"Gaming the drought" aka Drought Tracker
Our pitch is to create a "data-driven" narrative game that allows a user to assume a role, work their way through scenarios related to the drought, water conservation and water consumption, learn from their choices and share their results with their network of friends.
####Flow of the game
- User would choose a role and answer two or three questions that would further personalize the role
- Ideas for roles:
- Homeowner
- Owner of an industrial business
- Farmer
- Restaurant owner
- School superintendent
- Goal of the questions is to arrive at a particular archetype:
- Conserver
- Waster
- Compromiser
- Example questions:
- Number of employees, students, customers
- Type of crops planted, food served, etc
- Zip code/neighborhood/location
- Ideas for roles:
- User is faced with a choice in a scenario:
- Example choices:
- Use water sparingly
- Use water excessively
- Make a compromise in another area
- Example scenarios:
- Mandatory rations are in place. Choose how to spend your water allotment
- Similar to a state budget slashing interactive.
- Your business is offered a discount if it can reduce its water consumption by 30 percent. Where do the cuts come from?
- What "water usage" activities will you do today:
- Based on answer user sees how much it costs
- Shower for X number of minutes
- Run X number of loads in dishwasher
- Wash X number of loads of laundry
- Mandatory rations are in place. Choose how to spend your water allotment
- Example choices:
- As the user works through scenarios we offer links to resources, conservation tips from experts, facts about water usage, anecdotes and methods to participate in a discussion about water use in Los Angeles.
- Historical water use in zip codes will allow people to see how they compare to their neighbors
- Tips from expperts could be personalized based on the scenario
- Ideas for resources are below
####Ideas for sources of data
- Academics who create data values for how much water is consumed for each use: toilets, sink tap running, large load of laundry
- Solicit our audience to keep a water usage diary
- Gather and clean data that shows historial water use by zip code
- Crowdsource selected data points from user water bills
####Ideas for complimentary resources
- A user's guide to understanding the water bill
- A user's guide to what happens when… you flush the toilet, run the dishwasher, use outdoor sprinklers
- A mechanism to share water conservation tips with others
- A water conservation council
####Designing a Game
- Make your game fun
- Your game must have an objective
- The result of the game should not be predetermined
- Give people a reason to play again.
####Inspiration
I also really like the idea of finding a way to gamify this. Ideally, I'd push to add a PIN element as they did with Budget Hero (http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/budget-hero) or we could take this opportunity to create an educational game a la Marketplace Income Upshot (http://www.marketplace.org/sites/default/iframes/income_upshot/). If that is beyond our bandwidth, we could do a simpler maze-style game like the ones where you have to keep connecting pipes to keep the water from spilling then have water facts pop up between levels.
Additionally, I like the idea of providing real world tips. Don't tell me to cut 20 percent of my water. Show me how I realistically could. Could we create a gallery of examples of what people have already done with before and after photos and facts? We probably have a big enough pool of folks, between do-gooder celebrities and our PIN responses.
I love the users guide idea when it comes to what individual water decisions mean and add up to. With GAD, we talked about how much people think they know versus what they actually know—and the notion that one person's changed lifestyle couldn't make a difference.
Comparing and contrasting different locations is great idea, too. Molly already has a project in the works comparing Southern California to Australia, and there are people we could call on all over the world to flesh out a world map of water conservation and trivia.
Lastly, I'd love to turn all those PIN sources into a sort of council we go back to throughout the project's life. We don't have to use them in every story, but we can continue the conversation with them, taking direction from what they're saying. We could even divide them into different groups and have a few different conversations at once.