This paper focuses on the process of developing the Earth Girl Volcano game, and
presents some of our best professional practices and lessons learned. The
paper shares our experience of weaving storytelling in the
not-so-straightforward process of interdisciplinary collaboration between
artists and scientists. Our practice-based research approach to games is
centered around a diligent and rigorous game development method that is
story-centric and that uses storytelling to communicate scientific concepts.
Our development methodology is presented in detail without the usual focus
on quantitative evaluations: games are not scientific projects but
audiovisual interactive catalysts of engagement. The survival of many
communities during volcanic emergencies is tied to their knowledge of
volcanic preparedness. Unfortunately, there is a gap between scientific
terminology and the non-technical language used by the general population.
For this reason it is necessary to develop and implement engaging outreach
strategies that familiarize communities at risk with volcanic hazards, that
show how a volcanic event unfolds, and what to do in case of an emergency.
Interactive games provide a perfect alternative to engage communities and to
impact their resilience. The Earth Girl Volcano game is about making strategic decisions that
minimize risk in communities exposed to volcanic hazards. Conveying the
complexities of volcano disaster preparedness to a general audience is a
communication challenge in itself because of the multi-layered,
interrelated, and technical nature of the information. We use interactive
dramatizations of hazard scenarios with people for players to identify with
the characters in the game and to empathize with communities impacted by
volcanic hazards. We present our approach for characterizing multiple hazard
scenarios and dynamics in precise but nimble ways and for designing
engaging gameplay within the context of a casual strategy game. We seek to
engage mainstream audiences and familiarize them with volcanic evacuations
and disaster risk management by providing a high degree of playability,
using storytelling to create empathy, making creative use of staging and
visuals, and using plain language. We believe that the combination of all
these techniques yields a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, a
perfect storm that is able to create an emotional connection between players
and the hazard scenarios presented in the game.
Introduction
Volcanic eruptions are a natural hazard that manifests itself in over 85
countries throughout the world. It is estimated that 800 million people live
within a 100 km radius of active volcanic systems and are exposed to
volcanic risk (Loughlin, 2015). The initial motivation behind our work was
to develop and produce free-to-download and fun-to-play games of natural
hazards preparedness and response. We were also interested in creating games
that facilitate learning, games based on scientific knowledge that provide
practical knowledge for players to absorb while playing. Volcanology is a
complex science with multiple dynamic variables, and understanding volcanic
risks requires a significant amount of information including the eruptive
history of a volcano, the geography of the area (Sparks, 2004), and the
situation of the nearby population at risk. Generally speaking there is
limited knowledge about volcanic activity throughout the world, and in many
instances volcanic risks have not yet been evaluated (Lockwood, 2013). In
light of these volcanic complexities we realized that any effective game on
volcanic disaster preparedness and response would have to be simple,
flexible, and easy to understand in a variety of cultural contexts.
A few of the critical team members had backgrounds in the professional
production of video games and computer games, and we were keen on the idea of
following the best practices found in the commercial world of interactive
game entertainment to create games that were inspired by scientific
principles. We realized at the time that this represented an experimental
approach that could only be successful through a partnership between
scientists and game artists. We were intrigued by the possibilities and were
lucky to have the opportunity to develop and explore our ideas.
The overall goal was to create interactive games that would be easy to play
and easy to learn from, games that could contribute to the human
preparedness initiative at large. There are millions of humans living under
the shadow of volcanic risk. According to the ranking by the National
Geology and Mining Service (SERNAGEOMIN) of risk specific to active
volcanoes in Chile, for example, around 1 500 000 people are exposed to some
type of volcanic hazard within the Chilean territory. This figure represents
about 8.3 % of the total population, and it includes individuals living in
high to medium danger zones or in areas that are exposed to ashfall
(Pedreros, 2020).
We were hopeful that given the proper distribution a robust series of
natural hazards games could have a significant impact on global hazard
awareness and preparedness. Ultimately the game seeks to empower communities
in hazardous areas by improving their abilities of preparedness and
response. For this purpose we met and talked directly to survivors of
natural and human-made disasters and learned from those interactions a lot
of factual experiential information (Kerlow, 2016). Based on the testimony
of many survivors it seemed that a large majority of the casualties occur
due to a lack of practical disaster preparedness knowledge, due to an
inability to recognize the early signs of potential danger and the failure
to act decisively. We got to work, and in 2011 the early team released three
simple interactive games with a focus on floods, tsunamis, and volcanoes
(Kerlow, 2011). We learned a lot from this early experience about features
that are generally successful in disaster games for mainstream audiences.
These early games require the Flash plug-in, and they are still available at
http://earthgirlgame.com/ (last access: 13 November 2020). In 2015 we released a more involved game focused
exclusively on tsunamis, and in 2018 we released a volcano game. At time of
writing the best two websites to download the English computer version of
the game for Windows and MacOS are https://earthobservatory.sg/ (last access: 20 May 2020) and
https://art-science-media.com/ (last access: 13 November 2020). Several localizations of the game for
digital tablets are available at Google Play and the App Store.
Our game design and development methodology is framed by a few
considerations and general techniques that are detailed below: using show-and-tell; considering the target audiences; optimizing for the chosen
technology platforms; committing to a particular game format; using
prototypes to develop the concept and the functionality of the game; applying
rigorous quality control and user testing all throughout the process; and
taking advantage of interdisciplinary collaborations. The specific game design
techniques used to characterize volcanic hazard complexity are detailed in
Sect. 5.
Show-and-tell
Watching the force of nature can be highly engaging, and what better way to
create interest in volcanic hazards than to show volcanoes in action. The
majestic and unstoppable quality of volcanoes instantly captivates people
regardless of their background. For this reason we use volcanic activity as
the main driver of the action in Earth Girl Volcano. Showing how the volcanic hazards develop
and impact the environment allows players to connect the dots and literally
see how different aspects of a single episode are connected. Representing
on-screen the progress of the multiple hazards facilitates the understanding
of volcanic episodes as systems of interrelated events and facilitates a
seamless visualization of precursor events. Showing the different impacts
after an episode of volcanic activity allows players to better understand
the difference between light damage and catastrophic damage; it also helps
to understand what goes into preventing and minimizing catastrophic damage.
At every point we try to convey the story by dramatizing and not by
explaining. Increased realism in interactive games has a direct effect on
the players' attention and retention (Krcmar, 2010), and we use every
technique available within our budget to maximize the realistic feeling of
the volcanic hazards in Earth Girl Volcano. These techniques include 2D and 3D animation (Fig. 1), sound effects, and music. The process of developing and producing a
suitable visual style for this game was an interesting one, but it is beyond
the scope of this paper.
Details of visual characterizations of volcanic hazards in the
game (left to right): ashfall, mudflow, lava, gas and rockfall, partial burning clouds, and total burning clouds.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Producers of TV news programs know that
showing a snapshot of a natural disaster impacting people's lives creates
instant strong emotions (Nazari, 2011; Lin, 2013). In Earth Girl Volcano we put a lot of
effort into representing unraveling volcanic hazards in impactful ways that are
also grounded on real behaviors. To accomplish this result we used an
innovative combination of 2D and 3D animation techniques that were visually
rich but technically simple. This made possible the viewing of the animated
simulations on devices and computers that are not state of the art.
Target audiences
A major practical objective when the core Earth Girl team set out to develop
natural hazard games in 2010 was to create games for an audience that was
both mainstream and non-technical. By mainstream we understood an audience
that might be vaguely aware of volcanic disasters but is largely unfamiliar
and lacks expert knowledge. By non-technical we understood an audience that
was not interested in learning about the technicalities of volcanology,
Earth science, or disaster risk management, including details such as
monitoring gas emissions or reading preparedness lessons. We had played
several of the hazard games available at the time, and they were either too
lesson-oriented or included too many technical terms to be of significant
interest to a mainstream non-technical audience (Latawiec, 2019; Castronovo,
2017; Solinska-Nowak, 2018). Our objectives were sharpened as we took the
time over a period of several years (2009–2017) to talk to survivors of
natural hazards, civil defense personnel, and volcano-monitoring scientists
in different countries throughout the world including Indonesia, the
Philippines, Thailand, Vanuatu, China, Italy, Chile, Mexico, and the United
States. The lessons we learned from those conversations eventually led us to
focus on two audience subsets that emerged as critical audiences: children
and leaders, including government officials and community leaders,
particularly those in disaster high-risk communities.
