“There is nothing that contributes so much to our sense of security and self confidence as knowing we are prepared for potential crises.” – The Bureau of Diplomatic Security, Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC), November 1995

In the context of international study relations, a crisis can be loosely defined as a situation where there is a perception of threat, heightened anxiety, expectation of possible violence and the belief that any actions will have far-reaching consequences (Lebow, 7-10).

Human vulnerability, exacerbated by the lack of planning or lack of appropriate emergency management, leads to financial, structural, and human losses.

All too often we are reminded that terrorism continues to inflict pain and suffering on people’s lives all over the world. Almost no week goes by without an act of terrorism taking place somewhere in the world, indiscriminately affecting innocent people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Game

The aim of this game is two-fold, firstly to better prepare oneself for the unlikely yet catastrophic event of a crisis. Secondly,  to bring about an awareness and understanding of various acts of terror around the world, and to better ensure the safety of travellers whilst overseas. Each mission of the game aims to shed some light on a previous terrorist attack, or a potential crisis situation. The missions are designed  to help recognise potential danger before they occur, to avoid the danger  all together, and to be prepared to notify higher authorities of any suspicious activity that could lead to further danger or threat.

The overall aesthetics of this game, bring about a worst-case scenario experience. The game arises the question of “What would you do, if…(some worst case scenario actually happens)“. The low probability of being in one of these scenarios is a catalyst for why people never really consider for themselves a contingency plan when some catastrophe takes place. For most, the upper limit of this thinking is at their workplace or school, where fire and bomb evacuation contingency policies exist and regular drills or training takes place. The issue here is that the individual becomes complacent not realising that these types of situations can take place at anytime and anywhere, alone or not. With the advent of terrorism, political and or religious incited violence, technological failure and human miscalculation and error all around the world, one starts to see that worst-case emergencies can happen not just at the workplace but anywhere and at any time.

The game would involve the initiatives of many different organisations, both commercial and the government would be backing the game. For example in Australia, such initiatives or organisations could include (See references page for links):

• Smartraveller – The Australian Government’s travel advisory and consular assistance service
• ASIO – The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
• DOFAT – The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
• AFP – The Australian Federal Police
• Last but not least, the Australian aviation industry as a whole

All with the intended goal to promote awareness of ones security and personal safety whilst travelling abroad. The awareness aesthetic is brought about in the game by scenarios, presenting the uncommon worst case situation that a person rarely faces in their life. However once these events do take place, the survivability of the individual can greatly be increased when they are aware of best practices and procedures in these situations. The game allows for this experience to be learned through iterative failure, where each time the player fails they are given a brief summary of their actions and instructed to repeat the particular scenario this time learning from their prior mistakes. While in chaotic situations like the ones the game explores, their are no hard and fast black and white rules that define what a person should do in any given situation. Thus the intent of this game is not to say “This is what you have to do in situation A and this is what you do in situation B”, but rather it offers some alternate suggestions (in the hope that the player learns to make difficult decisions quickly throughout the experience) that perhaps upon initial instinctive reactions to unexpected chaos one would not find immediately obvious. (For example one might freeze up and do nothing when a situation arises, this may be doing the person harm, by putting them in further danger, as an alternate reaction is required to minimise harm done and evade the potential threat or danger. ) Hopefully through awareness and opening up peoples minds to some of these ideas, they will be put in the frame of mind to think and uniquely answer for themselves “What would i do in (this particular worst case situation)”. The end result, increasing the individual’s decisive actions, to better personal safety and chance of survival.

Whilst the options available to the player and the way the player interacts with the game differs somewhat between scenarios, in each scenario the rules of the game loosely fall under the following list of rules:

