College of Washington Bothell?s Middle for Significant Perform Launches UWB Wetlands Restoration Social Sport on Facebook
Bothell, WA (PRWEB) January 19, 2012
The Center for Serious Play (CSP) at University of Washington Bothell today released UWB Wetlands Restoration game, a free-to-play Facebook game that centers on the restoration of the Wetlands located on the Bothell campus. Created by undergraduate students at the university?s Center for Serious Play, the UWB Wetland Restoration game has players build a wetland from beginning terrain to fully functioning ecosystems. Uniquely, the UWB Wetlands Restoration game was built under the guidance of Dr. Warren Gold, the Director of the UW Restoration Ecology Network and faculty at UW Bothell, and Jordan Weisman, the interim Director of the CSP and a well-respected developer in the video game industry, creating a cross-discipline educational experience for the participating students.
The UWB Wetlands Restoration game contains familiar social gameplay elements, where players create and maintain a biologically diverse wetlands environment in a fun, interactive way within Facebook. Its gameplay cycle lasts 25 real-time days and shows players the evolution of the environment from a blank landscape to a fully functioning wetland that represents 50 years of real world progress. The gameplay is centered on an ecological concept called succession, which highlights the timeframe and sequencing of events that occurs in ecological restoration. Succession involves the development of terrain and plants, along with the migration of animals to an area to form a biologically diverse ecosystem. Within the game players add to an environment to mimic succession and they can measure the success of the progression of their wetlands through a biodiversity rating that uses point values for each item in game.
To create a successful and thriving wetland, players will need to buy resources. Players use two types of in-game currency ? grant funds and donations ? both can be used to develop certain aspects of the in-game wetlands. Grant funds are awarded at the beginning of gameplay and throughout the process. Donation dollars are accrued by inviting friends to play the game, helping other players clean up their wetlands, holding events to raise money, or spending real dollars to purchase in game currency. 80% of proceeds from the UWB Wetlands Restoration game go to wetlands restoration of the real UW Bothell Wetlands and wetland education in and outside of the classroom, while 20% of the game proceeds goes to support game maintenance.
?UWB Wetlands Restoration game success is three-fold,? said Jordan Weisman, interim director at the CSP. ?Already we have been able to show our Center for Serious Play students how to drive a game from concept to release. And, as far as we know, this is the only academic game design program in the U.S. geared toward undergraduates. Our secondary goal is to educate our players on the importance of wetlands restoration and bring a greater understanding of UW Bothell?s efforts to a larger audience.?
This game was made possible by an interdisciplinary collaboration between UW Bothell Associate Professor Warren Gold and Center for Serious Play students and staff. Gold wanted to create a way to make environmental sciences learning relevant to students who live in an electronic world, and brought his vision to the Center to see how game narratives could be used to accomplish this goal. Center students worked in conjunction with UWB?s Environmental Studies program for research gathering and to ensure that every gameplay and nature element was accurate.