Generally speaking children are usually at high risk during a natural hazard
because most of them rely on the adults to save them or to tell them what to
do. But as it turns out there are many occasions before or during a natural
hazard that for whatever reason reliable adults are not around and children
must fend for themselves. In fact the genesis of the Earth Girl character
pays homage to the many girls throughout South and Southeast Asia who
tragically perished during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami mostly because they
lacked proper disaster awareness and preparedness information. During the
last decade we gave countless game demos to students in schools and
universities because children represent a direct link to parents, siblings,
and older members of the family. In Chile, for example, the National Network
of Volcanic Surveillance organizes outreach fairs throughout areas of high
volcanic risk. The participation in the 2019 regional event in the Lago
Ranco commune, Los Ríos region, included almost a thousand children
(998) with 51.4 % girls and 48.6 % boys. Around 300 adults attended with
67 % women and 37 % men. The attendance to geology and volcanology
workshops was 68 % female and 32 % male, while the emergency management
workshop was 20 % female and 80 % male (Gho, 2019).
During the early phase of research for this project we heard from NGO staff
and field volcanologists how challenging it is to convey details and
implications of volcanic hazards to non-experts, especially during critical
episodes (Jong, 2018; McBride et al., 2020). Presenting a holistic view of an
emergency evacuation is challenging because multiple processes are connected
and happen in parallel, and because some of the technical and scientific
concepts are complex. We have witnessed with satisfaction how the scenarios
in the Earth Girl Volcano game have been used to illustrate and explain volcanic disaster
preparedness, mitigation, and response to non-specialists. The game provides
a wide variety of scenarios that facilitate relating gameplay to specific
hazard realities of diverse locations.
From the start we sought to make an interactive game with characteristics
that would “speak to” or connect with non-technical individuals who lived
in or near regions with significant risk of natural hazards: a game they
would want to play, a game that they would connect with and recommend to
others (Fullerton, 2018). Many of the areas at risk are located in
developing countries (Oppenheimer, 2008), and we assumed from the start that
delivering games in relevant languages would be critical to their potential
success. In the case of the Earth Girl Volcano game, for example, we identified the languages
spoken throughout the Ring of Fire as a good collection of initial languages
to maximize potential outreach impact (Fig. 2). The initial target languages for the
first round of development included English, Spanish, Indonesian, Tagalog
(the Philippines), and Bislama and French (Vanuatu).
Map showing some of the major official languages spoken around the
Ring of Fire.
We realized that generally speaking our potential audience would be
multi-cultural, and we had to be sensitive to the different traditions and
attitudes to volcanic preparedness and response (Donovan and Oppenheimer, 2014, 2019). We
also knew from field experience (Kerlow et al., 2012) that our target audience
typically had different degrees of preparedness awareness. Some residents of
high-risk areas have considerable knowledge and experience in dealing with
natural hazards. But many in the same locations have limited or no
information about preparedness or response, let alone the basic scientific
information that explains the hazards themselves. In either case we felt
that a game that different types of non-experts would want to play could
benefit both of these populations at risk by increasing their practical
knowledge through gameplay, particularly knowledge about early warning and
disaster risk management. The plan was to provide learning by experiencing
the before and during of a natural hazard, by virtually “being there”, by virtually
“participating”. In summary the simple and straightforward gameplay of
Earth Girl Volcano is meant to engage a target audience of preteens, early teens, and adults.
The ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) rating is for “everyone”.
Technology platforms
In terms of the technology used to create and deploy the game, our underlying
strategy was to always keep it simple and stay away from solutions that
would require high-end hardware to play the game. We also considered that
our core target audiences had limited access to high-end computers or the
latest gaming platforms, and a high-technology specification would have
surely placed the games out of the reach of many of the target communities
in the developing world. We released Earth Girl Volcano as a downloadable for digital tablets
and computers. We chose not to release the app for phones because based on
early testing it was clear that a large percentage of test users had
difficulty playing the game on smart phones with small screens. The play
area was just too small, and a massive redesign would have been necessary to
make the experience possible. Unfortunately, we had neither the resources nor
the opportunity to do this.
As mentioned above, the first three Earth Girl games can still be played
online and offline on any device and browser that supports the Flash
plug-in. These early games were also available on CD giveaway packs with
stickers and posters that we distributed when demonstrating the game during
geography lessons at host elementary and middle schools. We are considering
solutions to extend the lifetime of the first three games after 2020 when
support for the Flash online plug-in is scheduled to end. One alternative
that we have considered to extend these Flash games is to upload them to the
repository website https://itch.io/ (last access: 13 November 2020). The second round of Earth Girl games,
Earth Girl Tsunami and Earth Girl Volcano, were created in the Unity environment with each
available as a standalone app. Both games run on iOS and Android tablets,
and the volcano game is also available for Windows and MacOS computers. The
multiple versions of the game are available online as free downloads, from
Google Play, the App Store, and a variety of public websites.
Game format – why a casual game?
Earth Girl Volcano combines features from a few game genres. It is primarily a casual game
because each volcanic environment, or level, in the game can be played in
just a few minutes. As with any casual game it is not necessary in Earth Girl Volcano to play
all the locations in the game to benefit from it; players can enjoy the
experience and learn by playing just one or a few levels. In this sense
casual games, because they are light and not intimidating, can be effective
vehicles to connect with communities at risk and decision makers. Early in
the development process a number of the Earth scientists involved expressed
concern about creating something “casual” in the context of a
science-inspired game. The team realized at this point that a common
understanding of terminology and goals would be necessary for the successful
completion of the project. Earth Girl Volcano also has major elements of a traditional
strategy game because players must devise a strategy and put it into action
in order to win or survive. The game also has minor elements of adventure
games and management games because players encounter multiple surprises and
unknowns, as in a typical adventure game, and must manage resources in the
most efficient possible way. The Earth Girl Volcano interactive game is about exploring a
location, gathering information, coming up with a hazard defense and combat
strategy, and putting that strategy into action in just about 15 min.
There are many genres and formats of gaming, and we explored different
possibilities in searching for the best way to structure and deliver the
Earth Girl Volcano disaster game. Genres in gaming are like genres in literature: each is best
suited to different styles of storytelling and different types of stories.
Once the design of a game is committed to a particular game genre, it is
important to take advantage and maximize the peculiarities of the genre in
question. Consider the differences between a poem, a short story, an essay,
and a novel; each has particular strengths and weaknesses depending on the
topic at hand. When choosing a game format we considered practical issues
such as our own resources and our target audiences. We had to find a concise
and fun mechanism to deliver complex information, and a compact game format
could be useful in forcing us to find that mechanism or face sure failure.
There is nowhere to hide in a small game: it either works or it does not. It
was also clear in the early stages that strategy was a promising tool to
facilitate the non-technical players to “get into” the scientific and
technical aspects of volcanic hazards. In the context of putting together a
strategy for a volcanic hazard evacuation, science is just one of the
critical elements but not the only one. So players unfamiliar or
uncomfortable with science would quickly think of the game as an
easy-to-play strategy game instead of an intimidating, long, or tedious
science game (Weizman, 2014). It seemed that practical knowledge was likely
to be more effectively absorbed by players in the context of a casual
strategy game than with a long-form traditional strategy game or a
science-focused simulation game.
The game prototype
Our overall approach to making disaster games is modeled on the creative
cycle often used to develop and produce commercially independent games. Such
a workflow considers at the start of the process the general characteristics
of the game and moves to build an early game prototype. These general
characteristics include, for example, the target audience, the main
objectives, the gaming style, the basic gameplay and game mechanics, the
user interface, the visual look, and the basic technical specifications (Kerlow,
2009). Game prototypes are bare-bones versions of the game with some
functionality and limited interactivity and are used widely throughout the
industry (Schell, 2019). Prototypes are meant to show how specific ideas
could be implemented into specific visuals and mechanisms. Prototypes are an
approximation of the game as it grows and is slowly fine-tuned from a rough
concept to a system of engaging situations and mechanisms. The multiple
versions of the game prototype were our main vehicle to assemble, visualize,
and evaluate the different elements of the game as we made progress. The
early proof-of-concept prototypes were useful to demonstrate to the dozen or
so scientific collaborators that it was possible to make a game such as the
one we envisioned. These early game prototypes were also extremely useful
for the creative team to test ideas and quickly see and evaluate the
results. Most importantly, the subsequent “builds” or iterations of the
prototype became our primary vehicle of interdisciplinary collaboration. We
tried to focus all discussions, critiques, and new ideas on the prototype
itself instead of having abstract technical discussions that did not always
contribute to the process. We modified or tweaked the prototype as our ideas
became more clear and precise. By placing the prototype at the center of the
interdisciplinary process, by making it the focus of all efforts, it was
easier for both scientists and artists to know where things stood at all
times. If we could not implement a specific idea in the prototype or if it
did not work in the prototype, it basically meant that we had to keep trying.
During the development stage of the Earth Girl Volcano game, we would demonstrate the latest
prototype of the game to groups of scientists by playing it and projecting
it on a large screen. This way everyone could see it and analyze it in
detail. Before and after the public demo to the scientific collaborators, we
would make game prototypes available on digital tablets for those interested
in spending more time examining the latest features. The review by the
scientific staff was important to make sure that all the critical
preparedness and response features were included in the game and/or were
implemented correctly.
