The Floating Six Worlds
SERIOUS GAME DESIGN · BOARD GAME · The Floating Six Worlds
THE FLOATING SIX WORLDS
From Digital Design Studio, School of Simulation and Visualisation, the Glasgow School of Art
COMPASSION - EMPATHY
Empathy is a core to help people understand compassion. Only when people have empathy and learn to stand on others' perspectives to understand problems can they better make sense compassion.
WHERE TO BEGIN:
ONLY WHEN PEOPLE HAVE EMPATHY AND LEARN TO STAND ON OTHERS' PERSPECTIVES TO UNDERSTAND PROBLEMS CAN THEY BETTER MAKE SENSE COMPASSION
The Wikipedia defined compassion, said that “The etymology of ‘compassion’ is Latin, meaning ‘co-suffering’. Compassion involves ‘feeling for another’ and is a precursor to empathy, the ‘feeling as another’ capacity for better person centred acts of active compassion, in common parlance active compassion is the desire to alleviate another's suffering.”
Empathy is a core to help people understand compassion. Only when people have empathy and learn to stand on others' perspectives to understand problems can they better make sense compassion.
The goal of the game is about experiencing and understanding compassion. The keywords, which players will be experienced in the board game are as follows:
Feeling for another
Understanding others
Taking actions to alleviate another’s suffering
Players associate with characters in the game, feel its feelings, understand events from their perspectives and feel empathy.
TRIADIC GAME DESIGN - REALITY MODEL:
HOW TO MAKE LEARNERS EXPERIENCE SADNESS AND REGRET, AND INTROSPECT THEIR ACTIONS
TRIADIC GAME DESIGN - MEANING MODEL:
HOW TO MAKE LEARNERS EXPERIENCE SADNESS AND REGRET, AND INTROSPECT THEIR ACTIONS
PLAY MODEL:
THE GAME ENCOURAGES PLAYERS TO MAKE A BALANCE IN SIX CHARACTERS.
BALANCE IS A METHOD TO DETERMINE WHETHER OR NOT PLAYERS HAVE UNDERSTAND EMPATHY.
GAMEPLAY LOOPS: KEEP BALANCE - THE MAIN TARGET OF THE GAME IS TO UNDERSTAND OTHERS
When players first start to play this game, they may just want to achieve the goal on their ID cards, but when several turns later, they will gradually find out that the main target of the game is to understand others. Because when player hurting others, the retribution may coming soon because of the swap system. So, the main purpose of the game is transform the players in the first loop to the second loop.
TARGET AUDIENCE:
One of the main objectives of The Floating Six Worlds was to design a highly experience game, it meaned that each player could understand and experience empathy in the playing and something that both young people and adults of any learning level could enjoy and benefit from, no matter their previous experience with role-play game or board games.
The target age group was 12+, because players could better understand sadness and regret. Although some research showed children aged 6–7 who experienced regret decided adaptively more often than children who did not experience regret, designers still thought the group age was more than 12 years old, because the story line of the game was Chinese myths, and appropriate educational backgrounds would help young people understand stories better.
Whilst our game aimed to appeal to a very broad audience, The Floating Six Worlds would be most beneficial to people who were interested in Chinese culture. For younger western students, the game could introduce the system of Chinese myths and help understanding Chinese culture. For students experiencing empathy, the game could help develop and reinforce the understanding of sorrow. The game could prove particularly useful to students in preparation for traveling or learning to China. It helped students to understand Chinese traditional aesthetic and traditional culture in advance.
GAME CONCEPTUALISATION:
The name of the game: The Floating Six Worlds
The theme of story world: Stories of Chinese myths
Characters: God, Immortal, Monster, Human, Demon, Ghost
Methods of expressing compassion: “Theory of mind”:
Story world and story lines; Chinese myths are new stories for western students, so players can experience a new environment, which is meaningful to experience empathy.Each character has a sorrow backgrounds, it means different character has own background and responsibility.
Condition cards — players maybe draw condition cards in playing, and need to do tasks in cards, like changing ID or pause.
Methods of expressing “Philosophy of mind”:
ID-exchange card — players are likely to experience others’ backgrounds and stories.
Different choices — players can analyse the situations of each character and do the
suitable choices about the time of using condition cards.
Relationships of Six Characters: God, Immortal, Monster, Human, Demon, Ghost
- God protects human.
- God has linking relations with human. If god wins the game, human wins, and if human wins the game, god also wins.
- Ghost has linking relations with demon. If demon wins the game, ghost wins, and if ghost wins the game, demon also wins.
- Immortal has linking relations with monster. If immortal wins the game, monster wins, and if monster wins the game, immortal also wins.
Goal of the Game:
Timeline and ID-exchange Turns: ID-exchange Turns - Experience Empathy
The game is 12 turns. If no one wins or dies in the process, after 12 turns, the game ends.
In 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11 and 12 turns, every player can use one of their event cards or condition cards each turn and draws a new card.( everyone has to hold 3 cards in hand).
In the 4th, 7th, and 10th turn, every player should draw an ID-exchange card(two players will exchange ID), players have to use it immediately and no one can against it. When exchanging the ID, players need to exchange the background card and ID card, but keep the event card.
Story World: The world story of a game is like thoughts of human. Only the game has a worldview and story lines, players can be integrated into it to promote the progress of the game, and also the game is full of vitality.
The floating six worlds has a main story background, which contains the relationships of six characters(races) and the responsibility or goal of each race. and every race also has their own background, which illustrates the origin of race and story lines.
Furthermore, as long as some conditions are met, it is also possible to change identities among races. It is a point to enhance empathy.
Mapping
Use a visual mapping to introduce the relationship between six characters, and make players know what is floating six worlds.
Background Cards (characters’ features and backgrounds)
Event Cards (story lines)
TESTING / EVALUATION:
Throughout the entire game, a certain combination of game mechanics and meaning had already been highlighted. However, I am not sure, whether the combination is suitable or not. Thus, I felt the importance of testing the game. Testing and adjusting the game again and again is what designers are going to do next.