1. The player is presented with some form of information or scene. 
   For example, a busy morning in the streets of New York during peak hour.
2. The player is then positioned somewhere in the scene as determined by the given scenario, and will usually be given some brief time to familiarise themselves with whatever they deem to be key elements of their environment.
   For example, the player is positioned in a car and begins sipping on some coffee whilst driving around the busy streets of New York for 60 seconds. Player may or may not notice the big pot hole up ahead.
3. An element of surprise takes place that causes something unexpected and unplanned for to happen. 
   For example, upon approaching a busy intersection the player’s view is distracted for a split second when the player hits a pot hole causing the coffee to spill over the player, when the players view is returned to normal, the player realises an immediate impact collision with the small oncoming truck is inevitable.
4. The unplanned event puts the player in a vulnerable and threatening position of some crisis.
   For example, the small truck is impacted as it is turning and consequently is tipped over on it side, the contents of the trucks container spills out onto the road. The engine of the player’s car catches fire upon impact, luckily for the most part the player is relatively unharmed and just a little shaken up. The player may or may not notice the flammable warning sign on the side of the turned over truck. The player is now right in the middle of a crisis situation.
5. Given the situation and the way the player perceives the threat of the situation to their survival, the player is left with a list of possible decisions that they must carefully make in order to react in some way.
   For example, the player can choose to break out of their vehicle and go see if the truck driver is alright. Or perhaps, they realise and decide for their safety they need to evacuate the impact area as soon as possible.
6. The consequences of the players reactions are explored.
7. The threat->decision->consequence cycle continues until either the player dies, or the scenario ends (with the player survived).
   For example, the player might begin pulling the truck driver out of the truck not realising the combined danger of the flammable liquid and the car’s burning engine, as consequence both the player and truck driver get caught in the explosion and die. Alternatively, the player decides their personal safety is paramount and evacuates, as consequence the player survives relatively unscathed.
8. Feedback as well as a transcript of choices made are given at the end of the scenario.

These scenarios have no right or wrong answer, they are designed to put the player on their toes to make life threatening/changing decisions, removing themselves from the emotional/physical pain of an actual real life crisis, in the hope that when a real situation does occur they can be better prepared for whatever crisis befalls them.

Analysis

One example of gameplay in the game, a scenario might start off as a full motion video in a first person perspective, of someone walking towards a bathroom just after exiting a plane and through one of Hong Kong’s airport terminals. The video would begin by first looking down at the person’s feet as they begin walking and then the camera tilts upwards to see the terminal’s walk way and a sign pointing to the bathrooms and another to the terminal’s exit, all the while the clanking of shoes to the ground at each step is audible to the player. Upon arrival to the bathroom the protagonist in this scenario upon realisation, verbalises to themselves that they “left a bag on the plane”. After turning and approaching the plane, all hell breaks loose as a loud bang is heard along with an accompanying ball of fire that is speedily making its way across the terminal walkway towards the player, trying to escape the narrow walkway and burning it in its wake. Once the loud bang is heard, the player is given control, and depending on their actions determines their survivability in this chaotic emergency situation.

The multifaceted branches of choice that the player can decide to do are many. Their is usually more than one way to survive, and more than one way to fail the scenario and die. Through this way players react to situations using their own unique instinctual methods.

• The initial explosion:
  • The player is killed by the shockwave and fireball as a result of the explosion should they choose to do nothing, stand, walk or run around the terminal walkway when they hear the bang.
  • Should they decide to immediate get down on the ground behind some form of cover, or run to a sheltered off area like the bathrooms (given they have the time to get there) will survive the initial fireball relatively unscathed, and the scenario continues.
• The lights go out as a result and the player is left in the dark, other panicked people in the terminal can be heard nearby:
  • The player decides to find these panicking people
    • Through their choice of dialogue, the player manages to calm the panicked
      • they become an asset to the player, remembering they have a torch/lighter in one of their bags
    • Through their choice of dialogue, the player cannot calm the panicked
      • they become too anxious and they run away leaving you alone
  • The player tries to remember the direction they came from and head towards the bathrooms/exits
    • Depending on their recollection they may or not remember or find the way out
    • If they do find the way to the exit, the scenario could end or keep continuing presenting choices and decisions to be made in a similar manner.

