This is where we post notes on our process and any other announcements on our progress. The project blog serves as a record of how our project develops over time.

The Traveler’s Dilemma is a game about two travelers whose luggage has been damaged and are given an option to get their money back. I think the travelers are not honest and are very greedy. They are given an option to say how much money their belongings were without knowing what the other said. When I saw this T thought this people could be getting a lot more money if they were just honest and told how much their belongings really were. I would have either said 100 or the real price of the item. The logic that the most likely number would be 2 makes sense; However, it just shows the greed of people this days.

Ayiti is a game that aims to raise one’s awareness on the hardships an underprivileged family may go through in life. This game also causes you to think of what your main goal is in life and whether or not it is worth the sacrifice.

In this game one must maintain a family of 5 for a period of 4 years and each year consists of 4 distinct seasons: rainy, summer, hurricane, and dry season. The main goal is to get the family through the 4 year period; however, there are many sub-goals one might like to accomplish. A win is rewarded for getting even only one family member through this struggle, but is seems only right to keep the family together and allow no deaths. Every character is susceptible to illness, which is why the health meter of each family member must be carefully observed as time progresses. In addition to the health meter the happiness meter is present, simulating the pursuit of happiness. Depending on your priorities, whether it is health, happiness, education, or money you can make or break the family.

The cost of life in this simulation of reality is outrageous, as I discovered in attempting to complete the game successfully. I conclude, based on my experience, that Ayiti is successful in accomplishing its main goal, but almost unrealistic. Although it may seem the player has complete control over the family’s fate a lot of things are simulated. For example, at certain times in the game a notice may come up informing the player of a fatal illness to one of the family members. In situations like this, one is only given so many options; at times one may only be allowed to ignore the illness, which puts the others at risk. Overall, the game is a good eye-opener and one can only help but ask, “what do I want out of life?”

The game my group selected for the serious game review was Peace maker. The goal of the game was to show how many problems there are in the Middle East and to show how unstable the lives of the Israelis and Palestinians are because of bad decisions done by the government leaders. In the game you choose the leaders you want to be then you go and make decisions for the group you are leading and you choose what you want to fund and where you want to take money from. What really makes this game work and gets its point and purpose across is that many things are based on real life events, and they show articles from real newspapers, real life pictures, graphics are just great. This game is effective because it really puts you in the situation.

Escape from Diab
Ayiti: The Cost of Life

Initially, my group intended to play and review the game Escape from Diab, which according to its website is an advanced game designed to teach kids about healthy eating habits. However, after spending some time trying to find the actual game, we realized it was not released yet. So, we went ahead and tried out a different game…

Ayiti: The Cost of Life is a game meant to show how difficult life is in some parts of the world, with the focus of the game specifically being rural Haiti. After playing for just a brief amount of time, it is quite obvious that life there is extremely difficult to manage. As soon as I had gotten the entire family I was in control of to be happy, someone got sick and died. When the money situation was starting to look up, someone suffered a major injury and required a costly stay in the hospital.

I feel that this game is very effective in raising awareness of the hardships people face in other parts of the world. It always has some nasty surprise waiting around the corner for you, just like real life. Now, if I could just find some cheat codes…

Ayiti: The Cost of Life

Hello everybody in computer land this is David Miles reporting from Tech II with a review of a game called Ayiti: The Cost of Life, which revolves around the life of the Guinard family attempting to balance happiness, money, education and health. The game lasts for four years, each being divided into four seasons, Summer, rainy season, hurricane and dry season, each having their own natural problems, such as sickness and hurricanes.
The agenda of Ayiti: the cost of Life was to raise awareness about the living conditions of rural Haiti, as it seems nearly impossible to balance all aspects of life. Whenever I made some extra money, a hurricane came and tore the family’s house down making them poor, and unhappy. When one of the kids got sick, they spread the germs to the rest of the family, forcing them to take off from school, and affecting their health negatively.

The goal of Ayiti: the cost of Life was to survive through four years of rainy, summer, hurricane and dry seasons, while maintaining a happy life, getting an education, earning money and staying healthy.

The game works as it simulates an under privileged region of earth. It successfully educates the user through the interaction of a family going through different but limited aspects of life, and it shows how hard life is for this family, and how hard they struggle just to make it through the day. Some cons to this game though are that a lot of the events that occur happen at the worst time, and the game exaggerates a few situations. For example, if one of the family members get sick, you can choose to rest them or make them keep working, but no matter the choice, the sickness will almost always spread to the rest of the family. Then a hurricane will come and blow the roof of your house off, and before you know it every family member is in a grave. All in all, this game accomplishes its primary goal, but in my opinion it exaggerates a bit too much.

Hello everyone.  For this assignment, our group was originally going to play and review a game called Escape From Diab, which sounded like a very interesting game.  We were excited to play, but when we were finished playing all the mini-games, we read a little note that said the full-length game was not finished yet.  The game should be finished soon but until then all we can do is wait. 

