| |
Google sent out a call for entries called Project 10100, asking people to submit project ideas that they could invest in, in order to help a large number of people.
The following is one of the project proposals that I submitted.
Your idea's name:
Electrical Engineering Game
Please select a category that best describes your idea.
- Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
- Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
- Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
- Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
- Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
- Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
- Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
- Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don't fit into any category at all.
What one sentence best describes your idea?
Game about exploring an agricultural-era world, picking up and assembling devices based on arcane texts...which depict everything as circuit diagrams.
Describe your idea in more depth.
The game character within this computer-based role playing game is a boy or girl whose only option is to become a farmer (or potentially a member of the
priesthood). Shunning those options, he or she decides to travel the world and embrace their wanderlust spirit.
As they travel the world, they find and collect "spiritual" devices from the ancients/gods. Soon, they come across a crashed spacecraft with two books
and two skeletons -- one book is an advanced textbook, and the other is a children's book -- entirely in pictographs and alien writing. As the character
reads the book and starts to put the devices that they find together, they soon learn that they can create simple circuits...as well as construct more
advanced devices. (The alien pictographs are actually real-life electrical circuit diagrams, such as those found in any book of circuit design)
The rest of the game has them assemble devices to solve puzzles of greater and greater complexity, while exploring the world and solving the mystery of
who these ancients/gods really are...while getting a solid understanding of real-life circuit design.
What problem or issue does your idea address?
This game is designed to encourage true learning and the adoption of real world skills in children of a very young age. Understanding electronics and "the
way things work" is not only for nerds and geeks -- this brings it to a much wider audience. Growing up, I played a game called Rocky's Boots where AND, OR,
and NOT gates were assembled to solve puzzles. This stayed with me throughout my life, and 10 years later, while my classmates were struggling, I was able
to breeze through advanced Boolean operations and EE316.
If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?
The children who play this game will become the technocrats of the future. Five years later, when they are able to pull out an advanced electronics textbook
and realize that they can speak the language...that will be the pay-off. A fully immersive game that can teach an actual skill -- from trouble-shooting
electronics all the way to being a potential career opportunity -- makes the rewards of the game benefit the player long after they move on from the original
game...especially in our increasingly wired society. (Additionally, this game will encourage not only debugging skills, but also design and invention)
What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground
The first step is working with a good game story writer to brainstorm and finalize the major elements of the game - interface, environment, gameplay, NPCs,
etc., as well as working with a game architect designing puzzles based on different game elements (and making sure that different pieces will work together
seamlessly and are reusable in different puzzles). After that, developing a prototype of the game interfaces (and environment), working with graphic
designers/animators, building an alpha, testing, beta, etc. -- the typical game development cycle. Future steps include working out multi-player
playability, console and potentially mobile applications, and (possibly) AIML based NPCs (so they can continue to learn and evolve as well).
Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?
The optimal outcome is that this game would break the typical gaming life cycle of pre-release excitement, launch/reviews, initial spike of purchases, drop-
off of purchases, and relegation to the dollar bin. This game could continue to evolve and regenerate interest, as well as be adopted by schools and taught
in course curriculums. There could eventually be off-line competitions, tie-ins with Engadget, hacking hardware contests, O'Reilly's Made magazine, etc.
0 Comments
Submit a Comment:
|
