In Proceedings of GALA

A Serious Game to Inform Young Citizens on Canal Water Maintenance

Yoeri Appel, Yordan Dimitrov, Sjoerd Gnodde, Natasja van Heerden, Pieter Kools, Daniel Swaab, Nestor Z. Salamon, J. Timothy Balint, and Rafael Bidarra

Example of two minigames that introduce new pickups. Left: the aim is to remove duckweed, that blocks sunlight into the canal. Right: the goal is to catch muskrats that build holes in levees.

In order to support the creation of sustainable and healthyecosystems, citizens should have knowledge of the necessary maintenanceneeded. For example, they should be aware of the challenges of maintain-ing proper urban surface waters, so that they can take on a responsibleand proactive role. Ideally, citizens should acquire this knowledge froman early age. We describe the design, implementation, and evaluationof the serious gameHydro Hero, aimed at forming and reinforcing thisawareness and reasoning. Hydro Hero is an infinite runner game withextended minigames, which show bothwhatshould not be on the canalsas well aswhythey should be removed. We assessed the ability of Hy-dro Hero to teach young children about canal maintenance by combininga questionnaire with open-ended play-testing sessions at a science mu-seum. On average, players were able to improve their ability to justifywhy certain items should be removed or left in a canal. It has not beenfully confirmed that Hydro Hero conveyed this specific knowledge, dueto the absence of quizzing beforehand. However, given the high partic-ipants' engagement, we consider the game to have contributed to theirawareness about the importance of canal cleaning for a sustainable urbanenvironment.


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Citation

Yoeri Appel, Yordan Dimitrov, Sjoerd Gnodde, Natasja van Heerden, Pieter Kools, Daniel Swaab, Nestor Z. Salamon, et al., A Serious Game to Inform Young Citizens on Canal Water Maintenance, In Proceedings of GALA, pp. 394–403, 2019.

BibTex

@inproceedings{bib:appel:2019,
    author       = { Appel, Yoeri and Dimitrov, Yordan and Gnodde, Sjoerd and van Heerden, Natasja and Kools, Pieter and Swaab, Daniel and Salamon, Nestor Z. and Balint, J. Timothy and Bidarra, Rafael },    
    title        = { A Serious Game to Inform Young Citizens on Canal Water Maintenance },
    booktitle    = { In Proceedings of GALA },
    year         = { 2019 },
    pages        = { 394--403 },
    doi          = { 10.1007/978-3-030-34350-7_38 },
    dblp         = { conf/gala/AppelDGHKSSBB19 },
    url          = { https://publications.graphics.tudelft.nl/papers/102 },
}