Quality control and user testing
In addition to the formal reviews of the game prototype by the scientific
staff, we also conducted game playability testing. This quality control
effort routinely tested new and existing game features in the prototype,
created bug reports for items that needed to be fixed, and made playability
suggestions. The core internal testing group was composed of a dozen student
interns from a variety of fields of study including Earth and environmental
science as well as animation and gaming from Nanyang Technological University and
Nanyang Polytechnic. We also relied on outside testers who volunteered their
time to play the game and provide feedback in the areas of playability and
comprehension. Many of these volunteer testers were preteen and teenage
digital natives who are familiar with a variety of interactive game genres: their feedback
was invaluable in fine-tuning the mechanics of the game and in identifying
the strongest features of the game and those that required improvement. We
worked with volunteer testers in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vanuatu,
China, Italy, Mexico, and the United States. We also received useful
playability suggestions during our PICO oral/poster interactive
demonstrations at the 2017 and 2019 EGU conferences in Vienna, Austria.
Interdisciplinary collaboration
Interdisciplinary collaboration between scientist and artists is a
fundamental part of developing a game of disaster prevention, and this
presents unique possibilities and challenges. The idea of interdisciplinary
collaboration has wide appeal, but making it work in reality can oftentimes
prove more challenging than expected. Scientists and artists are used to
different methodologies and usually operate under different parameters. The
scientists who participated in this project offered a high degree of
expertise but oftentimes were uncomfortable with a game development process
that seemed to them too intuitive. Artists were at times uncomfortable with
a scientific method that seemed rigid and points of view that seemed
narrow-minded. In order for the collaboration to bloom, the team had to
develop a mechanism for collaborators to maintain an ongoing dialogue and
focus on the end result. The team had to find and practice a methodology of
interdisciplinary collaboration that was suitable for this project.
Exchanging points of view was an important part of the interdisciplinary
collaboration, and we believe this broadened the horizons of most
participating scientists and artists. The former were exposed, for example,
to the challenging and complex process of developing and producing an
interactive game with high-production values. The latter were exposed to the
complexities and technicalities of natural hazards. Oftentimes some in the
scientific community assume that making a game, or “gamifying” a
particular subject as it is sometimes called, is a straightforward process
mostly focused on scientific information and software technical issues.
Likewise, many in the gaming community do not always value the critical
importance of deeply understanding the scientific and technical data as a
requirement to produce gaming experiences that provide the correct essence
of the subject at hand. Our empirical research and practice in making games
about disaster preparedness has taught us that an open dialog and discussion
between scientists and artists is critical when making games about disaster
preparedness and response. Only a true and deep collaboration between game
artists and Earth scientists is able to produce games that non-technical
users play because they want to – not because they have to – games where true
learning is embedded in gameplay.
Act I: connecting with the community
Each dramatic act in Earth Girl Volcano functions as a unique moment in the overall process of
preparedness and response, and in this section we analyze each of the three
acts in the game. Most traditional theater plays or films are divided in
several acts, usually three (McKee, 1997). This is meant to separate
different blocks of the story, and introduce large shifts and twists.
Interactive games are not plays or movies but they also tell a story, and
many of the same techniques and conventions used in theater and film can be
considered when designing a game. We loosely structured the interactive game
following the traditional three-act structure, with each act providing a
unique dramatic purpose. Act I in Earth Girl Volcano sets the stage for action, Act II
provides an opportunity to explore and understand the challenges faced by
the community, and Act III provides an opportunity to actively try to save
the community from disaster. Writing for games is a bit more technical than
writing for films, for example, because many hardware and software technical
issues must be considered and built into the script itself, something that
is rarely done in film. The somewhat technical script used to write games is
known as a game document and, just like in film or theater, the actions
specified in the game document need to be staged. Any seasoned theater or
film director knows that there is a long road between a good screenplay or
script and a good play or movie. The same is true for games and game
documents. A script after all is words on a page, a collection of unrealized
characters, dialog, locations and action. A script needs to be staged before
it can be turned into an experience for the audience.
Generally speaking staging refers to the arrangement of actors, props,
lights, cameras, timing and action on the set. The above is also true for
games, the art of staging in game design plays a critical role in how the
story is told and how the players are allowed or encouraged to participate.
Every moment in an interactive game needs to be considered and staged with a
purpose, a purpose that is meant to create an emotion and/or to convey an
idea. In the case of Earth Girl Volcano we intend to convey basic concepts of volcanic hazards
and disaster risk management. Before an interactive game can exist its game
document, as game scripts are often called, needs to be skillfully translated
into scenes, performances, moments of action and reflection, and
opportunities to interact. Players of an interactive game want to feel
emotions when they play a game and, generally speaking, good staging is
directly proportional to the emotional impact of a game.
The basic setting in Earth Girl Volcano, and the gameplay itself, is that
volcanic activity is increasing nearby and the player has the opportunity to
save as many people as possible by using a variety of resources. The premise
becomes evident on the welcome screen where the player is encouraged to
gather facts from the local inhabitants (Fig. 3).
The welcome page encourages players to interact with members of
the local community.
The game has five major areas that are seamlessly connected to one another,
and each area has a dramatic purpose. These areas are the map, the market,
the toolbox, the chosen location (in either exploration or action play
modes), and the post-game feedback and statistics (Fig. 4). In terms of
dramatic staging we can think of these game areas as acts in a play or a
movie, and each act has a dramatic purpose and a possible outcome. Through
their choices the payer can emerge as a hero or as a villain. An optional
tutorial is also available at the start of the game.
Flowchart showing the primary flow between the areas of this
casual game.
Act I of Earth Girl Volcano starts with the welcome page but quickly moves to the navigation
map. In Act I the protagonist, the player, must make two important choices
based on their confidence to defeat the impending disaster. These
choices include one of three possible difficulty levels of gameplay and one
of nine possible locations where the action will take place. This early and
somewhat blind choice also highlights the fact that the player is getting
into some sort of an adventure where not all the parameters are known beforehand. It can also be inferred from this suspenseful moment that some effort
will be necessary in order to find out what is necessary to succeed in the
chosen location. The level of difficulty chosen greatly influences the
intensity of the challenges faced later in the game.
The fact that players must make an important choice in Act I but have not
had a chance to learn much if anything about volcanic hazards is by design.
The goal is to introduce the concept of uncertainty, which is an integral
aspect of disaster preparedness and response (Stein and Geller, 2012; Tsai et al., 2015).
Uncertainty is present even when robust systems of volcanic monitoring are
in place, as it is impossible to predict the exact moment of a volcanic
eruption based on a sequence of precursors and statistics. The level of
uncertainty in locations lacking monitoring and early warning systems
becomes even more serious, and the community's speedy reaction becomes
particularly critical. Sometimes in real-life situations of disaster risk
management (DRM), we must make educated guesses and take calculated risks,
with the understanding that the more we know about the challenge at hand the
more prepared we will be and the better our guessing is likely to be.
Strictly speaking the staging of the action in the Earth Girl Volcano game starts in the map,
where the player is placed in the position of the protagonist. This is a
suspenseful start with many unknowns for the player to really know what to
expect (Fig. 5).
The navigation map displays nine different locations where the action can take place.
Levels of gameplay difficulty
Earth Girl Volcano offers three levels of difficulty: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. The
pedagogical goal behind offering three significantly different levels of
gameplay difficulty at the start of each round of play is to allow the
player to quickly make an assessment of their own skills and ability to
stomach more or less risk. The game allows players to choose any level of
difficulty in any order without limitation. It is possible to play a
location in advanced mode first and in beginner mode second. This freedom of
choice intends to give players a feeling of control on what they play and
how they play it. This characteristic also emphasizes quietly that the game
is about exploring and learning to defeat volcanic disaster rather than
accomplishing a high numerical score. The post-game section provides
qualitative feedback and detailed performance statistics (i.e., people saved,
casualties, tool usage, etc.), but it does not focus intrinsically on a
quantitative final score. The goal is to be prepared for every possible
hazard no matter what the level of challenge, and every hazard counts the
same when it comes to being prepared and aiming for zero casualties.
The beginner level provides simple challenges, generous budgets, and ample
time, providing single-hazard scenarios and gameplay that are well suited to
non-experts or first-timers. The intermediate level offers an increased
number of multiple hazards per location. This provides exciting yet
challenging gameplay, and it requires a judicious choice of tools. Budgets
and timelines are somewhat tight, and players are forced to carefully
strategize in order to succeed. The advanced level is the closest
approximation to a real-life situation where it seems that there are never
enough resources to cleanly defeat a multi-hazard challenges: not enough
funds to be perfectly prepared to launch a perfect response, higher
population densities, and multiple hazards with a high degree of intensity.
