Serious Games Summit DC 2006
Design Process After Dave went over the high level reasoning for why a budget game should exist, and what it should try to accomplish, Michael started speaking about the issues they ran into designing the game. They at first thought that the front end needed to be visually pleasing, but soon realized it didn’t matter until the backend was solid. In designing the back end, they eventually settled on a card game type system that would have a single cycle and then show meaningful results. This was done to make for an easy paper prototype of the system, and allow players to learn how the game functioned after a single cycle of moves. This was in contrast so many other budget games that depended on a series of moves to see the consequences of any one action. Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, and other games where a single card could have a variety of effects on the entire game were researched. The idea taken away was that a single card would represent the cumulative effects of a policy decision over a number of years. The cards were made as results, not algorithms. This also allowed for more cards to be added on the fly with less chance of strange interactions. Avoiding the political left and right influenced both interface and card design. Much care was done to make sure people would not feel the game was biased to the left or right. When the pros and cons of a policy are displayed, they decided to display on the top or bottom. It was also revealed that eventually display to the top or bottom would be randomized in order to take out any assumptions as to help avoid preconceptions.
Since the users have the option to create both pro and con, the game keeps track to see what rhetoric is displayed. It then records people’s responses and whether they are more or less likely to support something with various rhetoric displayed. This was done to not only test the value and power of rhetoric used, but what people were more or less likely to believe about a budget when phrased in certain ways. Any user can add the rhetorical tidbits, and the only moderating was going to be for profanity. At the end of the game, a summary of the cards played is made, and compared against other users with the same demographic set. The demographics are completely anonymous, but can provide feedback to players about how others of their bracket are responding to the issues. The idea for the community was to publish and share budgets to get a dialogue going, and to allow for more informed decisions about how the policy of the US is influenced by budget changes. Lastly, making the entire thing open source lets people take and change numbers themselves. The game itself allowed changing Entitlements and Revenues in the version we were shown, with Taxes and Cuts being the main actions that could be taken. All actions were followed by a set of “poison cards” that had negative effects. These negative effects were informational, and represented the bitter pill that had to be swallowed if a player wished to perform the selected budget modifications. But, to allow players the flexibility to create a budget regardless of political consequence, it was decided that a player could do whatever they want, and still make it to end game. The “poison cards” had a wide variety of consequences that helped illustrate what was at stake. On the extreme side, when cutting defense spending to 25% of its previous levels, the player was able to make the hard choice of disbanding the US military, and depending on Canada for support. While not many politicians would be able to get away with such a radical shift, it did help bring to light how large an effect some of these budget changes could demand. The online modification tool used a standard array of pages that allowed inputting new cards, effects, and comments. Next versions are planned to automatically update with data from some more regular sources of budget data. The current information was provided by Ben Sawyer reading and summarizing GAO reports over the summer (Ben was in the audience and extremely supportive of an automated method of input as well). Also in the works are improved charts and graphs that are easier to read and understand, and more cards to allow greater variety in gameplay. Ideally, the goal would be to be able to take a politician's claim, and then see the results of what would have to happen. They concluded with “Maybe it might help us understand that no change is without consequence, and when some politicians make claims, it's pretty much bullshit.”
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