Resources

With ChoiCo, students can become sensitive to and grapple with wicked problems by playing, modifying or creating choice-driven simulation games. Wicked problems are multifaceted real-life problems with no clear solutions, such as balanced diet, climate change or cybersecurity.

As players, students employ decision-making, empathy, argumentation and systems thinking to make choices with conflicting consequences, and try to maintain balance for as long as possible. The winner is the player who survives longer.

As designers, they can design a map and place choices on it; define the conflicting consequences for each choice; use map editing; Google Maps; and program the rules using block-based programming.

With the extended AR features, ChoiCo can be used on any mobile device to design games outdoors. Students can add new game points to their location while moving around, and see how their surroundings look like in Street View.

By switching between the roles of player and designer, students become more knowledgeable and less anxious about important socioscientific issues of our time, developing at the same time skills such as computational thinking, creativity, communication, flexibility and critical thinking.

Play a ChoiCo game either by choosing an online game, or load a game from your computer. In a ChoiCo game the player makes choices that have conflicting consequences in a set of predefined fields. For example, in this game the player chooses among different places to visit or different activities to do in a city.

Each choice has consequences on the time he spends, the fun he gets, the money he has and his social image. You can see the consequences of each choice in the point information table on the right part of the screen.

Each time the player makes a choice, the values of the fields in the field table on top of the screen change according to these consequences. Here, the 'Pizza place' choice increases the field 'Fun' by 10 and decreases the field 'Money' by 15.

In case a field of the game has too low or too high value, popup messages warn the player. Here, 'Social prestige' value is low, so we have to make a choice that has a positive consequence in the field meaning it increases its value, like the choice 'Golf club', which increases the 'Social prestige' field by 30.

The aim of the player is to stay in the game for as long as possible, keeping the values of the fields in balance. Here, we lost because the value of the field 'Money' is very low. In the end of the game, download your score and game load, where you can see all the choices you did until you lost.

In order to add a choice in a ChoiCo game, go to the edit mode. Every choice of the game is represented by a line in the data table. Click on the pin icon on the left of the screen. For as long as the icon is green, you can add new choices by clicking on the map.

Every time you add a choice on the map, a line is added to the data table. There you can name the choice you have added and define its consequences for each of the fields of the game. For example, here we add a choice 'Theatre', which increases 'Covid risk' by 20, 'Social life' by 10 and 'Fun' by 20, while it decreases 'Money' by 20.

If you want to delete a choice from the game, go again to the edit mode and right-click on the pin that represents the choice, then click on 'Delete point'.

The fields of the ChoiCo game are the different parameters that are affected by the player's choices. For example in this game, if the player chooses to go running, the running of the field 'Physical' will increase by 50, as running has a positive consequence on physical health. Accordingly, the choice 'Local store' decreases the value of the field 'Money' by 30.

You can add new fields in a ChoiCo game by going to the edit mode. On the right part of the screen you can see the database of the game, where every line corresponds to each choice in the game, and every column to a field of the game. Add a new column to the table by clicking on the plus icon on the top-right of the database window.

Let's add in this game a field called 'Energy', which represents how much energy the player consumes by each choice. Set the type of the field by clicking on the white box under the name of the field, and then on the settings icon on the left part of the screen. Here we choose numerical type for the field 'Energy'. Set a value for each choice. For example, 'Rest at the park' increases energy value by 10, while 'Walking with a friend' decreases the value of the field by 10. Use the arrows to change the columns and lines' order.

Switch to play mode. Notice that the new field is undefined in the fields table. This is because we have not defined the initial value of the field, meaning the value that the field has when the game starts. Switch again to edit mode and go to 'Initial Settings' tab. Here you can use block-based programming to set the initial values of the fields. You can either choose a block from the left part of the screen or copy-paste and edit an already existing one. Here we set the initial value of energy to 50. Switching to play mode again, you can see that when the game starts the value of the field energy is 50.

In order to delete a field, click on the white box under the name of the field and then on the bin icon. Delete the initial value block that refers to the deleted field.

You can provide the player with useful information about a choice by adding a textual field in your ChoiCo game.

Go to the edit mode and click on the plus icon on the top-right of the database window. In this game, we name the field 'Useful information'. Click on the white box under the name of the field, and then on the settings icon on the top-right of the database window. Set the type of the field to textual.

And now you can add your descriptions. For example in this game, for the choice 'Rest at the park' we add information about an exhibition that takes place there. When switching to play mode, the information appears in the 'Point information' table.

The aim for the player in a ChoiCo game is to stay in the game for as long as possible, keeping the values of the fields in balance. The player loses when the value of a field is too high or too low. For example in this game, the player lost the game because the value of 'Money' field is very low, -15.

To program the ending rules of your game, go to the 'End Rules' tab of the edit mode. The game here is programmed that if the value of the field money is below 10, a message pops up and the game ends. Let's change this value to 30. Now the player loses if the value of the field 'Money' is lower than 30. Here the player's money went to 25, which is below 30, so the player lost.

You can create new ending rules by choosing the block 'if' from the 'Conditionals' category on the left part of the screen. Add the variable you want the rule to refer to from the 'Variables' category. Here we want to create an ending rule for 'Fun'. Here we set a rule that says if the value of the field 'Fun' is lower than zero, then pop up a message and end the game.

Let's play. We lost because 'Fun' is -20, lower than zero, which we set as an ending value.

The instructions for the player appear in the popup window in the beginning of the game. Go to the edit mode and click on the notepad icon on the left part of the screen. Edit the text or add your own. Change the style, size and colour of the text.

When you are ready, close the text editor window and switch to play mode. You can now see the instructions for the player in the popup window that appears in the beginning of the game.

Instead of a background image, you can make a ChoiCo game using the Google map. In the Google map that appears in the scene, you can zoom in and out; use satellite view; show or hide the labels on the map; show your current location; choose 3D or Street View of the map; use Google Compass to orient yourself; and view the map in full screen.

You can add a point on your current location by clicking on 'Add Marker to Current Location'. You can also add more points on the map using the pin icon on the left of the screen. Before starting playing, do not forget to set the fields' initial values.

When you use Google Maps in a ChoiCo game, you can show live traffic data by clicking on the 'Show live traffic' option. You can use this information in your game. Go to edit mode and add a new field in your game by clicking on the plus icon on the rigged top of the data table window. Click on the white box under the name of the field, and then on the settings icon. Set the field type to 'travel time'. Choose whether the value of the field will increase or decrease by the selection of each choice. Then choose the point from which the time will be counted.

Every point in the database has a number. Select the point with the according number. For example, here we want the game to calculate the time to the fast food from home. Set the initial value of the field. Switch to play mode and select a point. In this game, you can see that the field time takes the value of the time needed to get to the place that the point represents from the point home.