NMSUCC's messages

Thanks, expressionexp! The hard-sell education was pretty much a given from our funders, so we tried to have fun with it. We figured the only way we’d get people to sit up and pay attention to this stuff would be to make it fun. Glad you enjoyed the game, and learned a bit about ATV safety, too.

I think we’re largely in agreement with you on your criticisms of the game; they’re the critiques we’d make ourselves. We still think the game is an enjoyable experience – the art and story certainly seemed to make up for the lack of gameplay for a lot of players – but we would have loved to add more “core” gameplay to the game, too. The end user doesn’t care about such things, but our hands were largely tied in this department; one of the requirements of the funder was that we never let the player actually do something wrong, which precludes building any gameplay elements on that. Combine that with stipulations for no racing, no stunts, no dangerous terrain, etc., and we were really struggling to come up with a way to teach this rather large set of diverse material in an entertaining way, and (I personally think) we came up with a compelling, fun, and entertaining way of doing it, even if it isn’t all that game-like. Regardless, our next game should not run afoul of this particular criticism – there will be a lot more “core” gameplay, and the educational content is easily woven into it, so we can be more subtle with the educational message.