Windfall+(Justin)


 * EDUCATIONAL GAME REVIEW: //Windfall// **




 * A brief description of the game. You may include images or even video clips to help give readers a better idea of the game. **

Windfall is a real-time strategy game in which the player builds wind turbines, trying to reach a target amount of energy output, while remaining politically popular. There are three difficulties (easy, medium, and hard), with the energy output goal growing as the difficulty rises. Also, the time limit goes by much faster on the harder difficulties, and your political popularity is much more easily damaged.  The game screen consists of a map grid with tools and monitors around the edge. The map grid changes from game to game and depending on the difficulty level. These landscapes can consist of anything from grass, dirt, water, pavement, hills, trees, bushes, houses, factories, other buildings, etc. Some of these features can be built upon, while others cannot.  As the builder of the wind turbines, you have several tools at your disposal. You can click on a square of land to do “research” about it. Clicking the “research” button on a given square of land tells you what its value is and how windy it is in that location. Once you have paid to research a piece of land, you can click the “info” button” at any time to look at those numbers. Otherwise, you have no information about which areas are best for building your turbines. This information is critical because it tells you which plots of land will produce the most energy and it indicates how much value the land has. If a piece of land is more valuable (or if it is located near a residence or business), building awind turbine on that land will be an unpopular decision. The more unpopular you are politically, the more money it costs you annually, hurting your overall score.  There are three different sizes of wind-turbines you can build—the bigger a turbine, the more expensive it is. Moreover, the larger turbines, while they produce more energy, are seen as more of a nuisance to residents and can result in a big hit to your political popularity. Each wind turbine must be connected to a transformer. You build power lines that connect your turbines to these transformers. Lastly, you can recycle anything you have built, taking it off the map and freeing up more space (or rectifying an unpopular build). The catch is this: you only get back half of what you spent to originally built it.  Days (on the game’s calendar) tick by as you play, and the game stops every so often to give you an updated summary of your progress (usually at the end of each yeaer). You have three years to reach your desired energy output goal. The point of the game is to place the turbines as strategically as possible, so that you can achieve the highest possible wind energy output for the lowest possible cost. What makes this game a bit trickier is the inclusion of political popularity. As your popularity goes down, it costs you more and more each month, potentially sabotaging any energy gains you may have made.


 * The kinds of learning involved (i.e. What specifically did you learn from playing the game?). Think about the game tasks, objectives, terminology, etc. What skills did you need to learn to be successful at the game? Note that many 'educational' games don't actually teach new content area skills, but rather allow students to practice skills they've already learned elsewhere. **

 There is definitely a lot of strategy involved in playing //Windfall//. Players have to have good special awareness to be able to effectively plot an efficient wind farm. There are many things a player must take into account—value of the land, potential wind at a given location, proximity to existing houses/buildings, available funds, natural obstacles, access to a transformer, etc. Players learn to balance monetary and energy gains with the possible political repercussions. The game does a good job of showing players a bit of the complexity involved in the shift toward alternative energy. It isn’t as simple as building in a way that produces the most energy or is most cost effective. People and the communities in which they live are involved, and no decision can please everyone.  Players must problem solve, as well. The natural and man-made obstacles make it difficult to arrange turbines ideally, as the logistics of connecting to a transformer and laying out the power lines often prove problematic. The game also forces players to budget their money. You only have so much money to start, and more money comes in from the wind turbines once they are built. However, money spends quickly, and it is important to not overspend—the time flies quicker than the money and you don’t want to be waiting for money while the days and months roll by.  One of the most important things players learn in //Windfall// is the value of research. The relative cost of researching the land is low, compared to the cost of building inefficiently. Knowing the facts and having the important information—doing your “homework”—before making decisions is an important lesson to learn. Building without researching ensures failure in this game.  Lastly, players must learn to think quickly and make snap decisions. The game flies by, and if you stall and spend too much time thinking, you won’t reach your goal. The ability to quickly conceptualize a layout for building your wind turbines is the key to success in //Windfall//. Players must really be able to see the big picture early on and spend the remainder of the game painting that picture.