In the scenario described above, it can be seen that rule number 1 of the game, (being presented with information or a scene) can be vitally important should a crisis happen.  In a crisis, you cannot always use all of your senses, for most people they rely on their visual sight the most. However, an awareness to all 5 of human senses is very helpful in assessing danger and survival (you can smell something toxic, feel something hot, or hear something ticking, long before you may visually realise the potential danger). For this reason, as can be seen in the choice branch examples, if the player can correctly recall key information prior to an event of chaos and crisis, they can greatly increase their chance of survival. Using their sense of hearing for example, they can recall how many steps it took them to walk to the bathroom/exits. Thus their aural perception is used to calculate distances to key elements of their environment (an exit or safe zone in this case). In a real life situation you wouldn’t use your aural perception to count the sound of steps being made, but rather you would be able to just count the steps you know you made. Therefore the point of this exercise is just as much about your ability to use all of our human senses for survival, as it is to get a firm grasp on your environment. Knowing where the location of essentials such as entrances, exits, emergency entry/exit/marshalling points, fire extinguishers, first-aid kits, food, water etc. as well as potential threats or dangers such as elevated cliffs/heights, sharp objects, exposed electrical, flammable objects, harmful gases, suspicious bags, cars or people etc. are one of the greatest preparations one can have in order to take precautionary measures to protect their personal safety. Familiarising oneself with their environment be it at the workplace, home or abroad is exactly what the 1st rule of the game aims to achieve.

When the human body endears and suffers some form of trauma, the mind’s ability to make decisions is severely impaired, some people experience tunnel vision, while others lose their fine motor skills. In a traumatic situation whilst difficult it is imperative that one stay focused in order to effectively and quickly make and assessment of the danger or threat they are dealing with in their situation. The better the assessment the more chance they can make effective survival decisions. This is the basis behind the design of the other mechanics in the game. Firstly, players are put into a traumatic situation but are given the freedom to experience it removed from the real life pain/trauma of the real life equivalent scenario. The benefit of this is that they are in a calm and focused state ready to assess the situation and make informed decisions, that they otherwise would just instinctively jump into, perhaps at their own detriment. The game is designed so that throughout the threat->decision->consequence cycle players will hopefully learn through their iterative failures to better prepare themselves for making similar decisive actions in the event of a real world disaster or crisis.

The feedback system, is designed to give key survival tips to the player regardless of whether they actually survived the scenario or not. The reason for this is, not everything plays out the same in real life so their is no right or wrong way to do something in the scenarios, as long as the player realises what could happen and learns from this in order to apply to later decisions than the scenario is deemed to be effective. General Emergency tips and advice given in the game includes for example:

• “In an emergency try to remain calm and reassure others”
• “If a bomb goes off, get away to an open space or protected area as quickly and calmly as possible”
• “If you are caught in a fire, stay low to the floor, as smoke and heat rises”
• “be vigilant and stay clear of unattended bags especially those with wires protruding out of them or have a ticking sound”
• “Get down when a bomb goes off”

These general tips are more generally useful then telling the player “You failed the scenario! Next time don’t get burnt..”. Also, once key tips are given, they can be stored in a reference of survival tips that the player can look over from the main menu without actually going into the core game.

Scenario Types

The game should be updatable in that it can have scenarios reflecting real world events, such as the 9/11 attacks, Bali bombings etc. That can easily be added to the game once downloaded. Other scenarios that the player may face include:

• The spotting of unusual activity, potential terrorist planning or attacks
• Unusual videotaping or photography of official buildings or other critical infrastructure
• Suspicious vehicles near significant buildings or in busy public places
• Unattended bags
• Natural Disasters
• Earthquakes
• Tsunami
• Bush Fire
• Violent Storms etc
• Technological failure
• Plane
• Car
• Boat etc

Expandability

Making quick decisive actions for oneself is particularly hard enough, additional expansions to the game can deal with specific first responder teams such as security guards, police, fire fighters, paramedics etc. These expansions have a lot more going on, where not only do you have to worry about your personal safety,  but now players must coordinate the safety of many different civilians as well as commanding their response team to deal with the situation as well as looking out for their safety as well.

Summary

Through playing through the many different scenarios that the player must respond to in the game, the gameplay will enable  the player to prepare for and gain a better understanding of personal safety, knowing their environment, and  better responding to  and recovering from a disaster situation. Their readiness is especially useful to them when a crisis occurs abroad, such as a natural disaster, transportation accident, civil or political unrest or a terrorist incident.

References

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Accessed 13/11/09)
http://www.asio.gov.au/

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Accessed 13/11/09)
http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/index.aspx

Australian National Security – Community Information (Accessed 13/11/09)http://www.nationalsecurity.gov.au/agd/www/nationalsecurity.nsf/Page/Information_for_IndividualsCommunity_Information

Australian Federal Police (Accessed 13/11/09)
http://www.afp.gov.au/home.html

UN Action to Counter Terrorism (Accessed 13/11/09)
http://www.un.org/terrorism/

Lebow, RN, Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis: 1981. The Rancho Bernardo Hopkins University Press, ISBN 0-8018-2311-0.