Much like real tourist locations in the Chilean Andes, for example, the Rock
Resort location features a large tourist population that is largely unaware
of the nearby volcanic risks. The advanced gameplay in Earth Girl Volcano has the feeling of a
real emergency more than a game: saving everyone cannot be taken for
granted.
Act II: preparing for battle
After choosing a destination for the adventure, the player is gently guided
to the market for a reason: because getting to know the local inhabitants
leads to increased knowledge and understanding, which in turn increase the
player's ability to save the community (Haynes et al., 2008). Act II is split
between the market, the toolbox, and the exploration of the location itself.
Act II could be summarized as “preparing for battle”.
The market and the characters
The market provides a lot of the backstory, and players with limited
information about volcanic hazards can only benefit from paying attention to
this part of the game. This area is meant to foster learning by oral
storytelling by having the player “listen” to the villagers' experiences and
opinions. The market also provides clues regarding the ideal tools for each
location and level of gameplay difficulty. During testing with our youngest
audiences, 6–8-year-olds, we methodically observed that they tended to read
every single dialog available because they understand intuitively that this
will raise their chance of survival. Many of our teenage test subjects
stayed in the market only briefly or skipped it altogether; they were
anxious to get to the action and try their skills even if that meant that
they would have to try several times before reaching success. It is in the
market where the protagonist can invest energy into finding out about the
challenges faced by the community and is able to start putting together a
strategy. Some of the villagers in the market have useful information about
how past occurrences of the hazard have unfolded, plus strategies that have
failed or succeeded. Others may have strong opinions about what to do or not
to do in case of volcanic activity or a possible evacuation. So it is in the
market where the player can increasingly assume their position as
a potential hero. The player, now clearly the protagonist, can decide whether
to talk to the villagers or not and, like in any good drama, this choice
will have consequences (Fig. 6).
In some of the market interactions the villager's statement
suggests using a specific tool, and her facial expression changes when the player agrees to add the tool to the temporary toolbox in the lower right.
The cast of characters in the game includes over a dozen individuals, each
one with a unique personality, set of circumstances, and opinions. Developing
and including unique characters in the game is important because it reminds
the player of real people, and this facilitates players of the game to
identify with some of the characters and the situations they face. It is
easier for players to create an emotional bond with specific personalities
and opinions than with an anonymous crowd or a collection of inexpressive
characters (Vikan, 2017). Few disaster games, if any, to our knowledge, make
consistent use of characters with distinct personalities and opinions, deep
beliefs, traditions, and even misconceptions.
The stories told by the characters in the game are an integral part of the
storytelling about volcanic hazards, and they connect the player with real
experiences (Gottschall, 2013). Some characters in the market provide useful
factual or historical information, while others may provide opinions that may
be incorrect or misleading. The dramatic purpose of this incorrect
information is that the player must decide what information to use and what
to discard. The mechanism of providing incorrect information places the
player in a highly proactive position of having to constantly evaluate
information, prioritize it, and turn it into actions. From the dramatic point
of view featuring a character that provides misleading information only
makes the game more realistic and hence more effective. The point of the
market dialogs is not to lecture the player about what is scientifically
correct but to engage the player's mind into considering different
statements about volcanic risk and hazards, evaluating them, and making a
value judgment based on the player's knowledge at that moment. The
incorrect information occasionally provided by some villagers also puts in
evidence that the ability of the player to make correct decisions is
directly proportional to the player's knowledge. This can quickly act as a
motivator to spend some time talking especially to members of the local
community who seem to be able to provide useful tips. The game cannot
control whether a player decides to investigate and explore, but it can
provide a situation that is conducive for that to happen. We wrote hundreds
of market dialogs based on real experiences, dialogs that reference the
volcanic hazards, the tools provided to address them, and the personalities
of the characters in the game. The small sampling of ashfall-related
dialogs in Appendix A gives a sense of the general tone and style.
Line-up of sample characters for different versions of the game (left to right): street guy (Vanuatu and original), grandmother, cow, good boy, teenage girl (Vanuatu), father (rural, city, Africa), auntie (rural, Africa, factory), and baby.
The ways the characters look and move are meant to express their
personalities and attitudes (Thomas and Johnston, 1995). The cast is meant to present a
variety or personalities, ages, and ethnicities that can easily work in
multiple locations. We did extensive research to develop character designs
that were appropriate and believable within the context of a disaster casual
game. With so many possibilities and limited resources, we decided to start
with a basic group that would look natural throughout Southeast Asia; then
we fine-tuned it so it would make sense in a variety of locations along the
Ring of Fire. This basic initial cast includes a baby and grandparents,
young people, and adults. The initial cast also has rural, factory, and city
types, and the skin tone ranges from light to brown. During a later stage we
created an African version of the entire group, including matching props for
the locations, and found inspiration in the looks found in the regions
surrounding major volcanoes on that continent. We have started to create a
Vanuatu version of the cast and props (Fig. 7).
Facial expressions used for the teenage girl character in the
African edition of the game, each representing a specific emotional tone: mild happiness, excited happiness, mild surprise, disgust, quiet happiness, and fear (left to right).
In addition to the character's dialog in the market, we also use their facial
expressions to communicate their personalities and attitudes to the player.
The same approach is used in the post-game feedback area at the end of the
game. Emotional connection is a key objective and a key driver of Earth Girl Volcano, and one
of the implementations of this idea in the game is in the form of the
character's facial expressions displayed in the market and in the post-game
feedback sections. These facial expressions are used to provide feedback on
the strategic choices made by players and are matched to different character
statements. The facial expressions in the game echo the character's written
dialog, often times in a humorous way. It is widely accepted that facial
expressions are effective conduits for emotional feedback (Ekman, 2007), and
we developed for each character sets of the seven emotions that are widely
used throughout the character animation industry. These seven emotions are
happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, fear, contempt, and disgust. In
addition to the basic emotions, we also developed tonalities of each emotion
to further the emotional precision of each character statement or response
(Fig. 8). These tonalities include degrees of an emotion, for example, as in
neutral happy, happy, very happy, nice!, good job!, and that's great! happy.
The toolbox
The toolbox provides 16 tools that can be used to prepare for, mitigate,
or respond to volcanic hazard. The tools are organized into three different
categories: infrastructure, technology, and education and services. Players
can choose a maximum of eight tools, and their choices are shown as active
tools. When selected every tool displays critical information such as cost
and a simple description of its functionality. The early warning tool can
only be used once during gameplay, but others can be used multiple times as
long as there are sufficient funds. The toolbox is like the brain and the
hands of the game because most of the possible mitigation and response
strategies in the game are here (Fig. 9). This is where the player makes their first round of major choices, and the chosen tools eventually
determine the outcome of the emergency. After playing the game a few time
players realize that success in Earth Girl Volcano is all about the chosen tools, their
sequencing, and the speed with which they are applied to the emergency.
The toolbox includes 16 tools that can be used to address
issues of mitigation and response to volcanic hazards.
The principles that guided our development and selection of the final tools
and their mechanics are based on practical issues of mitigating and
responding to volcanic hazards. Some of these principles about tradition,
perception, practical issues, or culture, for example, are explored here.
Communities at risk oftentimes have preferred solutions when it comes to
hazard mitigation and response. Tools that might work in one culture might
be inappropriate in another. Sabo dams for example, also known as check
dams, are widely used in some countries but not favored in others because of
their complex design and engineering requirements (Nakatani et al., 2008).
Likewise, swimming across rivers during evacuations is also not recommended
in locations where the geography might create dangerous river currents (CDC,
2018; Ready, 2020). Inexpensive tools can sometimes be highly effective.
Both the awareness tool and the community center address this issue:
knowledge is shared with the entire community in an informal and low-cost
setting (Red Cross, 2020). This is also the case, for example, of easy-to-fabricate evacuation signs that point crowds in the direction of the shortest or
safest routes. Without these signs individuals in a panic or unfamiliar with
the environment are unlikely to find their way in time. The awareness tool
in the game is another example of another low-cost and possibly the
best-ever preparedness tool: education. In certain situations expensive
solutions are not only useful but are necessary to preserve life. Early
warning systems, for example, are indispensable in scenarios where a few
minutes can make the difference between life and death. Volcanic hazards
impact communities with extensive or limited resources, and therefore overall
solutions must include a range of tools from low cost to expensive. That is
why the game's toolbox has solutions within a cost range. Volcanic events
often create multiple hazards – some small, some large – and the best way to
handle this is by attacking each hazard with the proper tool. There is no
single tool that can take care of multiple-volcanic hazards in one swoop:
small hazards can be mitigated separately from large ones. Dust masks, for
example, can minimize the effects of ashfall on the population, but a full
evacuation is necessary to survive a burning cloud or pyroclastic flow. Last
but not least amplifying the existing community-based proven solutions is
sometimes the best solution. That explains why it is important to “talk”
to the characters in the game's market.
