Client: PIXEL Learning
URL: http://www.pixelearning.com/support/53Bank/upload/alphaV2.0/index.html
Opportunity:
The client, a famous UK-based e-Learning company, needed a “Diversity Game” which
would be designed to enable and enhance organizational learning and development.
This diversity awareness game needed to have the structure of a set of mini-games
and exercises within an over-arching game environment. The mini-games should each
in turn generate hidden effects on the over-arching environmental variables so that
it is only in their performance within these mini-games that the learners affect
the overall game. The over-arching game environment is a commercial space station
and an inter-species trading enterprise called “Makrini” (derived from the Greek
term for ‘remote country’) which relies on the goodwill of customers to generate
business. Makrini has many different retail, trading and business environments which
are affected variously by the environmental variables. The learner’s character in
the game is that of a Makrini employee who is asked to perform various tasks within
the Central Operations unit. The learner gets to see the “true” identity of the
character only at the end of the game, when a short movie is displayed which makes
the learner look into a mirror. All the species are displayed at this time, with
the faces of one morphing into the next. The movie stops at the species that is
least like the learner, according to the preference scores for species given in
the Lonely Galaxy (q.v.) and the learner’s choices in MG0.
Solution:
Keeping the client’s requirements in mind, Web Spiders designed the ‘Diversity Game’
application. Makrini is an ‘online’ graphically-rich simulation which is aimed at
delivering effective and appropriate diversity awareness and training experience.
The application was deployed in Internet file formats by using the standard TCP/
IP transfer protocols (e.g. HTTP) over Internet, Intranet, and/ or extranet networks.
Makrini runs on ‘client side’ (within an Internet browser) and does not require
any back end web service to process, store and manage data except for specific LMS
data which is to be stored externally (in the LMS) for organizational reporting
purposes. The application has been developed using the Adobe/ Macromedia Flash development
toolset and published so as to run in the Adobe Flash Player (run time environment)
version 8 onwards.
Technology:
Adobe Photoshop, Abode Flash, Action Script 2.0, HTML, XML