Bloom’s Taxonomy application in the Liike Game

GAME BASED LEARNING: A TABLETOP GAME APPROACH TO KNOWLEDGE APPLICATION AND PERVASIVE SKILL ACQUISITION

Tab 2. Bloom’s Taxonomy application in the Liike Game

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LIIKE: THE GAME EXPERIENCE GAME DESIGN: CONVENTIONAL GAMES

The bulk of Liike’s vision was sparked by conventional trivia and question-and-answer games such as:

Smart Ass², Trivial Pursuit³ and JEOPARDY!⁴. These games cover many varying areas of interest and are often designed as enjoyable games that will test knowledge. Resource management games such as Settlers of Catan⁵ and miniature board games such as Root⁶ also influenced the team’s design thinking and development. Numerous supplementary sources played a role in shaping the aesthetic direction, mechanical focus and general approach of Liike: Kyle Ferrin illustration⁷; Steven Universe art by Kevin Dart⁸; various AR games and applications; Raise your Goblets⁹ (CMON games); Bold Poker digital deck dealer (kater calling GmbH) and Zombicide¹⁰ (CMON games).

The approach to character design was kept focused and oriented on crafting a new, lived-in, fictional world for players to engage with and explore. These design features encompasses existing game mechanics as well as game mechanics that are unique to the Liike game.

GAMER TYPES

The main cast of Liike is comprised of six characters—of which five are anthropomorphised animal representations of the five relating knowledge areas represented in the game: Accounting is represented as a snake;

Financial management as a cat; Tax as a bat; Law as a shark; and Auditing as a weasel. The sixth and final character represents a non-playable character: Corruption; a wolf who is controlled exclusively by the actions and choices made by players and the cards that are drawn. This design features encompasses the different suggested gamer-types but character design is unique to the Liike game building it out to six types of players that is linked to the different curriculum subjects that are part of the game.

6 Root is designed by Cole Wehrle. Art done by Kyle Ferrin. Published by Leder Games; Fox in the Box;

7 See the artist for the board game Root.

8 Kevin Dart is an art director for Steven Universe. He is also an illustrator and director and has worked with animation studios such as Pixar, Disney, DreamWorks, Laika, and Passion Pictures.

9 Board game designed by Tim Page. Art done by Heiko Günther and Nick Miles. Published by CMON Limited; Edge Entertainment; Ghenos Games; Heidelberger Spieleverlag; Hobby Japan; Horrible Games and Kaissa Chess & Games. © 2016.

10 Board game designed by Raphaël Guiton; Jean-Baptiste Lullien and Nicolas Raoult. Art done by Nicolas Fructus; Édouard Guiton; Mathieu Harlaut and Eric Nouhaut. Published by Asmodee Asterion Press; Black Monk;

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Fig 5. The six conceptualised characters in Liike

Liike utilises genre conventions as sets of elements capable of distinguishing it from other genres and media types (i.e. film, comics). Iconographic features such as icons, card/tile layout, visual interface of digital displays form the visual style of the game and aid the player in recognising not only the genre (educational game) but invoke the opposite expectations about the user experience (Ye, 2004).

Fig 6. Icons representing the five knowledge fields in Liike

The above icons represent the five knowledge fields in Liike. From left to right, these are: Law; Tax;

Accounting; Auditing; and Financial Management. The infinity symbol unites the themes of “unlimited possibilities” and “authority” explored in the game.

GAME ATTRIBUTES: STORY, RULES, CHALLENGES REWARDS AND GOALS

Players take control of miniatures and move them around a board made up of various game tiles in the spirit of multilateral competition. Gameplay unfolds in the form of rounds, where a player may: move their character miniature from one tile to another; draw the indicated category and number of question cards from the appropriate deck; attempt to answer them; and acquire money for correct answers.

The objective of the game is threefold, and relates to three central aspects the subject experts/content contributors desire students to acquire through play: (i) answer subject-related questions printed on question cards correctly (subject mastery); (ii) procure currency (resource management); and (iii) construct the longest career path (future planning). Liike, at its core, is a multiplayer tabletop game for 2-10 players which include: question-and-answer style gameplay; modular, tile-based movement (Fig. 7); risk-reward motivation; an evergreen digital system;

translatable content; interdisciplinary didactic material; and mixed-medium modes of delivery.

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Fig 7. Six-sided tiles in Liike.

GAME PEDAGOGY: SAICA COMPETENCY FRAMEWORK AND BLOOM’S TAXONOMY

Researchers posit that serious game design is the formal methods for the specification and planning of both educational and fun content and features that support both the gameplay and educational goals of the game for serious games (G. Gunter, Kenny, & Vick, 2006). The goal of serious game design is similar in nature to that of entertainment games, but is more complex, in that not only must one maintain intellectual control of the design elements that lead to a fun and engaging game, but one must also plan instructional elements that lead to a fun, engaging, and educational game experience. To be sure, instructional strategies and learning theories must be included in these formal methods. In order to create a powerful game, one must define the game's (or designer's) focus, that is, the essence of what the game is about (Rouse III, 2010), at the beginning of formal design paradigm (the game design process). For a serious game, this need does not diminish (G. Gunter et al., 2006). The focus frames the game's semiotics and provides the context for the Liike design: knowledge application and skill obtainment. For serious games, however, this designer's focus is necessary but insufficient. In addition to the designer's focus, a didactic focus is required for serious game design (G. Gunter et al., 2006).

In the Liike game the question cards are therefore formulated in accordance with Bloom’s Taxonomy, the SAICA competency framework of 2017 (knowledge and skill requirements) and the learning outcomes of the included subjects from the Accountancy curriculum.

Fig 8. Liike question cards

Fig. 8 indicates the conceptual mock-ups of the back and front side of a question card in Liike. In collaboration with subject matter experts, these initial concepts were the result of an exploratory design phase seeking to give the serious game an identity of its own. A digital version was created following this initial playing card design (Fig. 9).

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In document Developing a serious game design framework for educational tabletop games with digital components (sivua 196-200)