Game Designer, Project Lead
Client: Prevention Strategies
Shipped on Web Browser
Overview
Create a research prototype game that can demonstrate the efficacy of a gamified drug use prevention program based on values clarifications therapy. The player will choose NPCs (“classmates”) to spend their time with. The player’s choices and actions in the game will influence how well they can achieve their life goals as reflected in their score.Learning Experience Goals
- teach adolescents to be more selective in friend selection
- teach adolescents to actively pursue their life goals
- learn how to recognize and avoid individuals who are at high-risk for engaging in anti-social activities
The client created “TeenSim” and wanted us to turn it into a prototype playable game. They created their own game design document that we used to jump off from to make sure their priorities were included in the game we designed for them.
I focused on producing a final GDD that captured the game prototype we aimed to build. Some features of this described:
- Locations: NPCs can be found in school rooms and talked to, giving agency to the player to make decisions about where NPCs with their same life goal may reside.
- Simplify Life Points: Life Points was already designed by the client as a metric to document how well the player is sticking to their life goals. Instead of providing a point reward for every available life goal and how well the activity rates on Most relevant to Least relevant, I made sure to cut through the noise and designate 3 kinds of activities: Prosocial, Neutral and Negative.
Release
Defined AWS analytics to store and anonymize player’s game data to forward the client’s research.
Shipped for web browser.