Initially, we came up with over 30 possible tools to address different
aspects of volcanic risk. But after much trial and error and significant
user feedback early in the process, we decided to keep the toolbox as compact
as possible. Developing the tools, fine-tuning their mechanics, and
structuring the toolbox were one of the most interesting aspects of this
project, but we shall limit ourselves here to describing the 16 tools
included in the final toolbox. We did early testing of the prototype with
about 20 individuals. More than half of those users during early
playability and comprehension testing seemed overwhelmed by toolboxes with
more than a dozen tools, and their gameplay would become slow and
inefficient. Others seemed to lose interest in using tools that were too
technical or that required a high degree of expertise to be used (Ibrahim et al., 2014). Based on the test users' written feedback we decided that in the
context of a casual game targeted at a mainstream audience it did not make
sense to have every single possible tool. This decision was amply validated
while testing prototypes that incorporated user feedback. The final set of
tools includes six infrastructure tools: escape road, bridge, stairway,
escape sign, sabo dam, and roof upgrade. The technology tools include
inspection, gas sensor, dust mask, motorbike, and early warning. Last but
not least the education and services tools are awareness, leader,
evacuation supplies, paramedics, and escape truck. The plain-language
descriptions of the final tools used in the Earth Girl Volcano are in Appendix B.
Generally speaking, a specific tool in Earth Girl Volcano is meant to address a specific
action or a specific hazard. For example, sabo dams are only used to mitigate
volcanic mudflows. But volcanic disasters are multi-hazard events, and in
many instances a hazard may require multiple tools to address its different
aspects. In the case of ashfall, for example, three tools can be used to
respond to it directly: the dust mask, the roof upgrade, and inspection. The
dust mask is a low-cost and highly effective tool in the game that can be
applied to multiple individuals at the same time and instantly protects
their health. During episodes of intense ashfall, the health of villagers in
the game decreases rapidly, sometimes leading to collapse and possibly
death. Mandated evacuations in game locations that are dominated by ashfall
are likely to result in some human and cattle casualties unless dust masks
are used. The roof upgrade, another tool related to ashfall, fixes damaged
roofs to avoid collapse from heavy ash deposits. Some of the damaged roofs,
especially those of huts or small houses, can be easily spotted, but the
inspection tool is necessary to make sure that a structure is damaged and
requires an upgrade. The pedagogical purpose of the inspection tool is to
highlight the fact that specialist knowledge and significant expense are
sometimes necessary to retrofit communities against disasters (Jenkins et al.,
2014). In some instances a single tool may be used to directly address
multiple hazards. The evacuation sign, for example, is an inexpensive tool
used in the game to address ashfall and other volcanic hazards. This tool
attracts individuals with a high level of volcanic hazard awareness who are
in the process of evacuating to fast and safe evacuation roads, and it speeds
up their escape from high danger. In general the available game tools can
prevent or mitigate the physical impacts of most volcanic hazards. Burning
clouds (pyroclastic flows) are the exception to this rule because their
physical impacts cannot be mitigated for the only alternative is to issue an
alert and carry out an early evacuation.
Exploring the locations
Earth Girl Volcano offers nine distinct locations where the action takes place. The aim is to
design sets where volcanic hazards can unfold in a wide variety of possible
ways and permutations. Each of the locations is designed to facilitate
specific situations that are part of the gameplay, and they are named in
obvious ways: Pyro Creek, Pyro City, Mud Village, Rock Resort, Ash Town,
Fishpond Village, Lava Buildings, Petrol Hell, and Gas Village. These
obvious names provide first-time players with a small clue about a possible
critical gameplay in that location. The nine locations provide rural, urban,
and industrial settings; some have basic infrastructure while others are in
remote locations (Figs. 10 and 11).
Example of an urban location in the game, Pyro City, with painted background and overlaid props.
The Gas Village is an example of a rural locations in the
interactive game.
None of the locations in themselves are more or less challenging than the
others. It is the combination of multiple variables that yield a high-risk
environment, including topological features, props, population, and level of
gameplay difficulty. Each of the nine locations has built-in features and
also passive props and inhabitants that can impact the result of a potential
evacuation. The built-in features are literally painted on the background,
and the level designers place the passive props in strategic locations. Some
of the built-in features include, for example, proximity to the volcano,
evacuation aids (e.g., paved roads), evacuation obstacles (e.g., rivers), and
people. Some of the passive props that are part of the mitigation and
evacuation dynamics include huts, houses, and buildings. Some of the tools in
the toolbox are also props that are activated when the player places them in
the environment. Some of these active props include sabo dams, escape
trucks, motorcycles, and the early warning system.
Each of the nine locations has obvious topological features that can be
easily identified while in the exploration mode. These topological features,
along with the human-made structures, or props, hint at unique opportunities
or obstacles in case of an emergency evacuation. Each location includes
features that are inspired by real places and situations faced by real
communities living next to or near a volcano (Oppenheimer, 2008). The
exploration mode provides the player with an opportunity to assess the
topological features of a location and quickly incorporate that knowledge
into the crafting of a possible mitigation and response strategy. The nine
locations in the game are described in Appendix C.
In addition to the obvious obstacles and opportunities, there are other
features and clues that are not as easy to spot as a hill or a river. These
hidden factors, or hidden variables, also play important roles in the
overall development of the disaster, and they include primarily the people.
Users kept asking “Where are the people? Where is everybody?” while
exploring locations during early game testing. It is striking, especially
for first-time users, that the locations seem a bit empty of people before
the action starts. While the toolbox may display a number of inhabitants in
the hundreds, the streets and the fields initially look a bit empty. This is
because many are actually indoors; we do not see them but they are there:
kids at school and adults at work or at home. This staging of the action is
a hint to emphasize that one of the goals of the evacuation is to get people
out, to convince them to leave. It is well documented that evacuees do not
always leave their homes behind happily or automatically (Vaessen, 2017). In
addition to the local population there also are visitors, outsiders who are
not on-site at the start of the volcanic episode but who are driven away
from their towns and seek safety by the game location. This staging is to
emphasize that it is not always possible to have a perfect plan and that
major unexpected events might and will impact the development of what seemed
to be a “normal” evacuation. The message to the player is that normal
evacuations do not exist in disaster mitigation and response. Every disaster
case poses unique challenges, and those in charge must be on constant alert.
Custom character behaviors
A simulation engine runs the Earth Girl Volcano game, and this type of software allows for
every villager to have unique characteristics that can be defined by a few
variables. Some of these are assigned by default, others are stochastic, and
a few are context sensitive. The top four variables that define how a
villager in the Earth Girl Volcano game reacts during a volcanic emergency are health,
awareness, “stupid behavior”, and swimming ability. These variables can
render behaviors that are faithful to the myriad ways in which different
individuals behave during a volcano disaster. This in turn brings the
behaviors and mechanics experienced in the game closer to what real people
experience during real volcanic events; it makes them more believable
(Rooney, 2012). Health, for example, can be thought of as battery power, and
villagers start with a certain amount of health based on their age and
physical characteristics. Health in the game decreases naturally throughout
time, but certain hazards like ashfall can have a devastating effect on it.
Dust masks prevent or stop this condition. Awareness is a sort of disaster
know-how factor that allows villagers to make the best choice in a variety
of situations. Volcanic hazard awareness is represented with a color circle
around the villagers' heads: red represents a lack of knowledge, orange
represents limited knowledge, yellow represents some knowledge, and green
represents maximum knowledge. Villagers with maximum awareness, for example,
automatically start to evacuate no matter what when the alarm level reaches
yellow. The amount of disaster awareness distributed throughout the
population is a standardized way, and most characters have a default
awareness ranging from low to medium. The awareness tool can raise
practically everyone's awareness level to the maximum, and the results are
highly noticeable. Any changes in disaster awareness have a decisive impact
on crowd behavior and the way in which an episode of volcanic activity plays
out. Changes in the health and awareness values are time-sensitive: raising
it at the start of gameplay has a different result than raising it in the
middle of gameplay. We use the term “stupid behavior” in the Earth Girl Volcano game for
actions that go against all common sense, and only the leader tool can
remedy this situation. Examples of this behavior include running towards the
flowing lava or refusing to evacuate when everyone else is evacuating during
a red level alert. The last of the hidden variables in question is swimming
ability, and it allows villagers to cross small bodies of water even when
bridges are not available. In some real situations, such as the Chilean
Andes, this feature strictly speaking is not as relevant due to geography.
Values for both stupid behavior and swimming ability are statistically
assigned to the population by default.
