Old Streets Adventure: Fall 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

Old Streets Game

Test Date Sep 3: 2019 (5 teams of 3 played)
Present from KCAD: 6 students working that have not played the game before
Present from GRPM Staff: Erin Koren (Museum Educator), Gina Bivens (Historian), plus other museum educators. All of them had played the game before.
This version had no prices on the items in their locations. Item prices were listed on the tallier sheet. Players had to visit shops to see if the item they suspected to be correct... was in stock.
The museum was unusually quiet.

Action Items are bold-Italicized

The game needs to get players to spend more time looking into and discovering things in the locations. 3 of the teams were able to partially, or completely hack the game and did not need to spend that much time seeking items in their locations.
- Put all items in one list and add more red herrings (out of stock, wrong prices). That will make the game much harder to hack
Instructions: The part about items not being in stock was not noticed by the teams working strictly off the instructions and not remembered by the other teams.
- Action... make it a lot clearer & put in multiple places
- Add train delay story to explain the out-of-stock issue
Need a reward at the end
- Make a paper check system and stamp or sticker reward
- Eventually make a digital version with a QR code on a poster that provides an animated reward (players enter their answers into a form field)

Make users solve riddles to figure out some prices
Some items that have prices on them in the store would not have prices on the sheet. Players would need to find them.
Add multiples of items... requires more math

Add street names on the maps - this will connect it connect with contemporary GR
Game was playable without the historical figure key, so that can be left off of the
tallier Sheet.
Place icons next to place names for young non-readers
- May make game too easy
- May removes some of the discovery aspects
- Might oversimplify from an educational aspect (without reading required)

Move the Street Railway Ticket prices to the Indiana and GR Railroad ticket area.
There is a pick axe.. so it cannot be out of stock

Spread posters around so each team has to move around more
Ezra Holmes should be near Rudell
J.C. Craig should be at back of gun shop (across from engine house next to bench)
Chan hoy needs to move into a better lighted side of the post (it was too dark for the camera to recognize the target).

Phone: subtitles and animations were readable for the holder but not so much for the group
It's fairly typical to watch the animations twice
The museum was quiet so all the teams could hear the audio and did not need to rely on the subtitles