person who wants it. The baked good, the person wants, appears on top of his/her head. The player has to right click and hold the baked goods, and keep holding down the right button and release it when the correct person is aimed. He has to respond to these at a certain time. This part gets a little out of the scope and becomes challenging nut in a way that is more like aiming at the right direction with the mouse within the given time. Player doesn’t learn anything related to being an active participant at this task, instead he repetitively gives cakes to other characters.
A game, whether for learning or not, has to have quantifiable outcomes, that is attached to the player. Depending on the outcome, the player can feel challenged, and this creates player effort. The player becomes more engaged with the game when there is a challenge. Player’s engagement and effort helps the player keep in mind the real goal of the game. For an educational game, the goal of learning a concept should always be out there, throughout the game play.
For this game to be suitable for the description of a game for learning, the tasks should have consequences like showing what happens if player can’t achieve one particular task. For example, for the taking care of the animals at the shelter, the player should see the dogs hungry or thirsty with a visual or sound feedback to let the player know that he has to give food or water to those dogs within the given time. That would also create emotional design in the game, and the player would feel ownership. These, emotional design and ownership, would result in better learning outcomes.
For the chocolate part of the game, that makes it a game with no learning goal, the player could make calculations for raising money and it could involve problem solving as if it is a real bake sale. The player can think about how much money should be raised, how this could be done and what are the expenses of baking and income, etc.
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