So instead we played the game called Stop Disasters.  The agenda of the designers of this game was to raise awareness on how to stop natural disasters. They did this by making it the gamer’s goal to protect as many people and as much property as they could from the natural disaster.  There were restrictions placed  on the gamers, such as a time limit and a budget,  in order to make it as realistic as possible.  There were good and bad things about this game. The good was that it was educational and interesting.  The game seemed very realistic which made it exciting.  There were also bad things about it.  One thing, was that there were squares on the map that the mouse could not click on to change but could be damaged and used against your overall score. Another thing was that you had to click each individual square when you wanted to do something to it, even if you wanted to do the same thing to a large plot of land.  It would be better if you could highlight more than one square at a time to change it in order to make it less tedious.  Overall, I thought the designers of this game got their message of awareness across very well through the use of this game, which was fun to play.

Peacemaker is a very prestigious game known around the world, and is characterized as a serious game. The ability to control Middle East affairs is a great way to show players, adults, and other people around the world the real events that have occurred in the past but can be prevented in the future.

This is but only one of the few games out in the world with a hidden agenda but a demonstration of how games really should be used in the market. Back to the agenda, it demonstrates political views to the players on the state of Israeli and Palestinian, also initializes the players realization of the world events occurring around him/her.

The goal of the game is simply to make peace with your opponent, in this case is between the Israeli and Palestinian, but there are many obstacles you must solve such as police control and military charge. The game is but just one whole simulation about real life events and you must settle it on your own. Only with the right skill and knowledge can you succeed on your mission to set peace in the Middle East.

As a gamer, I have been more interested in entertainment games but for the first time I’d experience a game where there is lesson to be learned and still have some entertainment. The game has won awards for its ingenuity to modern gaming. It has my approval because not only was it fun but it made me think about the world consciously. I really do recommend this game to PC gamers out there, and maybe we can all learn something out of this game.

Here is the link for the demo: http://www.peacemakergame.com/

Here are some screenshots.

Ayiti: Cost of Life

Created by: GlobalKids and Gamelab

Funded by: Microsoft

 

(Screen shots)

Game Review

By: Jann Ramirez

Background information: You can control what each character does during each season. You can either choose to go to work in a factory, work on the family farm, go to school, stay at home to rest, or go to the hospital. Some things cost money to do such as getting an education and going to the hospital. If you don’t make the right moves you may end up in debt and have to quit school or quit work. The Guinard family is comprised of five characters. Two parents: Jean Guinard is the father and Marie Guinard is the mother. They have three children: Patrick and Jacqueline (in their teens) and Yves (the youngest son).

The Goal of the game was to help the family survive four years. Each year is broken down into four seasons: Rainy, Summer, Hurricane, and Dry. To survive you have to keep every member of the family healthy and happy. If you survive all four seasons, you’ll be judged on how much education you were able to give to the characters.

The Agenda of the game was to help raise awareness about how tough life is for people who live in extreme poverty, have to face severe weather, and possible medical problems.

The game works because it gives a glimpse of how people live in other less prosperous countries. The game nearly seems impossible to finish, which says a lot about the real lives that people have to go through. Sometimes making the right decision is difficult to choose.

Click Here To Play

I just played Stop Disasters which is a game that enables you to simulate multiple disasters and ways of preventing them. I would say that the designers of the game wanted to create a game so that they could raise awareness of the severity of disasters. Thedesingers wanted to create a game that allowed for them to show how bad certain senerios can be and what people are trying to do to make them better. The goal for the gamer is to prevent as many people and buildings from getting hurt when the disasters comes. It is not easy to accomplish because you have limited resources and you have acertaing amount of time. If the gamer feels that they are more experienced then they can also change the size of the map to make it more difficult. Over all the game was something that impressed me. There are also some flaws in the game. The gamer needs to play for twenty minutes which they might not do because they feel it is a long time. The gamer also cannot control the people in the city, but overall the game was fun to play and it got a message across to their gamers.

Here is a screen shot:

The interactive game Peace Maker is an interesting development in order to inform the community about the current issues of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict taking place at the moment, the use of live videos during the day’s report gives the player a deep insight for that city. The goal of the game is to promote peace in the middle east. By creating a game, the developers are trying to persuade organizations to take action on the conflict.

The game simulates the life of either a Palestinian or an Israeli leader, once chosen, the player is in charge addressing the nation and become the voice of the the country against the opposite nation and in international affairs. The player is in charge of military facilities, create speeches to promote peace, maintain the well being of the citizenry and deal with sudden burst of revolts inside the nation. As a leader, the player has to carry out the militaristic, economic, and social events and endeavors that will benefit and eventually achieve peace before the other nation.

One thing i don’t agree is with the ideology of the game, the player is forced to compete for peace and i think those actions will not help the other nation at all, the opposite nation will see you as an opponent and will try to fight you in order for them to achieve peace.

Overall, the game graphics are very well developed, the audio can use a little upgrade, the game planning work very nice and the controlling helps the player to easily maneuver through the menu.