Smartraveller – The Australian Government’s travel advisory and consular assistance service  (Accessed 10/11/09)
http://www.smartraveller.gov.au/

Bureau of Diplomatic Security, Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC), November 1995, (accessed 13/11/09)
http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/travel/security/security_overseas_overview.html

This made me realise the need for a space, in which people who travel together, can at a later stage collaborate their experiences of the trip in the one place. This way people can see the trip from others perspective and serve as a refresher in what they experienced on the trip. While blogging services, facebook groups and flickr provide a way to share experiences, non of them can do it a cohesive whole, where multiple people can contribute.

• Blogging services & flickr are usually one persons experience shared to the world, with the world offering their opinion or comment as a postback reply.
• Facebook groups do connect related people together, however only admins of the group can actually contribute.

What we need on the other hand, is a place that all participants can take part in. I propose, taking the collaborative functionality of wikipedia (or wiki’s in general) and combining that with social networking functions including the sharing of photos and videos, comments on media, personal anecdotes and experiences etc. Being a space for fellow travellers, friends and family, the space should be centered around 3 key elements.

1. Real-time travel updating
2. Post-travel reflection
3. Social interaction & future travel planning

Real-time travel updating

Whilst travelling with friends or family, the space should allow for instant twitter like feedback of travel experience. These experiences are categorized by travel location or activity.

For example, 4 friends travel to Egypt on a tour. After partying in Cairo, Tom posts photos of the night’s festivities. James, sees these photos and posts comments (similar vain to facebook/flickr), but now Tracy brings up their shared list of activities and things they will be doing together tomorrow (an itinerary), and makes a few changes. Tom, sees the proposed itinerary for tomorrow, and comments that he only wants to do 2/3 proposed activities as he is too tired to start early enough to do all 3. James is inclined to agree with Tom at this stage, and so Tom edits the page to reflect some alternative activities at a later time, to allow for some much needed sleeping in. Tracy, sees the changes, and decides to update the page compromising on tomorrows activities. She chooses to go with the original plan to see the pyramids as the alternate activity that suits her the most and then posts the changes. The next day after retiring to their hotels after the days activities. They begin posting their experience at each place. Tom: “Thanks guys, we managed to see the pyramids and still sleep in!”

This process continues until, a complete itinerary is made for the trip. Each place or activity has a separate page where experiences (and locality based photos/videos) can be collaborative shared.

Post-travel reflection 

Once an itinerary is complete, the collaborating travellers can choose to share their holiday space, with selected friends and family or make the space open to the world to see. Itinerary discussions are hidden, when the trip is opened up to others, or if they are no longer required the discussions can be removed all together. Instead, others should see experiences of each locality or activity, with the ability to comment on each.

A routing map of the whole trip is automatically shared and rendered post-travel, once the trip is statically complete and no longer up to the travellers speculation. Each destination on the trip route map, links to their corresponding destination shared page. And each page, can link to anything else if referenced in the page itself (same vein as a wiki page)

As not all travellers have time to post to the travel space, whilst travelling they still have the opportunity to add their experiences , photos and videos. Travellers can post to do like lists of what might be missing. i.e. “we need more photos of the Egyptian Sphinxes”, with links to the appropriate page. This way travellers can simple go to this page and see if they are capable of contributing to any of those causes.

After a long period of time when travellers can no longer remember all that they did on a particular holiday, they can now go back and reflect on what they did day-to-day using the calendar for that trip.

Social interaction & future travel planning

Now that family and friends have seen how much fun people are having on their trips, one group of friends decide to start planning their own holiday, either from scratch or borrowing elements from different trips. For example, they might want to travel to Petra, Jordan. So they create a collaborative travel space for all travellers involved. They then decide they liked what their friends got up to in the Egypt trip, so they add a stopover in Egypt, selecting their favourite activities. Additionally one traveller posts a scheduled discussion for 7pm on the main trip page, all travellers are notified. At 7pm they converse and chat about possible travels around the Jordan – Egypt area. The itinerary is then updated with these new proposals. Thus through this a new trip itinerary starts to emerge and unfold, and the above processes are repeated once the trip date arrives and the travellers adventure begins.

