05x02 - Game Changers

[bunniefuu]

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪

[Izzie] We need you!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪

[Izzie] Come on!

[girls] ♪ When I need help and I've got a question ♪

♪ There's a place I go for inspiration ♪

♪ Got to get to the Web, check the girls' investigation ♪

♪ What girls? ♪

♪ SciGirls! ♪

Whoo!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪

[Izzie] I need you!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪

Come on!

♪ We got to log on, post ♪

♪ Upload, pitch in ♪ Yeah!

♪ Want to get inside a world that's fascinating? ♪

♪ The time is right 'cause SciGirls are waiting ♪

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪

[Izzie] We need you!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪

[Izzie] SciGirls!

[Jake munching]

Hey, Jake, how's the Cheezy-Poof game coming?

[continues munching]

I keep eating my Cheezy-Poof maze...

[crunches] And running out of ideas for games.

Ugh. What are you doing for the school carnival?

[munching]

Oh, come see.

Ocean Aid.

You get it?

A lemonade stand to raise money for saving the ocean.

What do you think?

Iz, this is supposed to be a carnival booth,

so, like, fun.

Saving the ocean is no joke.

Apparently not.

Hi, there.

We're not open yet, but did you know that ocean plants

produce % of our oxygen?

[gasps]

[stammers] Wait, wait, wait.

Overfishing is hurting the ocean's ecosystem.

[whimpering]

I've got to make saving the ocean more fun.

And I have to find a way

to stop eating the games I make up.

[crunches]

Yeah, that was doughnut mini golf.

Ha.

We need inspiration.

SciGirls, help.

[upbeat music]

♪ ♪

Mm, no.

Ooh, now, this looks interesting.

♪ ♪

[Nasya] The girls and I--

we all attend Farnsworth Aerospace.

It's a magnet school,

and we mainly focus on aerospace and flight.

Kind of excited for this,

but I just don't know how to play mini golf.

I think we should change the rules.

How can we do that?

I think we should have our eyes closed,

like, when we hit it. [Nasya] Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, let's play.

My name is A'mya, and I'm years old.

[upbeat music]

I like that all games are different

and fun to play,

but I prefer winning.

[all] Oh!

My name is Aja, and I'm years old.

♪ ♪

I like science 'cause I like to get my hands dirty

and I like to learn about stuff.

[Nasya] No, no. [Aja] A'mya. Oh!

[girls ooh]

I'm doing great on this one, guys.

I'm probably still gonna lose. It's fine.

My name's Nasya, and I'm .

♪ ♪

I like games because I like competition,

but I also like helping each other

if it's a cooperative game.

[Jolie] Go, wow. [Aja] Oh!

[Nasya] Did she make it in?

Oh, man, I thought I made it.

Hi, I'm Jolie, and I'm .

♪ ♪

My interest is making games, like, creating games.

That's a big part of what I like about computer science.

Good game, guys. We did good.

[laughter]

[Aja] Okay, that was fun.

♪ ♪

Today we are going to Glitch to meet Evva.

Glitch is a place where people design games.

[Nasya] They have a company dog named Icarus.

He's a bit of a shy dog,

and he was especially cute-- I'm not sure what it was.

[Evva] Hi, girls. [girls] Hi.

Welcome to Glitch.

My name is Evva Kraikul.

I'm the founder and executive director here at Glitch.

What type of games do you design?

Well, do you want to just go and play them?

[girls] Yes. [Evva] Awesome.

♪ ♪

[girl] No, no, no, no. [Jolie] Oh, my gosh.

Stay in a corner. Just--

Right.

[Aja] It game for you. [Nasya] Game.

First up is a game called "HyperDot."

It's an arcade action game where you dodge everything.

What you have in front of you is a game called "Optica"

that you can get on mobile stores.

[Nasya] Evva and her company make digital games,

but she does have a couple of tabletop games

that she showed us.

And the final game is "Dire Realm,"

which is a prototype game that we have going on here.

It's a cooperative strategy game.

It was cool to see games still in a prototype phase.

So do you all want to make a game?

[girls] Yes. [Evva] Yay.

There is an event that we host called GlitchCon,

and it's our annual digital games festival,

which is a video game showcase.

Would you all want

to potentially have your game in there?

[girls] Yes.

There's, like, ,-something people, so don't freak out.

[Evva] Don't freak out. [laughter]

Let's go chat with my friend Laura,

who's also a game designer, and she can help get you started.

