Old Streets Adventure: Play Test 1: Spring 2019

Author: Bill Fischer in collaboration with students from the KCAD students as part of The EPIC Project.

Project Overview

A place based augmented reality driven game that:

  • Tells the story of old Grand Rapids in a way that incorporates animation, video, sound and gameplay.
  • Accommodates a variety of mobile devices (phone, small tablet, large tablet).
  • Provides a game experience that accommodates 1-30 persons.
  • Is packaged as part of a GRPM and/or K-12 lesson.
  • Can be packaged as a school field trip and/or integrated into existing GRPM educational programming, such as the 3rd - 6th grade Summer Immerse program.
  • Provides a non-game experience that is informational.
  • Integrates Universal Design Principles

This Slide Show documents the game play

Old Streets Game

Play Test 1

Overview

  • Test Date Feb 21: 2019
  • Present from KCAD: Kyleigh Daniels, Jeremy Fairman, Leanne Wisner, Luke Cleveland, Wyatt Anderson, Mackenzie Brown, Brenna Pilotti
  • Present from GRPM Staff: Ashleigh Palmiter (Museum Educator), Rob Schuitema (director of Education), Katie Bilby (Museum Educator), Gina Bivens (Historian), Alex Forist

Action Items are bold-Italicized

Map and navigation

All liked the look and feel

  • √ Put orange dots next to every historical character name or put historical characters names directly on the map.
  • √ Change historic to historical in header for that list
  • √ Directions are taking up too much space
  • √ Map needs to be bigger
  • √ Add some more landmarks to the map to make it easier to navigate...car, bike, Indian statue, barrels, fire engine, etc.

Tallier Sheet

  • 4 games on a page is good for playing multiple times and for managing materials.
  • All liked the layout, look and feel
  • √ Can we redesign the tallier sheet to make the game harder to hack?
  • √ Add Eva Laraway (above the the drug store) as a historical figure in place of one of the other women in the Clara Brown game. (couldn't find any information online... asked Gina (historian) if she had some. Gina could find none so we will be going with Emma Cole, who has a connection with the museum (though not specifically Old Streets).

Price Tags

Alex thought the look was pretty good but wondered if they could blend in with the existing price tags. That would make them harder to find, which could be good or bad.

  • √ Alex thought that making items less "up front" would have players spending more time at the locations and slow down the game as well as create a more immersive scavenger hunt experience.
  • Maybe put dummy price tags on non-game items as decoys... to game the game harder to hack.
  • Do price tags need to differentiate from price tags already in displays or should they blend it?
  • One group of players with museum staff thought the price tags were too hard to differentiate from the existing ones.

Gameplay

  • Just right for 5th grade... main target age. The key features to the experience were expressed as:
      • A meaningful way to engage with the Old Streets locations and artifacts within, through the use of a role-play/scavenger hunt game
      • A lesson that covers an understanding of inflation and problem solving using math as well as introducing 12 historically significant and diverse persons from the era.
      • Fun with AR technology and moving around the space.
  • Would need to be played differently for 3rd grade and for other groups such as English as second language learners. The GRPM education staff will brainstorm and work with us on that later.
  • Alex Likes the historical figures that have a presence in the Old Streets the best.
  • Looks like allotting 15-20 minutes per game would be about right.
  • Perfect for a one hour program where the game is played 2 to 4 times, depending on the efficiency of the group.
  • A second hour of extended learning could be added. We can make media for that.
  • A video "how to play" instead of written directions would be good.
  • √ Need two women to role play as... Replace Cuthbert with woman running for election to the school board.
  • √ It's too easy to hack the game. Those teams did it in 6 to 7 minutes. Even teams getting clues hacked it by just finding all the items the finding the combination that added up to 15.
  • Some thought the clues in the stories could be clearer and some thought they could be less clear.

Targets

  • √ Need to blend into the exhibit more
  • √ Alex Likes the idea of them being part of the numerous posters scattered about... perhaps newspaper articles about adding the characters to a fictional Grand Rapids hall of fame.