[kidsgames] geography game

[pkienzle@kienzle.powernet.co.uk (Paul Kienzle)]

A geography game might be fun.  Tommy wants breakfast.  Rice Crispies
with bananas and milk, a glass of orange juice, and maybe a kiwi on
the side, so he jumps into his teleporter and bounces around the world
looking for stuff.  He knows that rice paddies are hot and wet, and
bananas are tropical, kiwis are temperate, oranges are subtropical and
somewhat draught tolerant, and cows like grass.

The game starts off with an empty kitchen, and a shopping list on
the fridge.  He clicks on the banana icon of the shopping list and a
picture of a banana tree pops up with a jungle backdrop.  His teleporter
has a globe which he can spin and click on to go where he wants to go.
Beside the globe are buttons to select between temperature, rainfall,
vegetation, and political boundaries representations.  When he actually
finds the banana trees he can load some bananas into his teleporter,
press the return button, and be back in his kitchen with the bananas
on the table next to his bowl.  A more elaborate version would force
him to handle the bananas once for each time they are actually handled
(onto a truck to the coast, onto a ship, onto a truck to the warehouse,
onto a truck to the supermarket, onto a car to home).  All very tedious,
but it does highlight an advantage of buying local produce.

This idea was sparked by a mention on another mailing list that Debian
Potato includes a mapping package called GMT.  Has anyone played with it?
Does it have geographic data on the whole earth (political boundaries,
climate, etc.)  Could its maps be incorporated into a point and click
type game (with produce stickers of course!)  Production information is
available in the CIA fact book is it not?

I don't know how this fits in with the "generic kids game engine"
discussion that's being batted around.  I suppose it is just clicking
on icons to change between scenes, and spark the occasional animation.
The spinning globe is more complicated, and will require some pretty
game specific code.  If we design a few games like this, we will get
a much better sense of what facilities we need from our game engine.
Too bad I'm too busy to take a stab at it.  Any takers?

"Scalability" is a difficult problem.  Certainly a 3-5 year old could
click around the world and see whatever happens to appear while a
5-7 year old could actually collect the items on the grocery list.
I don't see it scaling much past age 7.  Nor do I see why it should.
I can understand the frustration with a package which puts arbitrary
limitations on its content simply so that the can resell three times to
different age groups, but on the other hand, it doesn't seem reasonable
to expect a game which appeals to a 3 year old to also appeal to a 13
year old.  Now you could reframe this slightly into a game where you
are given a plot of land and you can choose what to grow (bananas,
coffee, apples, ...).  Then introduce a trading component and groups
of 13-year-olds could experiment with various models of competitive and
cooperative trade.  But this is an entirely different game.

As for the other "scalability",  I don't see how 3-7 year-old version
is usable in classroom situations, or the 13 year-old version is usable
at home.

Paul Kienzle
pkienzle@kienzle.powernet.co.uk

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