Act III: action under pressure
Act III in Earth Girl Volcano is all about saving the community from a likely volcanic
disaster. The player is placed in the role of the protagonist and is
expected at this point to have a strategy for mitigation and response if
necessary. But players only have limited information, and they must act
quickly and effectively on the basis of the known facts. They must also
remain vigilant and react to any new developments. Some data are displayed in
the style of a heads-up display (HUD), and this can help the player to keep
track of progress. But regardless of the known information there is always
some degree of uncertainty and unexpected surprises. The basic information
displayed includes time left, budget left, and people saved, and it provides
the player with both a sense of urgency and accomplishment. If the player
chooses and activates the early warning tool, the HUD will also display a
color-coded alert level, an indication of the areas at highest risk (a
simple hazard map), and the total cost of a mandated evacuation (Fig. 12).
Quantitative data are displayed during action gameplay to help
players assess their progress. Using the early warning displays the alert levels and the simplified hazard map.
A real-life episode of volcanic activity that ends in a volcanic disaster
can usually take hours, days, or weeks. But because Earth Girl Volcano is a casual game we
compress the duration of each action cycle of volcanic activity to between
3 and 5 min. Everything unfolds very rapidly and demands full
attention and swift action. One of the results of staging the action in such
a compressed way is the feeling of stress by the player. Too many things
happen at the same time, and too many things need to be taken care of. The
pressure, the uncertainty, and the overload experienced by the player at this
stage bring the experience close to what an emergency evacuation manager
might feel in a real emergency situation. Once again in the game the staging
of the action is designed to provoke in the player an emotional connection
with the moment, with the act of trying to save a community from a volcanic
disaster.
Malapoa College students in Vanuatu test play Earth Girl Volcano on a tablet and discuss possible strategies for a specific location. Photo by Isaac Kerlow.
The experience of playing for the first time a single location in the Earth Girl Volcano
interactive game can take an average of 8–15 min depending on how much
time a player, or a group of players, spends in the market and exploring the
location before triggering the volcanic activity. We conducted playability
testing with volunteer students or interns at the Nanyang Technological
University in Singapore, and one of our key on-site testing locations was at
Malapoa College in the city of Port Vila, in Vanuatu, a nation with a
high density of active volcanoes (Fig. 13).
Players can review general feedback on their performance
and strategic choices (left) as well as gameplay statistics (right).
The locations in the game can be played in multiple ways, and during testing
we recorded these behaviors casually so as not to interfere with the
spontaneity of playing the game. We have observed players that start by
reading just a couple of dialogs in the market, go straight to the action,
and play the same location over and over in beginner mode until they are
able to save practically everyone. We have seen players who try different
locations. Even if they get a low score, they move onto other locations before
returning to a favorite location and playing that over and over at different
degrees of difficulty. Most of the times that we visited schools to
demonstrate the game, we played in teams of two to four students, each team
with a tablet. In this variety of team playing the players usually read
every single market statement, talk about it, and try to identify the
takeaway idea so they can incorporate it in their mitigation and response
strategy. Playing a single level in team mode may take 20 min because of
the extra discussion, but it is extremely satisfying to watch a group of
young players argue about their ideal strategies for a zero casualty result.
To wrap up Act III the game offers general qualitative feedback on the
player's performance, focusing on their strategic top accomplishments
and worst failures. Numerical statistics are also available for players to
review after playing each cycle of volcanic activity (Fig. 14).
Characterizing volcanic hazard complexity
Our ultimate goal in characterizing volcanic hazard complexity for Earth Girl Volcano was to
have non-technical audiences identify with communities at risk of the
impact of volcanic hazards. We believe that this emotional connection makes
it easy for players to become familiar with technical and practical
knowledge, and we followed a few game design approaches to increase the
potential of emotional connections. These specific design techniques
facilitate the characterization of volcanic hazard complexity for
non-technical audiences in the context of a casual strategy game. We
followed and refined these guidelines from the start of the process and
throughout the development process. The techniques include using show-and-tell (described above in Sect. 1.1), custom character behaviors (described in
Sect. 3.4), and general principles; generalizing from critical details, explaining
and dramatizing, using humor, and combining simulation and scripting.
General principles or golden rules
In the context of volcanology, scientists approach the details of specific
episodes of volcanic activity by applying the scientific method: observing
the phenomenon, analyzing it using a variety of theories, and proving the
results in the laboratory. But using the same approach in the context of
communicating volcanic hazards to the general public proves ineffective, as
mainstream audiences lack the specialized knowledge and/or interest to fully
understand and use such technical information (Bellotti et al., 2011). In Earth Girl Volcano we use
general principles that are based on practical experience, also known as
golden rules or rules of thumb. Because of their simplicity and their direct
link to empirical experience these principles are generally useful for
presenting the essence of volcanic hazards and their impact on communities.
Some of the broad principles presented in the game are explicit, and others
can be inferred from the experience of gameplay. Many of the market dialogs
present true information and explicit rules of thumb that encapsulate the
experience and prior practice of real communities that are represented by
the characters in the game. Many of the volcanic precursors shown during
gameplay in the locations show actions and events that can easily be
generalized into rules of thumb. A few of the empirically based rules in the
game include the following: ashfall impacts people and cattle in different
ways depending on their health level; ashfall can be mitigated by wearing
protective masks; the weight of ashfall can collapse the roofs of frail
dwelling structures; volcanic mudflows are likely to occur after episodes of
intense ashfall and rain; and using an early warning system can provide
communities with additional time to respond to an eventual volcanic episode.
General principles are efficient heuristic devices that help non-specialists
to get a quick sense of complexity and use that knowledge to make swift
decisions and solve challenges. Golden rules are broad but true and easy to
remember.
Focus on critical details but avoid extreme detail
When it comes to volcanic hazards, the immediate interests of communities at
high risk are the ways that the hazards might impact them. Details such as
the precise chemical composition of magma or the ideal arrangements of
seismic monitoring devices, for example, are of interest to specialists but
less interesting to main audiences because these details are not immediately
useful to most of them. Generalizing high-detail information into more
abstract information with less detail helps to focus the player's attention
on the areas that are of immediate consequence to the well-being and
survival of communities. Our own rule of thumb in generalizing volcanic
hazard activity in the context of the game is to focus on what is relevant
to the gameplay and the game mechanics supported in the game (Fullerton,
2018). In terms or disaster risk management the ultimate goal of a
successful generalization is to show the unique dynamics of each volcanic
hazard, what to do when an event is triggered, and what the possible
impacts are.
Let us take the ashfall volcanic hazard, for example. Players of Earth Girl Volcano are shown
three important aspects of ashfall: its impacts on human and animal health,
on weak structures and roofs, and as a precursor to mudflows. Ashfall
presents additional negative impacts in real situations, impacts such as
destroying crops or complicating air travel, but we do not explore those
impacts in the game. The goal of the game is not to provide encyclopedic
reference on volcanic hazards but to focus exclusively on the critical
details that can be experienced through gameplay.
The variables used to simulate hazards with scientific simulation software
can be quite extensive (Francis and Oppenheimer, 2004), but we had to scale the simulation to
the context of a casual game. As a result the volcanic hazards in the game
are characterized by just a few critical details that are capable of
expressing their essential behaviors. Ashfall, for example, is defined in
the game by a few variables including ash start time, ash health damage, and
ash density. There can be multiple start times for multiple sequences of ashfall, and these are stipulated in the hazard scripts that control gameplay
for each location. The damage variable is used to impact the health of
people and cattle over time, while they remain unprotected in the ashfall.
The numerical value of the health variable is never displayed in the game,
and players must keep track of the population during evacuation for any sign
of severe health issues that might require a paramedic. Ash density is used
to modulate the amount of damage of ash deposits on weak or damaged roofs.
To further characterize ashfall we usually specify variables within ranges
that are easily recognizable. Ashfall events in the game usually appear as
light, medium, or heavy to help the player quickly assess the most suitable
response.
Explain and dramatize
The act of explaining can provide objective information that helps to
understand a specific situation, but by itself it does not create emotional
connection. Explaining is an important mechanism to communicate scientific
topics in general because the point of science is to understand and to gain
objective knowledge. But explaining how volcanic hazards work is not
effective in creating the emotional connections that are one of the
essential goals of Earth Girl Volcano. The cold facts of geoscience rarely capture the
imagination of communities at risk. We have observed and experienced this
ourselves oftentimes when talking about volcanic hazard preparedness with
individuals from such communities. Dramatizing, on the other hand, is a
technique used to create emotion and emotional connections by using
characters and the challenges they face in a specific situation. We use the
word dramatizing in this instance not as in exaggerating something but as in
turning the human experience into a story, as in staging a situation where
characters face internal and external pressures (McKee, 1997). The artists
on the Earth Girl Volcano team were familiar with a rule of thumb well-known to writers of
novels, movies, and theater plays: “dramatize, don't explain.” Dramatizing
a situation instead of explaining it is a time-proven approach to engage the
emotions of the audience. The scientists on the team, on the other hand,
were familiar with formulating hypotheses and testing them. The game
benefited in the end from each group focusing on what they do best and also
trying to understand how to enhance what the other group does.