 * The kinds of teaching involved (i.e. How did the game teach you?). Think about the kinds of feedback, rewards, guidance, and information the game gave you, and how it paced and structured your learning. Which Principles of Learning did the game utilize? **

 //Windfall// begins with a tutorial, in which the goal of the game is explained, you are introduced to the various tools in the game, and have a chance to test out some of these tools before beginning the actual game. After this tutorial, however, there is little guidance. During gameplay, pop-up boxes remind you to connect your turbines to transformers or alert you that your transformer is reaching capacity. There is no deliberate feedback offered by the game. A player can see the immediate impact of a building decision by monitoring his/her political popularity meter or their energy output. But this feedback is entirely self-monitored. No rewards are offered and the game does not pace or structure the learning—the game goes at its own pace, and players either sink or swim.  The main learning principles the game utilizes are the active, critical learning principle, the design principle, the “psychosocial moratorium” principle, the probing principle, and the multiple routes principle. //Windfall// forces the player to learn by doing, actively building understanding (active, critical learning principle). The goal of the game is to design the most efficient wind farm in a given landscape, thus appreciating the nuances of design is core to the game experience (design principle). Also, Windfall utilizes images, words, actions, and symbols in a complex system that is essential to the game’s learning experience (semiotic principle). Everything on the map grid is represented by a symbol, each of which is connected to specific rules and actions within the game, as well as a name. The interrelations between these various sign systems is fundamental to game play and learning within //Windfall//. Next, players are able to experiment and build multi-billion dollar wind farms and alter communities without the real-world consequences of those actions (“psychosocial moratorium). Lastly, the game offers multiple routes to success—wind turbines can be built almost anywhere and in almost any formation—allowing each individual player to utilize their own strengths and explore various approaches to building their wind farms (multiple routes principle). And these multiple routes involve a cycle of making an action (building something), reflecting on results that action caused, forming a hypothesis of why it was effective or ineffective, taking another action with this information in mind, and continuing with the hypothesized plan or rethinking your approach (probing principle).

 I really wasn’t sure whether or not I would enjoy this game at first. I have played somewhat similar games in the past (//Dune// and //Command and Conquer//) and really wasn’t a huge fan of either. Unfortunately, my instincts weren’t too far off with //Windfall//. I was engaged while I played it, but I doubt I would choose to play it again. I think this is just a personal taste issue—I don’t think I enjoy real-time strategy games. In fairness, I don’t believe I played the game long enough to really hone my skills and gain a full understanding of the game. The few games I played were largely unsuccessful, and I’ll admit that I’m still not exactly sure how to accurately pin-point the best spots for wind turbines or how to best design a wind farm. It seemed that no matter what I did, no matter how much I tried to research, my decisions were unpopular and I failed to reach my wind energy output goal. The constant ticking away of time was also somewhat nerve-wracking. I felt that if I took the time to really think things through, I would run out of time (incidentally, I noticed there was a pause button toward the top of the screen at the end of my session). I tend to be a slower processor, and this accelerated time limit was very uncomfortable for me. However, this may be an area in which I need to improve. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> I think that //Windfall// would be a difficult game for me to use in my curriculum, as it doesn’t seem particularly suited for language arts instruction. However, I think it could be used well in science or social studies. I feel that much of the cyclical probing process of science is embodied within this game, and students could play the game to not only practice their problem-solving skills, but also to learn a bit about the complex nature of implementing new technologies and sciences in the real world. They would be able to see the impact wind energy could have on a community, both positive and negative. And I believe that a social studies curriculum could use this game to demonstrate the political effects that these sort of large scale movements (the movement away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy) can have on communities and those trying to institute the changes. In both of these disciplines, students could utilize Windfall as a means of honing their strategizing skills—science to strategically problem solve a way of building the turbines with minimum disruption to the public, and social studies to strategize the best way to maintain political approval, while still championing a personal cause. These are really the same thing, but each discipline could look at the game through a slightly different lens.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Your overall reflections on playing the game. How might a teacher use the game in their curriculum? **