Echo Chamber is a branching narrative debate game about climate change in the media. You’re a fictional Bill Nye The Science Guy (Phil Hugh the Science Dude), and you’ll face off against a contrarian opponent on national news. Defend the science behind climate change without sounding like a scientist!
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Download a Mac build.
Mouse controls, takes 5-10 minutes to play.
The game is a branching narrative with one mechanic: choose what to say. It has three levels, and the player character must debate his co-host on topics related to climate change.
Project Goals:
- Teach players new methods of communication through gameplay
- Create a unique type of gameplay with an unconventional topic
- Design and write a branching narrative dependent on player actions
- Create a sense of empathy for scientists in the limelight
- Transfer knowledge to players in a fun and engaging manner
Brief Overview
The story: Phil Hugh, The Science Dude, has a segment on a national news station. His ratings have been terrible, so his producer is bringing on a co-host to debate him on climate change. Phil has three days to improve his ratings to save his show. Whether or not Phil succeeds is up to the player with 4 possible endings.
For my Master’s Thesis I wanted to shine a light on how climate change is communicated in the media and why the US remains divided on climate change. To address this, I made a game about how climate change is politicized by pundits in the media. The player character is Phil Hugh, The Science Dude, and he’s informed at the start of the game that he has three days to improve ratings for his show. His producer feels that having a dissenting voice will grab a wider audience (“watch those sparks fly!”), so Phil must debate a climate denier.
Part of development went into researching how to teach scientists to be better communicators. For a pundit, this is part of their training, but scientists are taught to rely on scientific facts, and will readily assume others do as well. My solution was to structure levels around a learning objective – for example, make science relatable to general audiences, or tap into emotional cues in your audience. When the game’s over, players will have a nugget of information on better communication tactics.
Many narrative and text based games run the risk of becoming monotonous; Point and Click dialogue is sometimes derided for not being a “game.” My work-around was to make the game tense, to have many forms of feedback, and to be able to manipulate the opponent. For example, I added the following:
- Wrote an engaging story that’s funny at times, and serious at others.
- Added many forms of feedback for the player: sound effects for right/wrong choices, the public opinion graph ripped from CNN, smiley/frowny face sprites, screen shakes, and more.
- Opponent will Interrupt at certain points, prompting the player to make split-second decisions.
- Allow the player to trap the opponent into making a damaging statement, much like in a real debate.
Echo Chamber is built in Unity 5, programmed in C# with Fungus plug-in, and runs on PC/Mac.
Very early paper prototype. The game then was about stacking different types of arguments on a board. Neat mechanic, but not right for this game.
