Designing Games for Rural Population

One of my interest lately has been designing for the rural population.
By rural population I mean the rural population in third world countries like India, and Africa. I believe that there is a whole lot of challenges involved in this and many a times the tried and tested methods and design patterns do not work in these cases.
I came across this paper today that deals with designing games for the children in rural India.
The paper titled: "Mobile Gaming with Children in Rural India: Contextual Factors in the Use of Game Design Patterns."

This is really interesting as in the paper its discussed that the general design patterns, become not so useful, as the context varies from one culture to the other. Similarly the cognitive understanding of games are completely different for children across cultures.

Using of identified game design patterns for expert game designers, the novice designers and the developers who are not designers is important to know. Many a times the standard design patterns do not work and its nothing short of suicidal to blindly follow them.

One of the things that i seek to find out is the parameters on which the design for games, and entertainment for that matter , are dependent on. This could also mean a design pattern of the rural population. How children interpret symbols, graphics, based on myths, based on society's superstitions...

The whole thing is proposed to be a part of the framework that I call the Rural Interaction Design framework.

Nurturing a baby...

Have you ever tried doing that?

Its happening.
The baby is being nurtured... The baby here is the "Bonus Year Game" for Dr Chef.
The Final Game is developing... and everyday the excitement level seems to be increasing.

Of late I started to analyze how difficult it is to be a game designer. Its challenging but its fun!
Its no easy profession.

The level of planning that goes in the development of each character, each frame, each flow, each level, each prop in the game.
the work s mind boggling.

Add to it the theory being given by our Prof Thom, along with the information from the Theory of Fun book by Raph Koster is really interesting.

Its interesting the moment you start to think about a game being designed you tend to add thousand features, only to realize late that actually nine hundred of them would actually not add to the overall experience of a game.

The theory point of a game is what we miss at times and its a pleasure to read this book.

Often, as a photographer and a designer I have felt that any system(photograph, video, game) would only be pleasurable to use, if there is a certain degree of fun associated with it. The way we not define fun is interesting.

Sanctuary makers

Come, lets create more sanctuaries and wildlife preserves for our planet!

The idea is inspired by this clip on creating the Gabon wildlife sanctuaries.
Gabons Parks Tribeca

The idea is to build a sanctuary / wildlife preserve based on the geographic conditions of the place.
Each location would be different for the 4 players.
Each location would require a different combination of resources to make a sanctuary.
Thus, say for Africa region they would require this combination.
A sanctuary here would comprise of 2 water body, atleast 3 species of trees, 3 species of animals.

Similarly for another region the combination required would be different. This combination would be revealed by the winning player only at the end of the game.

4 players start with the 7 different cards.

The goal is to collect the 8 cards to generate a sanctuary. The combination of cards required would be based on the location.
The 8th card would be the final card that they would pick up when they think that including would make the desired combination.

Total number of cards in the stack 48. (7 each of Creators and Destroyers i.e. 42 +3 UN Forces + 3 Ice Age)

The sanctuary creators :
An animal card.
A tree card.
Any water body card.
The UN Forces Card (the player can use this card as any other one resource card, this is the TRUMP CARD.)





The sanctuary destroyers:
The drought (the water body has dried up, player gives up the water body card)
The heat (trees have burnt out , the player has to submit one of his tree card)
The poachers (the player gives up one of the animals card)
The Ice Age Card (the player who gets this card looses after submitting all their card. This card is to be kept in the stack after the first round of distribution of cards has taken place).




Game Play and Rules:
After every turn, a player has to select a card from the stack of cards and submit one on the play area. The next player in turn may pick this card up or take the card from the stack. The selected card is not to be shown to the other users. However if the player gets the Ice Age card,
they have to show it and exit from the game. At this stage all the cards of the leaving player are also added to stack along with the Ice age card and shuffled again.

If a player gets a sanctuary destroyer card and does not have the resource, they have to give up any two resources that they possess. This can be their choice as to which ones they want to give up.

In case of the player having lost all their card, they loose, and are out of the game.

The player who is able to create a sanctuary first with the desired combination is the winner!

This could also be used as a game to increase awareness about the environment about a particular location. There is a good amount of learning involved, since this makes the players aware of the various factors that responsible for the destruction of wildlife and sanctuaries.

The Sanctuary Creators and the Sanctuary Destroyers cards could be further designed based specifically on a particular location and make the game more demanding.