Sorting Station
A website educational game for the university event, which teaches the players how to collect waste separately with the existing trash cans.
Case
My ecological organization, Green HSE, collected paper, plastic bottles, and metal cans in over 18 university buildings, sorting them and reselling to make a profit, further used to sponsor our events. To keep up and develop, we needed the waste in bins to be as clear and proper as possible, because our volunteer capacity to sort and clean it was really low. Unfortunately, a lot of students didn’t know how to sort trash properly, and all the educational events, huge posters, warnings didn’t work efficiently. When offered an opportunity to create digital learning material that will be presented on the annual “Vyshka day” and be included in the emails of all students, I decided to make us a video game.
About Game
As the game was meant to be completed by a variety of students, I kept it simple both with mechanics and knowledge. I have analyzed the most common mistakes in the trash as coffee cups thrown in paper, plastic bottles not compressed, or huge piles of pizza boxes, and found relatively easy balance to remember at least them.
The mechanics I chose were simple: you earn a point for catching the right waste, you lose a heart for wrong, 1 level for each rubbish fraction. For the main character, I animated our logo to get more publicity. To make people finish the game and get involved, I also included pieces of storyline and dialogues between interactions. I performed a test for a small and a big audience to adjust the balance.
Outcome
Although the game has turned out to be very simple, I regard it as a step to explore the influential potential of video games in media. We ended up receiving extremely positive feedback for the interactivity of the page, and the quality of the waste increased by approximately 70%. I believe it was a small contribution for the case of implementing digital arts into problem-solving may benefit both.