[all] Bye.

Hi. My name is A'mya.

I'm years old, and I'm in the th grade.

Some things I like to do are play basketball,

softball/baseball, and volleyball.

Me and my friend-- we got first place

in History Day for documentary.

I have a big family. I have six siblings.

These are three of them.

This is Cedric, Antonio, and this is Layla.

Bye.

[steady guitar music]

♪ ♪

Today we're going to the Fantasy Flight Games Center

to meet Laura.

[Aja] Y'all, they got "Star Wars."

They have, like, munchkin stuff over here.

I played a lot of these games.

Fantasy Flight Games Center is kind of like a game library,

where you just come in, you can play games,

and you can also buy games from here.

[Laura] Hi. [girls] Hi.

Hi, guys.

My name's Laura. I'm a game designer.

And I was thinking, if you're gonna be making a game,

we should play lots of games.

So I'm gonna pick a few out, and we can play over there.

How's that sound? [girls] Good.

So I picked kind of some different kinds of games.

So they have different things about them

that we can talk about.

[upbeat music]

♪ ♪

We're gonna take one of the cards

to, like, add it to our plate and then pass the cards around.

One, two, three.

Pass the cards to the right.

[girls] Oh!

Why would you do that?

One, two, three.

[Aja] The first game was a card game.

We had to collect points,

and whoever had the highest points won.

What did you guys think?

You're looking at people's card,

like, how they pulled it out,

like, which one they pulled out.

You got to, like, rely on other people to fail

so you can succeed.

[laughter]

[Laura] The main thing that game designers

talk about a lot are mechanics.

Mm-hmm. Like, how things work?

Basically, yeah. Very good.

How everything works in the game.

So it can be things like passing the cards around.

That's a mechanic.

The way the different points work for different cards--

those are mechanics.

Do you think, like, the mechanics of a game,

like, help develop, like, how the game goes

and, like, how it's being played out?

Yes, exactly-- it's not just the pieces

but how the pieces get used in the game.

Another thing that we can talk about is the theme of the game,

so what the game is about.

So the theme of this game is sushi.

If you have a really good theme,

it works with your mechanics well,

so how we passed the cards around

and we were collecting things--

that really made sense with getting sushi.

So this is a game where the rules change

while you're playing.

On your turn, you do a set order of things.

This is something that you would call the core loop

in a game,

and what that means is it's the steps of the game

that you do over and over while you're playing.

[Nasya] I think the fact

that, like, Laura mentioned core loop,

it made such much sense,

'cause, like, I always, like, saw the pattern.

I just didn't know what it was called.

[rock music]

♪ ♪

[Nasya] Play all cards.

When you play cards, you have to play all of them now.

[Nasya] The goal of the game kept on changing.

That made the game more interesting, yes,

but I got very frustrated

'cause I was very close to winning several times.

I think that's a good stopping point.

What did you guys think of the game?

I liked how the rules kept changing.

It was just like, "It's okay. I have another chance."

Before you guys start brainstorming,

I want to give you guys a few things to think about

for your game.

So think about whether it's a cooperative game

or a competitive game,

what the goal of the game is,

what the mechanics are gonna be, what you do in the game,

the core loop of the game--

so what you're doing in the game over and over--

and then think about how you're gonna write

the instructions for the game, too,

so that other people can play it.

[Nasya] What she taught us today--

it's really gonna help us, but it's so complex

'cause there's so many little aspects that go into it.

Here is a white box, and it has a bunch of stuff in it

that you can use for prototyping your game.

A prototype is the first version

of the game that you're gonna make.

So I'll check in with you guys in a few days

and see how it's going.

[girls] Thank you.

We then started brainstorming

on our own prototype for our game.

So how many players do you think we should have?

So Laura suggested that we should do four.

I think it should be a card game,

so it works throughout cards and points.

This game should be a cooperative game

so we can all work together.

Our theme is space.

Goal was getting everyone and Icarus back to Earth.

He crash-landed on the Moon 'cause he ran out of gas.

[Nasya] Yesterday we met Icarus the dog.

We met him at the office,

and I think we grew very attached to him.

It's kind of like he is a part of this, too.

The core loop.

Oh, yeah, core loop.

Draw cards in order to collect materials

so we can, like, build up a spaceship to send Icarus home.

What if, like, they drew cards

where, like, it was, like, something bad, like,

"Oh, no, like, you found, like a toxic gas."