The inclusion of a cute baby character, for example, is all about
dramatizing. Babies are precious beings, and most players are concerned with
saving the babies in the game. During user testing we methodically observed
how practically every player, particularly the youngest, perfected the use
of many tools in the game just so that they could save the baby. The mere
presence of the crawling babies is a dramatic device that brings humor to
the mix and creates an emotional connection between players and the volcano
disaster. The game mechanics of stupid behavior and escape by motorcycle
further illustrate the technique of dramatizing. In the case of stupid
behavior, described earlier in Sect. 3.3, the reasons behind it are not
explained because they are secondary in the context of an emergency
evacuation. In terms of story, an impending disaster represents a life and
death external pressure on every character in the game. But characters with
stupid behavior respond to their own internal pressures, whatever those may
be, and place their lives in jeopardy by refusing to join the evacuation. At
that point we have a dramatic conflict between the desires of those
characters and the overall mission of evacuating as many people as possible.
The situation cannot be ignored because one way or another it will impact
the final score. In dramatic terms this conflict requires resolution and
brings the stakes higher. The escape by motorcycle also creates interesting
dramatic moments because only the closest characters to the vehicle can ride
it, and when placing a motorcycle the player can only estimate who might
arrive first. This situation creates suspense, tension, and hence an
emotional connection. The motorcycle tool is useful for saving stragglers –
usually the elderly, characters with diminished health,
and babies. Volcanic hazards are no laughing matter but fun
game design contributes to engaging gameplay (Koster, 2005). Yes, babies in
the Earth Girl Volcano game can ride motorcycles!
Combine simulation and scripting
This interactive computer game makes use of both numerical simulations and
script-driven events, both with some degree of stochastic values. This
approach is actually borrowed from the creation of special visual effects of
natural phenomena where physically based simulations are used to create the
overall look and behavior of the material, but a script is used to
distribute discrete elements at specific times and locations. This would be
the case, for example, of different types of waves that need to be
choreographed in a computer-generated ocean. The secondary or “crowd”
waves are generated with physically based simulation software, but the exact
placement and timing of the “hero” wave is controlled with a deterministic
script. This combined approach offers both flexibility and the ability to
deliver convincing renditions of volcanic hazards. The hazard script in
Appendix D paraphrases a simple sequencing of volcanic events in the game
that are easy to beat. In Earth Girl Volcano we use interactive menus and direct scripting in
the Unity programming environment to specify the parameters of each of the
27 basic experiences (Fig. 15).
Detail of a menu used to input volcanic hazard variables in
Earth Girl Volcano.
Conclusions
The process of developing and producing the Earth Girl Volcano game in the context of an
art–science interdisciplinary collaboration was both challenging and
fruitful. This collaboration confirmed that the default methodologies
favored by artists and scientist are oftentimes quite different,
particularly when developing a science-inspired game. Initially the
scientific colleagues were focused on a concept that simulated a volcanic
hazard in the most detailed way, while the artistic colleagues focused on a
concept that would engage the target audience. Simulation and storytelling
emerged as opposing approaches early on, but through extensive inquiry into
the goals of the game we managed to develop an experience that combines
scripted simulation with engaging storytelling. Interdisciplinary
collaboration between artists and scientists when developing a product for a
mainstream audience can be a challenging process that requires
communication, constant give and take, and where nothing can be taken for
granted.
Early in the process it became evident that scientists and artists follow
different approaches to research and that a compromise would be paramount
to avoid a failed collaboration. The parameters of modern scientific
research have been widely used for over a century. The scientific
methodology is narrowly defined and is centered on quantitative data.
Practice-based research is another modality of research that also generates
knowledge, and it started to be formulated and formalized in the late
20th century. Practice-based research has become the de facto research
methodology in the creative arts. It can be defined as “an original
investigation undertaken in order to gain new knowledge, partly by means of
practice and the outcomes of that practice” (Candy and Edmonds, 2018).
One of the motivations behind Earth Girl Volcano was the lack of interactive games that in
our initial estimation provided engaging experiences to non-technical users.
This original motivation became the goal of our practice-based research, and
we developed a methodology to address the challenge. We explored
storytelling techniques and crafted a simple way to integrate a story that
functioned on top of the underlying complexity and that also provided a
simple and intuitive gaming experience. The game incorporates notions
of Earth science and evacuation management, but the game itself is neither a
scientific project nor an emergency evacuation manual. We believe that
engaging science-inspired games must incorporate emotions that players can
identify with. These games can help communities to increase their
understanding and preparedness and be more than just a routine public
engagement exercise. We dissected in this paper our game methodology and the
techniques used in Earth Girl Volcano to characterize volcanic hazards in an engaging way. We
hope this contributes to the active discussion surrounding the nature of
practice-based research and the challenges of interdisciplinary
collaboration.
The Earth Girl Volcano interactive casual strategy game presents a comprehensive range of
volcanic hazards in the context of preparedness, mitigation, and response.
The team was able to create original ways to characterize volcanic hazards
within the context of an interactive story that is more engaging than a
collection of scientific facts. We hope these characterizations inspire
future games and have a lasting impact in the development and production of
disaster preparedness and response interactive games. The techniques that we
developed and used to convey complexity and to create empathy with the
situations depicted in the game have generated multiple inquiries from users
and colleagues. The nature of these user requests is a testament to the
initial interest sparked by the game, and they focus on possible
enhancements and/or modifications to the game, for example, creating game
locations that are faithfully modeled after real volcanoes, creating
“national” versions of the game where the game locations represent only real
volcanoes in a specific country, providing the ability to change and
customize market dialogs, providing the ability for users to edit the
volcanic hazard scripts, and adding science-oriented modules with in-depth
technical information. These are all intriguing suggestions, feasible within
the existing game engine, and are also in line with the original
specifications of the game. Versions of the game customized to a specific
real volcano, for example, would pose interesting and unique game design and
science communication research challenges. Increased levels of realism or
geophysical complexity simulation would likely require a game engine
upgrade.
A useful contribution to this project would include in-depth testing to
measure the shifts in players' attitudes after playing the game. Another
possible next step would be the development and creation of supplementary
classroom materials, a task that we initiated but did not complete. Such
materials would facilitate the use of the game by teachers in classroom
scenarios (Alklind, 2014; Foster and Shah, 2015). Earth Girl Volcano was translated into Indonesian,
Tamil, Spanish, French, and Italian. Pending new funding we are keen to
continue translating the game into additional languages spoken in the Ring of
Fire: Tagalog (the Philippines), Bislama (Vanuatu), Russian, and
and Japanese.
Game availability
At the time of writing the public can download the English computer version of
the Earth Girl Volcano game for Windows and MacOS from
https://earthobservatory.sg/ and https://art-science-media.com/. Several localizations of the game for digital tablets are also available at Google Play and the App Store. The early Earth Girl Flash games are available at http://earthgirlgame.com/, and they require the Flash plug-in. We plan to upload the Flash games to the repository website https://itch.io/.
Dialog examples
Auntie: Inspect the weak or broken roofs because a small amount of ashfall could
make them collapse and injure or kill the people indoors.
Bad boy: Breathing
volcanic ash for extended periods of time can make us weak and complicate an
evacuation. Masks or paramedics do help.
Bad boy: We usually get heavy ash when our
volcano gets temperamental. We have learned to keep around dust masks just
in case.
Bald man: Ashfall and smoke are a sign to get ready for a possible
evacuation. The signs help people find the evacuation paths faster!
Bald man: The
rains can easily wash down the volcano slopes some of the ashfall that
builds up on the ground during times of volcanic activity.
Father: The evacuation
committee plans to distribute dust masks when the ashfall begins. I don't
want my kids to get sick or faint.
Father: Volcanic ashfall is frequent in this
picturesque river town. Some of the roofs are damaged and need to be
repaired to avoid collapse.
Fat uncle: Heavy ashfall is an indication of high
volcanic activity, so be cautious and take action. Better safe than sorry!
Grandfather: I hope the evacuation committee distributes masks in the event of ashfall. Your nose gets clogged with ash and you can't breathe.
Scientist: The amount of
ash emitted during a volcanic eruption changes along with volcanic activity.
A sudden increase may be a sign to evacuate.
Scientist: Over time the falling ash is
debilitating and may be lethal, especially for the vulnerable. Dust masks
can minimize the impact.
