Exchanging Cultures (EC) Game
EC is a diplomatic game within Second life with both short term and long term goals.
Short term: Interact with and complete the games within EC
Long term: Create virtual communities and relationships based on the exchange of cultural items such as dances, art, recipes, clothing, and images of other places for travelers/explorers.
Each player becomes a diplomat who must attempt to understand the cultures of the people that he/she is building relationships with, as well as share elements of his/her own culture
Game Play
Each player starts at the “World Exchange Cultural Center” or WECC, which is the headquarters of the EC game.
WECC is represented by a geographic globe which will be floating and rotating in the air
This globe is a “gate” for accessing continents, regions, and cultures that the player will interact with by touch the part of the globe that he/she wishes to experience
When a player enters the WECC they receive a number of cultural items that they will need to complete the challenges
Next, the player chooses a region on the globe and touches it, the avatar is then transported to the corresponding culturally-themed room
Game Play cont.
Once in a room the player will face a challenge before he/she can return to the main room
The player will need the items they received at the beginning in order to complete these challenges
If the challenge is properly completed then the player receives a reward, another cultural item from the room
The player may then return to the main room and choose his next destination/challenge
Players may track their progress
The Globe
Click on a continent, and then your avatar will be transported to the corresponding room with five cultural objects.
Example of objects:
“Continental” Rooms
Rooms will feature riddles, quiz questions, descriptions, and games for the players:
The player may be asked a question about an object in his or her avatar’s possession.
The questions and riddles will help the player figure out
what object to leave in the room before departing.
For example:
They are made from the fruit of the higuera tree, which are
common throughout Puerto Rico. After taking out the pulp
of the fruit through two holes that are bored through the
dried shell, small pebbles are introduced into them. What instrument
should you leave in this room?
EXCHANGING CULTURES (EC) GAME
Conceptual Idea of EC GAME: Description of the Public space of the EC game and why EC promotes Public Diplomacy
Exchanging Cultures (EC) is a diplomatic game built inside “Second Life”, a Massive Multiplayer On Line Game (MMOG). The main purpose of EC is creating virtual communities and relationships based in the exchange of cultural items like: dances, art crafts, food receipts, architectural models, dresses, cultural routes and images of real original places for travelers and explorers. The best diplomat is the one who understand the culture of the people that is building relationships with. The diplomat has to become a kind of anthropologist who invests time and interest in understanding the details of a culture and then starts to share his own with respect.
The idea of exchanging cultural items and having a specific virtual space and a game available 24 hours makes of the EC game a compatible game that can be played for people from all the world time zones. The fact of having a cultural game where people could exchange unique and original objects and actions for free will make of EC one of the biggest resources for experimenting new features in the Second Life virtual world. The “World Exchange Cultural Center” (WECC) is the headquarters of the EC game. WECC will be represented by a Geographic Globe, which will be floating and rotating in the air. The WECC floating globe will be a gate for accessing the different continents, regions and cultures that the player will interact with, through touching and selecting one of the them in the globe. This will be a similar idea of the tv series and film “Startgate”, where a circular metallic ring becomes a tele-transporter to another universe. In the EC case it will be the different interacted parts of the globe the ones that will open another spaces, rooms and game levels, in the planet Earth and the culture that habits in there.
DESIGN NOTE: I think could be nice to have here and IMAGE OF THE FLOATING GLOBE with some people with different dresses and skin colors around it and someone touching one of the continent. The continent would be with a zoom in or some kind of special effect that will look as a opened gate or a teletransporter. THE GLOBE SHOULD BE GEOGRAPHIC NO DEFINING ANY POLITICAL BORDERS BUT GEOGRAPHIC LIKE MOUNTAINS OCEANS, ETC.
PLEASE INCLUDE AS MUCH IMAGES AS YOU CAN IMAGINE BASED IN THE DESCRIPTION AS POSSIBLE SO PEOPLE COULD HAVE A FIRST VISUALIZATION.
The WECC serves for two purposes. The first one will be as a tutorial where people will learn how to drag on their library new cultural features like animations that make you dance, traditional dresses that you could wear, pictures of traditional plates or original aliments from one place, music, pictures, art crafts that you could wear, use for building or use as decoration, etc. The second purpose will be for using WECC as a cultural learning center where each player would be able of playing several mini games.
The mini games will serve for learning and understanding cultures. They will be trivial games that ask cultural questions or constructive games where you would have to build an specific dress or art craft or perform a dance or do a questionnaire to a person from that culture. The WECC will serve also as a place for the encounter of people from different cultures to exchange language classes or practicing different language, to ask to a cultural native about a place that someone is going to visit or just to share their travel experiences, photos and videos. The idea is to provide a basic architectural infrastructure based in the 6 continents where the people could build new rooms for their own culture and for different cultural exchanges purposes, for example projecting small video clips of a real place or event or even create the Second Life EC International Film Festival.
The players will be able of learning about geographical, demographical and cultural information of different continents in a virtual space where the mistakes are allowed and recommended for learning something new about a culture.
EC will be respect all the people who would like to share, exchange and build cultural items and experiences in an environment of respect and creativity. For that reason the globe would be based in the cultural inputs of the people and in geographical representations where different cultures could be sharing the same space. The main purpose of EC is the representation and the motivation of the Cultural Exchange beside any political, religion of business interests.
The exchange of cultures will be based in certain rules that will provide the principles of discovery, experimenting, justice in the barter process, respect of the other likes through inviting to the exchange but no forcing it, renewing cultural information and items, replay ability through updating the cultural items and the games developed in the WECC.
There will be scores and special recognition and abilities for the different players who will create more cultural items for the different categories: food, dress, dance, art craft, dance, architecture, etc. Hopefully with the collaboration of cultural institutions we could even provide free flight tickets or housing around the world so the best players, the ones who play to increase the exchange of cultures (ECs) in their different aspects, could meet each other.
Game Background & Motivations.
It is based in the idea of creating entertainment games related with the function that a multicultural international organization like the Unesco could develop. The discovery and the player skills development are some of the most important motivation for creating a flow during the game experience. Also, the exchange of cultural items and habits it is a very rich full resource for inviting the players to discover new and original aspects of different cultures.
Through this game project, we seek to explore questions such as how are different culture’s created, integrated or/and maintained in a digital world, what type of emotional investment would player’s have to a game if they have a greater sense of agency in the game’s purpose? People can connect with people from different cultural and artistic skills backgrounds so they can learn while playing. We develop a cultural context where you can play while learning different aspect of different cultures: dresses, foods, dances, artcrafts, etc. The game also provides a place for the sharing of media- photos, video, and stories. Users can attend the virtual theatre and watch media submitted by other users. Since the game’s scope is international, it will provide an international inter-cultural bridge between people. Using media as universal way to communicate with each other. We seek to evolve the ways humans communicate through the use of shared media in the context of a game.
The Prototype: Describing the Player Experience, Game Design & Specific Rules.
I think it could be great if you could describe here :
1) The Player Experience: Narrate with words and the draws and design the
Prototype or Short Film giving a tour of the space( just create some artcraft and exchange between each other)
2) The Game Aesthetic.
3) Game Mechanics & Rules.
