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HEALTH
EDUCATION LEARNING
TRAINING
URBANISM ECONOMY
CULTURE
SOCIETY
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AL2049, A PLAYFUL MUSEUM’S VISIT
TO GRASP THE ISSUES OF COMPLEXITY
Simon Morard 1, Eric Sanchez 1, Gil Oliveira 1, Nicolas Godinot 2
1: University of Geneva, TECFA, Geneva, Switzerland
2: Alimentarium, Vevey, Switzerland
simon.morard@unige.ch
KEYWORDS
Mixed Methods, Game-based-learning, Museum, Complex Problem, Complexity, Food Production,
Gameplay Analysis
ABSTRACT
This article presents a game designed for school visits in a nutritional-focused museum and the research
method dedicated to evaluate its gameplay. AL2049 is a game that allows teenagers to grasp the complexity
and challenges related to food production. In order to evaluate how the gameplay may impact learning, we
performed an a priori analysis, enabling to formulate assumptions about how the game might be played, and
an a posteriori analysis, based on a mixed method, about how it is played.
CULTURE, SOCIETY, TOURISM
58
CONTEXT
A multidisciplinary team of researchers, game design and museology professionals designed AL2049, the
developed game for a nutrition-focused museum
[1]
. The purpose of the game is to oer the students a playful
experience in the museum and get them to reflect on the systemic feature of food and its production. The
game starts with an introduction performed by a game master who presents himself as a scientist working
at the museum. His main concern is to feed 30 people stucked in the museum, considering environmental
and societal constraints. To succeed, players must feed this group using a simulator which allows them to
test ideas about food production.
The game interface corresponds to a museum map that shows the various rooms distributed on two floors.
The core mechanic of the game consists in assigning specific functions to these dierent spaces. Each func-
tion is a component of the food system. Then, players must make decisions to assign dierent units such as
production units (crop cultivation, animal breeding), processing units (transformation of plants or animals),
consumption units (market or restaurants) or a research unit (laboratory of agronomic science). Each unit
requires a certain amount of energy and the resources are limited. The energy comes from human labor (i.e.
30 people), renewable energy and fossil fuel.
TARGETED ISSUE
After allocating various units to the dierent rooms, the players get information about the consequences
of their decisions. The game interface provides information about the number of people who survived based
on the amount of produced food. In addition, they get information about the health and well-being of the
population. The score for health criteria depends on the nutritional variety and pollution. Well-being depends
on the workload of the population and the quality of nutrition. Thus, a low well-being score results from too
much work for food production or a lack of places for leisure and meeting (restaurants or markets). In addition,
monoculture impacts food variety and health score. The player is allowed to change the dierent parameters
and assess his decisions’ results in terms of health, well-being and number of people who survive.
This is where our methodological challenge emerges
[1]
as we would like to track the players' decisions during
the game. Since AL2049 is played by teams of 2 to 3 students and they are likely to interact with each
other: these exchanges are valuable for us to study their understanding of the game mechanics and concepts
related to food production.
PROPOSED SOLUTION
Our research method encompasses two main steps: the first step consisted of an a priori analysis to deter-
mine whether the choices made during the game design phase were likely to provoke the expected behaviors
in players, and to know the meaning they gave to the game. The process entailed scrutinizing the design
assumptions by clearly articulating them in a descriptive manner (for instance, outlining the actions that the
player will undertake at particular points in the game) and by elucidating their anticipated outcomes, especially
with regard to learning (predictive di-
mension) [2]. In a research approach,
a game a priori analysis should allow
the designers, as well as the re-
searchers, to reach a shared vision of
the design and formulate hypothe-
ses on the game impacts on learning.
Written in the form of a report, the
a priori analysis describes and justi-
fies the design choices based on the
educational objectives. The second step of our research method was an experimentation, during which two
classes of about twenty students played in the museum. The game was designed so that each interaction
with the tablet was recorded in a log file; thus collecting digital traces for quantitative analysis. In addition,
some players wore an on-board camera dedicated to record video files about players' interactions within the
teams. The dialogues were transcribed, and we performed a categorical analysis [3].
