Breed: New World

"Does the framing, and thus the players’ perception, of a game change the game’s educational impact? To study this another question arises: what design considerations are needed to archive a game that can be seen as both educational and entertaining?"
Summer 2021 I graudated from the games programme (design track) with this research question, having worked on this for half a year with two others. Two study this, we created a game, which could be presented as both a learning artefact and entertainment artefact. The game is Breed: New World which is based on topic of selective breeding.
Set on a alien planet, your job as a researcher, is to recreate humanities breeding achievements back from earth. This includes having fowls breed for meat, dog-like creatures to tame and goats (with trunks) for milk and wool. To make it a less apparent learning artefact, the game is designed to differ from the common learning game. This resulted in a 3D first-person farming simulater where you breed animals, with a surprise alien invasion in the mix.
On this project all members worked closely together, and all where involved more or less in all areas of the development, from programming to the visual elements. My biggest contribution to the game where in creating 3D assets (the lab, barn, trees and characters), 2D assets (animal icons), animations and user testing. As said we all where involved all aspects of the development, meaning I all so worked on balancing the game, QA testing, designing the interaction, etc.
To return to the rather long research question in the top. Sending mails to participant in a A/B test, presenting the game as either a "game" or "learning game" do not create any statistic significant difference. When it comes to designing an artefact, it is rather easy to create one that theoretically speaking is a learning game, yet can be percieved as a game for entertainment. That said, it is harder to convince players that the artefact is a learning game, as it seems players has a understanding of learning games based on early 2D mouse-interaction learning games that clearly states they are for learning.

Credits:

• Niklas Pelle Michelsen
• Nikolaj Jacob Andersen
• Tobias Damm Buhl Schamaitat

Download on itch.io