Comments on: I’m Buzzing Home

By: rahulb

rahulb — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 14:49:19 +0000

**NOTE: I think you’ve linked to the wrong game – this doesn’t match your video at all**

I think this is a well thought-out idea for a game that is hard to get a feeling for from the sketch materials.

Centrality of participation:
The project is a game, so it is clearly participatory. In addition the choices between rounds is another spot to let the audience guide it.

Rationale for design choices:
The game design matches your stated educational goals. Having the participant be the bee is fun. I’d like hear more about the idea of mapping potential bee health onto the amount of buildings. I wonder if this mapping would make sense to a kid – needs some design discussions with the target audience to see.

Layers of reading:
The game itself is pretty simple, but the idea of having this be one piece of a larger curriculum on nature makes sense. I would have liked to see more thought about the gameplay itself – what design elements would be critical and highlighted, what techniques for playing could be supported.

Appropriate data use:
I appreciate your acknowledgement that the data and potential causes are complicated.

Suitability for audience:
The choice of focusing on a younger audience is good, and creates challenges.

Narrative:
The game play and narrative prompts for this audience have to be highly visual – I don’t see a lot of that in the sketch so far so I’d encourage more iteration on that if you were to move forward. The idea of mulitiple-rounds is a nice approach to this.

Call to Action:
Your invitations of what to do match the game overall, and I like that you include both individual action and collective observation. These all sound fun!

By: ojyao

ojyao — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 14:21:37 +0000

Its a great idea to do a game, and I think the gameplay aspect was executed very well. As others said, I think the message of caring for the bees and why bees matter could be hammered home a bit more so that the game could be more educational.

By: ifeoluwa

ifeoluwa — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 11:50:00 +0000

The game interface is ideal for children and I can see how a child would voluntarily play this game for an extended amount of time, I enjoyed playing it. The colors are bright and in theme. It does a good job at not making bees seem threatening but instead seem friendly.
I believe that taking action could be tied more directly into the game. I could see how a child could skip through all the information about how to take action and just go to playing the game. Maybe having a “plant a pollinator action” as a move in the game could help encourage them to learn more about what a pollinator is.

By: tmillis

tmillis — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 23:33:12 +0000

I really like that the data influences the gameplay and how hard each level may be. I think offering up the data, giving the player options, and providing resources would really drive home the lessons.

Given my previous comments, I think the main weakness is the gameplay. It seems as if you have a game and are just skinning it with bees and information, without tying it more deeply with the topic. As I mentioned, varying buildings per the data is great, but having a gameplay loop that more ties in with that data and those ideas would reinforce them. This could be done in a similar level format as you have laid out, but maybe have the player trying to pollinate a bunch of flowers and it becomes harder with the less bees there are to help you.