AL2049 is a game that
allows teenagers to grasp the
complexity and challenges
related to food production.
CULTURE, SOCIETY, TOURISM
59 RELEVANT INNOVATION
We consider our research method to be innovative, as it combines both quantitative and qualitative ap-
proaches. The use of an on-board camera proved to be minimally invasive for the players, who agreed to
be filmed in all our experiments. The digital traces would not be sucient on their own to characterize the
players' experiences, but the combination of video recordings and traces allowed us to have an overall vision of
what happened during the game. By studying the traces, we identified specific moments of the game, during
which the players changed their strategy (i.e. by giving up a certain type of energy or by favoring well-being
over health). The timestamp of the recordings of digital traces facilitates the search for specific events in
the videos. For example, it is possible to focus on the moments when the players decided to change their
strategy and listen to their arguments. This argumentation translates an understanding, sometimes naive and
sophisticated in others, of the issues of food production.
We also consider innovative game design approaches. The museum is conceptualized as a closed and finite
system, a metaphor of the global food system. Each decision reached by the player in terms of type of crop,
farmed animal, related activities, or energy type and quantities allocated has multiple impacts, which highlights
the complexity of food production [1].
PROJECT OUTCOMES & RESULTS
Thanks to the a priori analysis, we could hypothesize that in the second game phase, the players’ strategy
mainly relied on the use of renewable energies instead of fossil fuels. However, the players realized that it
would be dicult to produce enough food with this single source of energy, so they faced a complex issue
with multiple solutions. The a posteriori analysis highlighted several strategies and attitudes towards the game
complexity. Many players made the association between fossil fuels (which they characterized as pollution)
and wellbeing and tended to reduce it.
The oil barrels, presented in the form of a pictogram, also generated confusion among players. Some of them
understood that they were water barrels needed for food production. The game master had to explain that
agricultural machines or food processing units need fuel. Thanks to the use of onboard cameras, we noticed
the problem and revised the instructions provided to students ensuring a better playful learning experience.
Some players also decided to reduce the complexity, by voluntarily not taking into account one factor. For
example, they choose to have a fed but depressed population or a small but healthy population (out of the
30 people to be fed). This way of solving the complexity seems to make them feel like they have “beaten”
the game.
60
CONCLUSION
Our data collection method as well as a mixed method analysis allowed us to both anticipate players' behav-
iors, and to reveal unexpected attitudes toward AL2049. Thanks to this iterative monitoring and gameplay
evaluation, we redesigned the game so that the playful experience in the museum helps the understanding
of the complexity of human nutrition.
PERSPECTIVES & NEEDS
It seems possible to anticipate some players’ behaviors, but not all of them, due to the subjective nature of
play. The study of the distance between the designed game and the played one is a field of research that has
not been fully explored yet in the field of game design [4].
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research project is funded by the Swiss National Funds. We thank the teachers who supported us during
the experimentations, as well as their students who tested the game and the sta from the museum who
participated in the project.
REFERENCES
[1] Oliveira, G., Godinot, N., Sanchez, E., Bonnat, C., Morard, S., & Dall’Aglio, S. (2022). Game Design for a Museum Visit : Insights into
the Co-design of AL2049, a Game About Food Systems (p. 2231). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22124-8_3
[2] Sanchez, E. (2023) Enseigner et former avec le jeu. Paris
[3] Bardin, L. (2013). Chapitre premier. L’analyse catégorielle. Quadrige, 207207.
[4] Fernández Galeote, D., Diamant, M., Volkovs, K., Zeko, C., Thibault, M., Legaki, N.-Z., & Hamari, J. (2022). Understanding the
Game-based Learning Experience : A Framework of Frictions Between Design and Play. Proceedings of the 17th International
Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, 14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3555858.3555933
CULTURE, SOCIETY, TOURISM
