We are now returned from our camping holiday, which was largely characterised by heavy rainfall and inadequate bedding. Nevertheless, a fun time was had by all; campfires were lit, marshmallows were toasted, and various other items were experimentally cremated by curious children.
With such bucolic delights in the past, the project continues. This week, progress has mostly consisted of addressing a range of contractual concerns that have been raised by prospective team members, as we seek to increase our developmental capabilities.
Clauses have been questioned, hypotheses have been posed, and semantics queried, but we’re cautiously optimistic that all these issues have been answered satisfactorily, and we’re ready to move on to the next stage.
One other very cool thing also happened; last night, we received an e-mail from David Waddington, Associate Professor in the Department of Education of Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.
He informed us that he and his colleague Thomas Fennewald have been studying Fate of the World to see how efficacious it is for educating people about climate change. Their research is not yet fully complete, but they have already presented some of the early findings at the Games+Learning+Society conference, which took place in Madison, Wisconsin last month.
He sent us the pdf of the poster displayed at the conference, which you can look at here. He also included word clouds generated from participants’ responses on the subject of climate change before and after they played the game, which indicate some of the changes in understanding people had from getting hands-on with the issues humanity are likely to face in future.
Needless to say, we are hugely gratified that our game merits academic research, and we keenly await seeing David and Thomas’ completed work. Detailed analysis like this is fantastically valuable to us as developers, and we’ve already taken on board some of the points raised here (for example, it’s unlikely that the sequel will be quite as Nintendo Hard as the original).
So, all in all, not too bad for the first week back at work. Things should pick up even more next week, as the new school term begins, and team members can turn their efforts from childcare to content creation. Thanks for reading, and tune in next week for another exciting instalment!