We have to think of a name of the game.

I think we should just call it...

[A'mya] "Icarus the Space Dog." [Aja] Yeah.

These are really good ideas,

so we can pick up on this tomorrow morning.

Okay. [sighs]

Hi. My name's Nasya. I'm , and I'm in th grade.

So I come from a very big family.

I'm the second oldest of seven,

and these are my two younger sisters.

One of my hobbies is to keep a memory box for each year.

This is my memory box from last year.

A lot of letters, postcard from Washington, D.C.,

birthday wishes, letters that mean a lot.

I like to play the bass guitar.

[bass guitar playing]

Bye.

[light music]

[Nasya] So we had a lot of good ideas yesterday,

but I was thinking

maybe we should change the way the game works.

Like, we should make it a board and a card game.

Each point, like, you move along the board,

and then, like, if you make it to the end, Icarus gets home.

There's other, like, set of cards.

Just, like, four?

Yeah, just four for the traits of the characters.

The people that are playing--

they all have something to do in STEM.

We keep materials in, like,

some type of backpack or something?

[A'mya] In our game, there are four characters.

Each character has a material they need to collect.

[Nasya] What about our actual board itself?

I think it should be, like, a circle, and then it spirals.

Like, it always goes to the center, but it's, like,

there can be different paths to go to the center.

The point of the game is to have everyone in the middle.

[A'mya] Yeah.

[Aja] The players work together

to fix the spaceship and get everyone back to Earth.

If someone lands on a black hole,

they can have, like, a mini drone to, like, look over.

[Jolie] Things were getting too complicated,

so we decided as a team we need to simplify it

to make it less difficult.

So which idea should we, like, narrow down or, like, take out?

I do think the spiral board

would be kind of hectic to work with.

[Aja] I don't even think we should have points,

'cause it's not a competitive game.

We changed, like, half of our ideas.

We should break into groups now

and start working on our prototype.

So we are responsible

for making the character trait cards and the negative cards.

We're working on the materials and instructions.

I'm gonna start on the character ones,

if you want to start on, like, the actions.

The four materials that I have are the toolbox,

oxygen t*nk, control panel, and fuel.

[Jolie] For all the negative cards, you have two turns

to, like, fix it? [Nasya] Yeah.

Jolie was working on action cards,

which is "move this many spaces,"

and certain other cards, she would make them,

like, the negative cards or the bad cards.

[Aja] If you have the pilot character card,

you get to go first.

I did instructions, and it was a little difficult.

So how should we start our board?

Should it go like this?

Each group designed a board.

[Nasya] This is where we start.

This is where the spaceship would be.

[A'mya] We'll add the squares.

[Nasya] If we wanted, we could have diagonal going crisscross.

[Aja] Then both teams compared boards and how far we got.

[A'mya] Yeah, we finally finished.

So let's see what we did.

[Jolie] Wow.

[Nasya] So there's obviously a big difference.

The first thing that me and Jolie noticed right away--

they only had one path to the middle,

and it just swirled around the whole entire board.

I really like how you guys, like, made it such a fun path

to go around.

We wanted to do that,

but, like, we didn't want to, like, overcomplicate things.

[A'mya] The only way you could get to these diagonal ones

are from the circle, right? [Nasya] Mm-hmm.

Well, we still have a lot to get done.

Next, we'll be showing Laura our progress.

[laughter]

[indistinct chatter]

Hi. I'm Jolie, and this is my house.

I like cooking.

I like to play sports.

I won second place

in local league tournament for regionals.

I like to do art, and I love to sleep.

Over the years, I collected these awards

because of my hard work.

I also won three honor rolls last year.

This is my brother Jae'vean.

[both] Bye.

[light music]

♪ ♪

[Laura] Hey. [girls] Hi.

[Laura] How's it going? [girls] Good.

I'm really excited to see your game. Are you ready?

[girls] Yeah. [Laura] Okay, let's go.

[Nasya] We sat down, and we showed her

everything that we had done so far in the game

and then played the game.

Let's time how long it takes us to play this game.

Hand out four material cards to each person.

[Nasya] Throughout the game,

you eventually have to start discarding your material cards.

Also, you get to, like, decide

which direction you want to move in.

Okay, so there aren't any rules for moving?

No, not really.

You can only do these two--

You can't enter the corners.

Yeah.

Oh, so just not the corners?

And you can't enter that, too.

Yeah, you can.

