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Makahiki: A Serious Game Engine for Sustainability

Yongwen XuCollaborative Software Development Laboratory Department of Information and Computer Science

University of Hawai`i at Mānoa

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Compete To Reduce

Sustainability education efforts:• Energy Competitions• Water Competitions

Goals:• Reduce consumption, save resource and money• Educate and hope for sustained behavior changes

(3) Map courtesy of Chelsea Hodge, 2010 Campus Sustainability Survey

160+College Campus involved

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Dorm Energy Competitions

Reduce energy use during the competition by 9% on average

Hodge, Chelsea, Dorm Energy Competitions, Presented at the Behavior, Energy, and Climate Change Conference, November 2010

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Want to Run an Energy or Water Competition ?

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A. Use a "minimal tech" solution such as a web page and manual posting of data and results

Harvard Green Cup

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B. Out-source to a commercial providerOberlin Campus Resource Monitoring

System

Lucid Design Group

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3 weeks1,035 first year students418 players, 850 hours

C. Build your own custom in-house solution

The Kukui Cup 2011

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Kukui Cup 2011 Technology

George Lee, M.S. thesis 2011. Makahiki: An extensible open-source platform for creating energy competition

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Univ. of Hawaii Manoa

9 months Energy CompetitionSmart meter

Hawaii Pacific Univ.

3 weeks Energy CompetitionSmart meter

East West Center

2 weeks Energy and Water Competition

No smart meter

The Kukui Cup 2012

d. Use an open source serious game engine

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Serious Game Engine

Serious game “a mental contest, played with a computer in accordance with specific rules that uses entertainment to further government or corporate training, education, health, public policy, and strategic communication objectives.” Zyda, Michael 2005

Game engine• “collection of modules of simulation code that do not

directly specify the game’s behavior (game logic) or game’s environment (level data)” Lewis, Jacobson 2002, Game engines in scientific research.

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Game engine definition (cont.):“a framework comprised of a collection of di erent tools, utilities, and interfaces that ffhide the low-level details of the various tasks that make up a video game” Sherrod, 2007

Examples:• FPS: Unreal (rendering, physics, AI)• Mobile: Papaya • Healthcare: OpenLabyrinth• Educational Storytelling: Fabula• Sustainability: ??

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Serious game engine for Sustainability

Energy Competition:• Energy real-time

feedback• Competition

elements:-Scoreboard-Prize incentives

Energy Challenge:• Energy real-time

feedback•Game elements-Scoreboards-Prizes-Smartgrid game-Daily energy goal game-Raffle game-Participation game-Points and Badges

Compete Play, Learn

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Q1. What design elements are required in a serious game engine to facilitate the creation, administration and analysis of a family of serious game instances for sustainability?

Research Questions

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Q2. How can we provide effective support for configurability and extensibility in a serious game engine for sustainability?

Research Questions

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Q3. What game mechanisms are needed to effectively support research in sustainability education, user behavior, and serious games in general?

Research Questions:

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Q4. How can serious game engine evaluation provide insight into evaluation of framework in general?

Research Questions:

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• A collection of customizable games and game mechanics

• A library of pedagogically organized learning actions

• Real time game analytics for research and evaluation

• Responsive (design) user interface supporting mobile, tablet, and laptop

• Deployable to PaaS cloud as an inexpensive hosting option

Makahiki Game Engine Features

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System Design

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Game Library

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Admin Interface

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Game Analytics

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Responsive Design

Laptop view Mobile view

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Deploy to PaaS Cloud

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Evaluation Methodology

Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Davis 1989• Questionnaire instruments• Measurement scales• TAM2, UTAUT

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Experimental Design 1

Evaluation: Case study of 3 different game instances (UH, HPU,

EWC)

Data collection:1. Structured interviews (pre-game, in-game, post-

game) to the system admins and game admins2. In-game survey from players3. game play logs and analytics data

Data Analysis:1. TAM analysis of interview and survey data2. quantitative analysis of game play data

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Univ. of Hawaii Manoa

Energy Game9 months1067 studentsnear real time data144 learning actions

Hawaii Pacific Univ.

Energy Game3 weeks198 studentsnear real time data39 learning actions

East West Center

Energy and Water Game2 weeks129 residentsmanual data41 learning actions

The Kukui Cup 2012 Experience

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Experimental Design 2

Evaluation: Case study of multiple external developers who are

tasked with making enhancements to the engine.

Data collection and analysis:1. Log book of development activities from the

developers (online Google form)2. Code reviews3. Questionnaires

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Experimental Design 3

Evaluation: Case study of research experience in UH game

instance.

Data collection:1. game analytics data2. game logs data3. energy data

Data analysis:1. Social interaction in the game 2. Effectiveness of Eco-Feedback (real-time vs. daily)3. Effectiveness of game mechanics such as Badge,

Quest

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Experimental Design 4

Evaluation: Experience TAM, UTAUT, or proposed modification to

TAM, in serious game engine evaluation, theoretical exploration of applying the same process to other generic software framework, such as Django

Data collection and analysis:validation data of TAM related evaluation

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Possible Contributions

An Open source game engine for creating sustainability related serious games and fostering serious game research

Applying the Technology Acceptance Model in evaluating serious game engine and possible software framework in general

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Thank You!