Makahiki: A Serious Game Engine for Sustainability Yongwen Xu Collaborative Software Development Laboratory Department of Information and Computer Science University of Hawai`i at Mānoa

Compete To Reduce Sustainability education efforts: Energy Competitions Water Competitions Goals: Reduce consumption, save resource and money Educate and hope for sustained behavior changes

College Campus involved 160+ CCN a nationwide competition that challenges college and university campuses to achieve the greatest electricity and water use reductions during a three-week period. Map courtesy of Chelsea Hodge, 2010 Campus Sustainability Survey

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

Want to Run an Energy or Water Competition ?

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

Oberlin Campus Resource Monitoring System B. Out-source to a commercial provider Oberlin Campus Resource Monitoring System Lucid Design Group

C. Build your own custom in-house solution The Kukui Cup 2011 3 weeks 1,035 first year students 418 players, 850 hours

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

d. Use an open source serious game engine The Kukui Cup 2012 Univ. of Hawaii Manoa 9 months Energy Competition Smart meter Hawaii Pacific Univ. 3 weeks Energy Competition Smart meter East West Center 2 weeks Energy and Water Competition No smart meter

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.

Game engine definition (cont.): “a framework comprised of a collection of different tools, utilities, and interfaces that hide 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: ??

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

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

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

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

Makahiki Game Engine Features 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

System Design

Game Library

Admin Interface

Game Analytics

Responsive Design Laptop view Mobile view

Deploy to PaaS Cloud

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

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 admins 2. In-game survey from players 3. game play logs and analytics data Data Analysis: 1. TAM analysis of interview and survey data 2. quantitative analysis of game play data

The Kukui Cup 2012 Experience Univ. of Hawaii Manoa Energy Game 9 months 1067 students near real time data 144 learning actions Hawaii Pacific Univ. Energy Game 3 weeks 198 students near real time data 39 learning actions East West Center Energy and Water Game 2 weeks 129 residents manual data 41 learning actions

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 reviews 3. Questionnaires

Experimental Design 3 Evaluation: Case study of research experience in UH game instance. Data collection: 1. game analytics data 2. game logs data 3. 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

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

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

Thank You!