Visual Game & Media Design graduation project
Student: Alexis Emmanuel Lozano Angulo
Year: 2020
The project objectives involved designing a game which could transform players, by increasing their knowledge regarding sustainability and circular economy for food. Thus, it was important to visualize the challenges and possible practices around food production and consumption for more sustainable societies.
Subsyst’s relevance in the game design praxis is based on the following criteria:
- Collection of user insights using the ZMET technique which modeled the content of the video game
- Using Machinations as a game design tool to balance the flow of in-game resources
- Assessing the impact of the game through a questionnaire-playtest-questionnaire methodology
The assessment stage of the project generated preliminary results, showing that the game has the potential to significantly increase the knowledge of players, after playing the prototype for a minimum of 30 minutes.
The Subsyst Simulator is playable at:
https://eplundare.itch.io/subsyst-simulator
(Playable only on a web browser on PC/Mac).
Is it sustainable to produce food in a small-scale or in an industrial scale?
Is it possible to produce food and regenerate the environment?
The project was given depth using documentation about sustainability, food systems and circular economy for food from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the One Planet Network from the UN. The work was also enriched with the ZMET (Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique), a user research process used to visualize the world view of users and their understanding of a specific topic.
Juryen sagde bl.a.:
“The game enables a space where players can control a food-economy while managing the environmental impact of their decisions in a virtual city. The project allows exploring and unpacking the relations between the production and consumption of food, as well as how to dispose of by-products and how to process pollution by contrasting an industrial linear economy against a sustainable circular economy. Alexis has done an incredible job at researching the facts, identifying the target audience and building personas, designing and balancing interrelated complex systems, and assessing the impact that playing the game has on users.”
