Serious Games Summit DC 2006
Speaking at the recent Serious Games Summit DC 2006, Michael Gesner, the CEO and creative director for Dragonfly Game Design (Charlie And The Chocolate Factory), and Dave Rejeski from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, addressed the topic of why there exists a need for better budget games that both educate and inform. The project they presented was a work in progress, representing one year of production. It was created to serve as a roadmap for the full game, which will be completed as funding becomes available. The main impetus behind creating the game in the first place is the simple fact that the national budget drives policy, so a national budget game can help inform the public. A game was selected as the method of delivery due to the fact that the budget is boring to the mundane user. The prototype was built with funding from the Lounsberry Foundation, and was made to help those who have difficulty reading GAO budget reports (all of us) and to help reach young people with information on how budget and policy decisions effect us all. Young people, for the market they were looking at, are those under the age of 35. Dave then spoke about the existing budget games in the marketplace. Budget games have existed for some time, and a variety of table top games are run around the country that help explain the process. The Concord Coalition runs a popular table top exercise but only reaches a few, several thousand at best, people. The market they reach also tends to be an older demographic. Mass Balance, a project spearheaded by State Senator Richard Moore, had much broader reach, even into the k-12 range. This in part was due to the extensive press attention it had, but the 1.5 million hits with people returning on average 5 times to the site helped illustrate the power of a computer versus tabletop game for reach. Mass Balance also was an excellent case study on how informing the public when the budget was in crisis helped the public debate on the issue.
Process The first step taken in the Budget Game was to identify the properties of the table top games. The Committee for a responsible Federal Budget helped and two subject matter experts were brought in. An extensive review of the existing budget games followed, with a final survey into Gen X and Gen Y about the items in a budget that they would want to change. Goals Mass market penetration was a goal, and to poke holes in assumptions people make about the budget. Another stated goal for the game was to be party agnostic. Using a transparent and open source engine was deemed important, to allow people to modify the game freely, and it was hoped that it would help attract the desired 100,000 users and an online community.
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