Real Lives 2010 Analysis

Analysis of Simulation Games
Game Title: Real Lives 2010

General Information

Background Information

Bob Runyan, author of Real Lives 2010 and president of Educational Simulations, developed this game to help immerse players in the day-to-day struggles of life in other cultures. The goal is to bring awareness of cultural challenges and world living conditions to others around the world. Players are able to experience over 190 countries facing challenges and make decisions about their life journey.

Creator Runyan "wanted to create a game that generates a level of empathy" (http://www.educationalsimulations.com/). Throughout the game, he provides real world data, based on the facts of the country and cultural references, and provides an opportunity to learn how people live in other countries. In addition, 10% of the profits are contributed by Educational Simulations to help improve the lives of those in disadvantaged countries.

Play Features

The game begins on your birthday! As a newborn baby, from a pre-chosen country, you are provided with information about your family, home, country, and health. Each year you age, a diary is kept to log the events that happen in your life. During the year, you will encounter events that challenge your health, family status, education, religion, economic status, and your country's hardships and celebrations.

As you grow older, you are making more decisions on your own regarding your financial status, relationships, and recreational activities. Those choices will be based on current conditions of the country and family status. Over the course of the game, as you age, you will experience the joys and hardships of living the life of a person in your given land.

Representation

Real Lives 2010 is representative of the world in the present day. Players are provided with information of personal successes and tragedies that are current with the situations that are on going and happening around the world today. Simulations are related to decisions that one would make living their life in the different country. Each year of life, players are notified of events related to births, illnesses, financial situations, crisis in the country, and employment.

With one click, your life advances a year. Each player can relate to the game differently based on age and prior life experiences. The game provides a sense of empathy as you journey through your life with a new identity in another country. You will find yourself making connections with familiar experiences as you play the game, and if you haven't experienced some of the circumstances, then you will feel compelled to think about the differences between your home country and your new simulated country.

Analysis

Game Components

A game is an interactive situation based on conflict, resolution, use of prior knowledge, interesting storylines, simulation, and virtual environments that are all used to complete a challenging goal. Multiple or single participants work toward completion of a challenging goal governed by a fixed set of rules. The game is organized, safe, amusing, interactive, and representative of the skills the students are working on, thus providing review and practice of prior knowledge, and allowing the participants to apply new synthesized knowledge to related situations.

A Look at Real Lives 2010 Game Components

1. Rules
2. Organization-clear goals to be obtained by playing the game.
3. Players
4. Representation of reality through simulation.
5. Chance
6. Conflict
7. Resolution
8. Safety
9. Amusement
10. Interactive storylines

Strong Components of Real Lives 2010
The goal, working toward a long healthy and happy life, along with making decisions that can change the outcome, is quite clear. A single player or a possible small group of players, can work toward achieving the goal. The chance that something devastating will happen to your virtual family differs based on the encounters throughout the years. Conflict arises when there is devastation in your family, a gain, or loss of a job, an event that poses problems in the country, or a personal life experience. Choices are made by the players to resolve concerns that may arise regarding finances, love interests, and contributions to the community. These components provide for a safe learning environment building on prior knowledge; simulating the real world experiences through decision-making processes.

Weak Components of Real Lives 2010
Rules are somewhat clear and could use a more explicit approach for understanding the game better. While the players independently play the game and can click on family members to obtain more information, the virtual environment is missing. Some of the material becomes repetitive, which may be a component of the trial game. The game becomes lengthy at times, allowing for periods of needed intermission by the player. Therefore, the amusement level would be higher if there were a stronger storyline, more interactive components, and more chances to interact with the non-playing characters of the game.

Learner's Styles & Teaching/Learning Objectives
I would choose this game for late high school or a higher education level of students. Based on many components of the game, there are not many opportunities for interactions with other players or non-playing characters. The decisions are made solely by the individual player or possible partnering of no more than two players. Based on this information, I would choose the Assimilation Style of learning for the group that would enjoy this game.

The Assimilating learning preference is for a concise, logical approach. Ideas and concepts are more important than people. These people require good clear explanations rather than practical opportunity. They excel at understanding wide-ranging information and organizing it in a clear logical format. People with an Assimilating learning style are less focused on people and more interested in ideas and abstract concepts. People with this style are more attracted to logically sound theories than approaches based on practical value. This learning style person is important for effectiveness in information and science careers. In formal learning situations, people with this style prefer readings, lectures, exploring analytical models, and having time to think things through (http://www.businessballs.com/kolblearningstyles.htm).

Objectives for Real Lives 2010:
Decision-Making: analysis of knowledge based on problem solving, prediction, drawing conclusions, and choice making. During the game, choices are given over the course of a lifetime to enhance the opportunity of a healthy and happy life. Detailed situations give the game a real-life feel, and players have the chance to monitor their life choices visualized on a current graph.

Social/Cultural Awareness: understanding the social environment of others. The students take on the life of a person from a different country making decisions that will extend or end their lives based on current issues that are relative to that country. This narrative-based game provides opportunities to comprehend and reflect on decisions made related to the real world concerns. During the course of the game, reflection is necessary to continue with choices. Upon completion of the game, a death certificate is given. It reviews the major factors and decisions that were made throughout the player's lifetime.

Ability to Self-Assess: evaluation of one's own progress. Players can consistently evaluate and change their social status by looking at the assets that they have obtained through life. There are also opportunities to continually assess personal progress with a graph; however, I'm not sure how this graph plays into the game. I couldn't find much value to it, other than I could tell when I was getting close to ending my life. At the end of the game, there is an opportunity to reflect on the game process.

Implementation & Assessment

Settings
If the high school setting were set up in small group stations, as we do in the elementary level, a purchase of a Six Pack license would be needed. The cost for a Six Pack is $199; the price goes way up when looking at full lab packs of 30 or more students. The total cost can exceed $800 to complete the license requirements for a student lab. Computer labs would also require systems to have Windows 2000 or higher, 512 MB RAM, and 1024 x 768 graphics resolution.

Real Lives 2010 is aligned with the national standards. This program provides additional teacher resources in the form of lesson plans. Teacher lesson plans include cause and effect, comparing personal life to the virtual life of the game, discussion-starting questions to synthesize the knowledge learned while playing the game, journal discussions, and activity extensions.

Teachers, students, families, and community members that share this game are the primary stakeholders. To fully understand and obtain the true feeling behind the author's message, the players will need a basic knowledge of life skills. If players are lacking experiences of independent life skills, it will be difficult to gain the full simulation of empathy for the virtual characters of the game.

Procedure
One way to implement the game would be to help students to understand that an important part of geography is the cause and effect relationship between the natural environment and human beings. The environment directly impacts the ways in which people live and the ways in which people make a living. Have students work in pairs to research such topics as land use, natural resources, climate, and vegetation in their simulated birth countries.

Assessment
Ask students to present, one by one, oral summaries of the major events in their simulated lives and the related causes/effects. Help students process all of the information and relate it to their own lives with post activity discussions centered on life's events, causes, and effects --those that we can influence in a positive or negative way and those we can't. Assessment given in a rubric from would be helpful for both students and teachers to know the expectations of the final project.