Making an Educational Game More Educational

hey all,

As I write this, it is still Wednesday in my time zone. I figured I had better get an early start so that my post is not late again.

As you all know if you've been reading my blog, I've been working on an educational game about human digestion. In my opinion, it was not so educational, however. For example, in the stomach level the main gameplay loop is copied from Asteroids: the player must fly around controlling a pepsin enzyme and break apart pieces of food and proteins. As the player does this, they may or may not notice that different kinds of foods produce different amounts of proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids. This simply will not do. After all, besides the vitamin and mineral content, it is basically the ratio of those three nutrients that determines the food's effect on one's health. Many nutritional sources recommend getting about 30% of one's daily calories from fat. On a 2,000 calorie diet, that works out to approximately 630 calories from fat. Since fat contains 9 calories per gram, that works out to about 70 grams of fat per day. OK, so what right? Well, a 100 gram chocolate bar contains 38 grams of fat. Thirty. Eight. Grams. Of. Fat. Just one little chocolate bar and you've blown slightly more than half of your daily fat budget, and about 20% of your carbohydrate budget. Granted, there are some really great properties of chocolate, but still.

It is no surprise that many Americans are overweight, suffering from high blood pressure, hypertension or diabetes. One of my favorite ice creams is Ben & Jerry's Half-Baked, a delicious mix of chocolate chip cookie dough and brownie ice creams. I used eat a pint in a single sitting during my college years. A pint of this stuff has got 52 grams of fat, and 140 grams of carbohydrates, and 16 grams of protein. Besides basically using up all the daily fat budget, it delivers 1,080 calories, slightly more than half your recommended daily value. Of course, I was swimming thousands of meters several times a week, and riding my bike all around campus and to and from work, which is why I only weighed 56 kg.

So enough ranting. I decided that allowing the player to notice or not notice the different amounts of nutrients coming from the foods simply would not do. I created a small panel in the stomach level that appears after you break apart a piece of food. The panel displays the food's name, and how many grams of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates are contained in 100 grams of said food item. The player does not have to infer or guestimate how the foods differ, as it is shown to them. I am working on the same kind of panel for the mouth level.

I also plan on changing the way that I calculate victory in the stomach and the mouth. Instead of just counting the number of nutrients or the number of pieces of food, I think I want to switch to calories, making it even clearer that the body's currency is energy, and energy comes from food, but foods are not all created equal. If I were feeling really evil, I might add vitamin and mineral tracking, so that if the player chooses an all sweets diet, they get stuck eating 3,000 or 4,000 calorie diets because they need to consume so much just to receive the recommended daily values of vitamin A or C, for example.