Scientist: Volcanic ashfall is a sign that volcanic
activity might increase, possibly with rock bombs or burning clouds moving
at 100 km per hour.
Scientist: Volcanic ash isn't the only precursor to an eruption.
Toxic gases can also be emitted from the ground before volcanic activity.
Scientist: Many people live in high-rise buildings today, but we still have to
maintain the roofs of short buildings in case of heavy ashfall.
Teenage girl: I am on
the community evacuation committee, and we have boxes full of dust masks to
give away, for use in case of ashfall.
Young woman: I worry about the families living
in beach huts. Those weak roofs do not withstand the heavy ash we get during
eruptions.
Tool descriptions
Infrastructure tools:
Escape roads are the fastest and most efficient way to escape on flat
ground.
Bridge is an escape bridge, useful for crossing wide rivers and lakes.
Stairway is the fastest and most efficient way to climb steep hills up or down.
Escape signs are signs that direct people to the fastest escape route; they make people run faster.
Sabo Dam is a barrier that blocks mudflows and slows them down. Multiple sabo dams are
needed to stop large mudflows.
Technology tools:
Roof upgrade reinforces damaged roofs to avoid collapse during ashfall, and it always requires the inspection tool first.
Inspection determines the structural strength of buildings and must always be used before roof upgrade.
Gas sensor detects gas leaks that may be poisonous or lethal to humans and cattle.
Dust mask limits damage from volcanic ash but is ineffective against lethal gases.
Motorbike can quickly transport up to three villagers away from danger.
Early warning helps to
decide when to evacuate, based on data provided by a remote volcano-monitoring center.
Education and services tools:
Awareness provides four levels of volcanic hazard
knowledge and improves peoples' evacuation decisions.
Leaders are individuals who lead people and cattle towards safety.
Evacuation supplies pre-pay the cost of an evacuation
to ensure the best possible one; cost is based on population.
Paramedics rescue and heal
villagers who are injured or who become disabled by a volcanic hazard.
Escape truck provides an efficient way to move up to 20 people and cattle away from
danger.
Location descriptions
Pyro Creek is a remote location by the volcano. The rustic dwelling areas
are split by a river and bound by a lake, and the only escape route is
narrow and gets easily congested.
Mud Village is a flat rural area located not far from the volcano and split by a few
small rivers. The huts and small houses are right by the river.
Pyro City is a high-density urban area with tall and short buildings. A river
runs through the town, and good vehicular roads are found on the south half
of the city.
Rock Resort is a tourist resort located by a lake and not far from the volcano. It
includes tall condominiums and leisure areas, good vehicular roads, and a
channel that partially blocks pedestrian traffic.
Ash Town is a small manufacturing city split by a channel. Small buildings are
concentrated near the only vehicular escape route.
Fishpond Village is a fishing village by the lake with a few huts and a large mosque, without
a vehicular escape route. The environment is fragmented by a system of ponds
and irrigation channels.
Lava Buildings is a city on the mountains with multiple high-rise buildings and a single
vehicular escape route. It is located in proximity to the volcano and split by a
river.
Petrol Hell is an industrial park and refinery located next to loading docks and
split by a man-made channel. There are good internal vehicular roads but limited
traffic in and out of the fenced compound.
Gas Village is a small village in a remote rural area located by large rivers. It lacks
paved vehicular roads and features multiple obstacles.
Scripting hazard events
Location: Lava Buildings
Difficulty: beginner
Budget: 7,500 units
Experience duration: 240 s
Population: 425
Incoming outsiders: 60
Point 1: start at 130 s, 20 people
Point 2: start at 130 s, 20 people
Point 3: start at 130 s, 20 people
Evacuation budget: three units per person
Music change: 120 s
Early warning cut-offs
Green: 0 s, yellow-green: 50 s
Yellow: 70 s, yellow-orange: 100 s
Orange: 120 s, orange-red: 140 s
Red: 150 s
Tremors: yes
Small Tremor-1: start at 85 s, magnitude = 0.5, shake duration = 0.5.
Small Tremor-2: start at 120 s, magnitude = 1, shake duration = 0.5.
Large Tremor-1: start at 150 s, magnitude = 1
Gas: yes
Crater node: start at 70 s, people damage: 0, distance: 100, speed: 0.7,
radius: 10
Village Node-1: start at 60 s, duration: 15 s, radius: 3, people damage: 0.1
Village Node-2: start at 75 s, duration 10 s, radius: 3, people damage: 0.1
Village Node-3: start at 120 s, duration 30 s, radius: 4.25, people damage: 0.1
Village Node-4: start at 125 s, duration 30 s, radius: 3, people damage: 0.1
Lava: yes
Lava-1: start at 160 s, slow speed: 0.8, radius: 0.6, ends at river
Lava-2: start at 180 s, slow speed: 0.8, radius: 0.6, ends at river, destroy
House: 1
Rockfall: no, ashfall: no, rain: no, mudflow: no, pyro flow: no.
Video supplement
Two short videos illustrate the features of this game. The Earth Girl Volcano – Game Overview video (1 min 30 s) provides an introduction to this casual strategy game and is available at the TIB AV-PORTAL at 10.5446/47697 (Kerlow, 2019a) as well as at https://vimeo.com/294752004 (last access: 13 November 2020). The Earth Girl Volcano – Game Demo video (6 min 27 s) illustrates a sequential gameplay of the game and is available at 10.5446/47698 (Kerlow, 2019b) as well as
at https://vimeo.com/305156140 (last access: 13 November 2020).
Author contributions
IK conceptualized the Earth Girl disaster games and designed the Earth Girl Volcano game, supervised the development and production teams throughout the process, participated in the creation of artwork, and wrote the original draft of the published work. GP and HA contributed to the methodology during the late stages of production,
participated in the validation, and reviewed and edited the published work.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Special issue statement
This article is part of the special issue “Five years of Earth sciences and art at the EGU (2015–2019)”. It is a result of the EGU General Assembly 2019, Vienna, Austria, 7–12 April 2019.
Acknowledgements
The core members of the Earth Girl Volcano game development and production team made
significant artistic and/or technical contributions to the game itself. The
complete list of game credits is at http://www.earthgirl2.com (last access: 13 November 2020). The design of the game and the user interface is by Isaac Kerlow. Programming
was done by Seah Wen Kai and Zel Ang. The game levels were designed by
Faye Lim Ying Yuan, Isaac Kerlow, and Lisa Lim Yan Xin. The technical artist
was Faye Lim Ying Yuan, and the lead artist was Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong. The
sound effects and the music were by Jeremy Goh. Kim Van was in charge of the
early prototyping. The market dialogs were written by Isaac Kerlow and Lisa Lim
Yan Xin, with additional contributions from Lee Jia Min, Seah Cheng, and Yeo Shu
Hui. The production was coordinated by Antoinette Jade, Jingqin Tioranu, and
Victor Chan. The Earth Girl Volcano game was developed in consultation with members
of the Volcano Group and other research groups at the Earth Observatory of
Singapore, with the active participation of Susanna Jenkins, who was the
co-investigator of record, Fidel Costa, Caroline Bouvet, Benoit Taisne, Li Weiran Alex, Fabio Manta, Lauriane Chardot, Chris Harpel, Jason Herrin, Dawn Sweeny, Christina Widiwijayanti, Dayana Schonwalder, Gareth Fabbro, Stephen Pansino, and Dorianne Tailpied. Translations were done by the following people: Ratih Oktarini and Riko I Made
for Indonesian, Elakeyaa Selvaraji for Tamil, Erinna Sacco and Fabio Manta
for Italian, Lauriane Chardot for French, and Gabriela Pedreros and Isaac Kerlow
for Spanish. We thank the following institutions for providing major support:
Earth Observatory of Singapore, AXA Research Fund, National Research
Foundation, Ministry of Education, The World Bank Group, Global Facility for
Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), Nanyang Technological University,
Nanyang Polytechnic, and Malapoa College. We also thank the many individuals
throughout the world who have invested their time, funds, and effort to
develop and implement this project. Special thanks are owed to Damià Benet,
Jacques Frety, Wendy Tan, Simone Balog-Way, Tiziana Lanza, Kerry Sieh, Chris Newhall, Glenda Tapel Newhall, Florian Schwandner, Ben Horton, Adam Switzer,
Jegannath Ramanujam, Naveen Raj Kunaseelan, David Higgit, Bruce Malamud,
Cheng Hoon Khoo, Esline Garaebiti, Shem Simon, Richard Shing, Henderson Tagaro, Johnson Toa, and Jackie Potgieter.
Financial support
This research has been supported by Earth Observatory of Singapore, AXA Research Fund, National Research Foundation, Ministry of Education, Nanyang Technological University, and private donors.
Review statement
This paper was edited by Jutta Thielen-del Pozo and reviewed by Christopher Skinner and one anonymous referee.
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