Sometimes games are driven by brainstorming uses for novel I/O devices such as the WiiMote.

Suppose you had a pair of sensor-gloves that could track your hand and individual finger movements. Think of a game that could make meaningful use of this controller.

A game that could make meaningful use of a pair of sensor-glove controller, is one of musical conducting. The gloves could track your hand and individual finger movements, and respond to your hand gestures, and how high you raise your hands. All translating to varying parameters in the game, i.e. volume, timbre, pitch, pace, note and instrument selection.

Players can be judged on how well they direct the correct instrument at the correct time to play a certain note at a certain volume. Lots of challenge can fall out of this. It could be presented in a classic guitar hero/ddr like format, where the player sees the actions coming towwards them and needs to respond appropriately at the right time. Or a whole new set of aesthetics for this game could result. Perhaps a 1st person view from the conductor, overlooking his conductees. Perhaps, the player is shown the full musical piece and what is required prior to the level starting, once it begins the player is forced to rely soley on their memory, (and even physical memory after enough repetions/failures) to conduct the right instruments, at the right time. (Time could be made more finite, by taking musical phrases: 8/16/32 beats etc. Player’s actions may only be required every phrase).

The game i came up with this week uses the fluid mechanic of flow. The basic premise of the game, involves a friendly goldfish swimming in a fish bowl perched atop a table. Fed up with the way its owner is treating it, the goldfish attempts to escape the confines of its fish bowl and seek a better life. A new life that begins, wherever the ends of the nearby drain below the table leads to.

The interaction in this game revolves around the player taking control of the goldfish. The goal in this game is to successfully rock the fish bowl enough to allow the fish to pour out of it, without killing the goldfish in the process. The mechanics are as follows:

1. The player is given 3 (cumulative) attempts, play begins with the goldfish in a fish bowl on the edge of a table.
2. Each attempt, the goldfish will nudge (fly/swim into) one side of the fishbowl, by an amount chosen by the player. The amount of nudge is added onto the previous attempt/s.
3. If the player rocks the bowl too much, the bowl flips over off the table, leaving a mess of water, shattered glass and a dead goldfish. The player fails.
4. If the player rocks the bowl too little, again the player fails.  The water in the bowl will rebound back and forwards in the bowl, and each time it goes forward, some of the water will pour out. The end result when the bowl settles: The goldfish ends up in a greater dire situation than before, with insufficient water depth to rock the bowl anymore.
5. If the player rocks the bowl just right, water and the goldfish flow out of the bowl into the drain below, without the bowl falling off the table. The player wins.
6. The player  gets to go again if their nudges in the bowl are insufficient, such that they barely displace the water as they lack the momentum to rock the bowl.

Once the player gets used to the play and interaction of the fish, the water and the bowl, if they can always gain the desired rocking angle of the bowl, the game will become stale. For this reason, the game is extendable to allow for a progression of difficulty through levels. Each level can vary, the desired angle based on many different factors. For example, early levels could vary the size of the bowl, or the amount of water in the bowl. This will give the player enough practice to get the feel for how the game works, before tackling more advanced levels.

Advanced levels, could include additional fish (not goldfish) in the bowl, that nudge the bowl in the opposite direction to the player’s goldfish. This would directly influence the desired rocking angle required. More, variations can come from this, the fish can vary in size (small/med/large) or a combination each with varying nudge ability, players would then have to work out how much more or less than their prior experiences to win the level. Variations in the type of fish could also impact the game, i.e. swordfish in the bowl might require a time limit, before they manage to crack the glass open leaving the fish to suffocate on the table.

For example, one possible game might be focused around meditation and relaxation.
The game could incorporate many different medidation exercises. At the start the game could instruct players how to do the exercise,
and then let the player complete the exercise whilst listening to relaxing medidation sounds and/or music.
Then on succesfull completion of the exercise, the player could log some of their medidative thoughts and
experiences in the game. The player can be rewarded for how often they do medidative exercises, and could
unlock additional exercises or sounds & music to use in the future. For, example after completing adequate exercises, the player could unlock a new exercise where they click on various features of a calm relaxing background to generate meditative sounds, i.e. Om, and other meditative syllables as well as different mantras. They will feel a sense of submissive relaxation in trying to generate the right sounds that they can hum along to.