Echo Chamber

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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Development:	Responsibilities:
Unity 2D Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator Audacity Development time: 9 months, including pre-production	Game Design and scripting Narrative and all in-game dialog (700+ lines) All art assets Audio mixing and balancing Research, playtests, and recruitment

Play in browser(Note: you must be in Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer) or download a Mac build.

Mouse controls, takes 5-10 minutes to play.

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  Echo Chamber
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  With a visual design borrowed from CNN
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  Don't pick overly scientific options!
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  Interludes have feedback from a Producer NPC
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  Your choices matter
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  Minor choices can have big consequences

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

For my thesis, the problem I saw was that games have not addressed how climate change is communicated in the media, or 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.

Echo Chamber is built in Unity 5, programmed in C# with Fungus plug-in, and runs on PC/Mac.

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  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.
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  Still of Digital prototype that was similar but vastly different.
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  Echo Chamber
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  Mockup I made of new gameplay style going forward.
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  Scrapped game mechanic of reducing dialogue options as the player became more and more frustrated.
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  Don't pick overly scientific options!
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  Originally was to feature "live tweets" for player feedback. If development continues, this will be added.
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  Interludes have feedback from a Producer NPC
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  Partial view of first level's Twine file. Subsequent levels were written in Unity.
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  Flowchart used for building a level. This is what was written in Twine, now in Unity.
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  Example of some of the visual scripting used in conjunction with standard C# code.
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  Borrowed from CNN

For my Master’s Thesis, I wanted to do something related to climate change from the get-go. The journey of how I got to where I am today is full of twists, turns, and ulcers, but my main impetus is that I feel that games should address real life events. The problem I saw was twofold:

1. Even though climate scientists are in near-unanimous agreement that man-made climate change is real, why is this still a heavily contested and politicized issue?
2. Many video games have been made about climate change, but none have tackled the public dissent over climate change, or how it’s portrayed and communicated in the media.

To answer these questions, I created Echo Chamber, ostensibly a debate game. To make a “fun” debate game I did 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, 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.

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