So where should we have the black hole start?

If you're still in that same space

when the black hole expands,

that means that the game's over.

So can you explain to me what happens on each turn?

What's your core loop?

What's the order that you do things in?

You could trade and draw,

or you could grab a material and trade,

but you don't have--

Wait, you do have to--

[Nasya] We didn't have all of the rules set up,

so we were kind of just playing by what we thought felt right.

Are you doing it one space in every direction, though,

for expanding the black hole, or is it just--

Like, what are the rules around that?

I think it'd just be one space.

How do you decide which direction, though?

[A'mya] The black holes--

they were one of the most confusing parts about the game,

only because we weren't completely sure

how to move it

and if we should move it after every round

and who should move it and which way it should move.

[Laura] It seems like we've been playing a while.

How long has it been?

[Nasya] minutes. [Aja] really?

[Jolie] That's a long--

[A'mya] And we didn't even get to finish,

and our goal was about minutes.

There was a little bit of confusion

about, like, how some stuff worked exactly.

So let's start with the turns and what you do on your turn.

[Nasya] You draw an action card.

You have to play it immediately.

[A'mya] For your second action,

you have a choice between either drawing

a materials card or...

[Nasya] Trade if you're on the same space.

Yeah, trading.

I think we should make the...

[A'mya] Board easier. [Aja] Yeah.

So it's not as complicated.

Try playing the game one more time

as a really short version...

[A'mya] With our modified ones. [Laura] With some changes.

Yeah.

[Nasya] To speed the game up,

we drew a simplified version of the board,

and it had less spaces.

[Nasya] One, two, three.

Move five spaces.

Oh, that is so fair. [laughter]

Something that I don't need.

Fuel t*nk.

[A'mya] Now I just have to get to Icarus,

and then I wait for you guys to get to him.

Black hole. We're done for.

If the black hole touches us, that means the game's over.

A'mya, you're dead.

Didn't make it. [laughter, groans]

/ minutes this time.

[A'mya] That was good.

[Jolie] Yay. [Nasya] Okay.

[Aja] That was great.

The second time we played, it took us / minutes,

and it made it more fun.

We should have a digital component in our game.

What if the digital component was an app

that had all of the "oh, no" cards in it?

Yeah, that would be really cool.

[Jolie] Like, random. [Laura] Yeah.

"Oh, no" cards are the negative cards in the game.

[all] One, two, three, break.

[upbeat music]

For our digital component, do, like, a space background.

[Aja] We used Scratch to create our digital component.

I'll do the cards.

Okay, then I'll work on the board.

[A'mya] We could... [Jolie] Add some stars.

[A'mya] It was space background with a rocket ship.

Now that we're done with the background,

we should start writing the code.

I did this before. So we'll scroll through.

So it's one of these orange, so let's click through.

[A'mya] Jolie was the navigator,

and I was the driver.

I have used Scratch before.

It was just a really long time since I used it,

and it was super helpful

for Jolie to be there and help me.

[Jolie] There we go. [A'mya gasps] That's so cool.

[Jolie] Yeah, we got it.

[Jolie] It was very good 'cause she "catched" on quick

of how to do it.

So, this is a good start. Let's show the other girls.

Okay.

[Izzie] Hmm. Oh, yes.

I'll make an app for my lemonade stand.

Genius.

Also, since I can't stop eating my games,

let's team up.

I'll help you make this

the "funnest" lemonade stand about saving the ocean

you've ever seen.

Deal.

Our app could let people place orders and--

Ooh, I like that.

Oh, and vote for awesome flavors.

And learn about saving the ocean.

Coding complete.

Let's test it out. [Jake gasps]

[upbeat music]

Let's order...

mermaid lemonade.

[Izzie] Fun fact--sailors used to see manatees

and think they were mermaids.

Enjoy.

Now, that's awesome.

[Nasya] Oh, my gosh, that looks so good.

I like the color blue.

This is what we have for an idea right now.

[Aja] The cards are color-coordinated to the board.

These--they're the character cards.

[Aja] So can we see the digital component?

Yes.

[Aja] Whoa. [Nasya] That's great, actually.

Wow.

Like, we were very excited.

Just the fact that they were able

to get it done in a few hours--

that was pretty awesome, honestly.

Hey, how's it going, guys?

[girls] Hi.

Since the game showcase is only in a couple of days now,

we should have some people

that have never played this game before play the game.

It's called user testing,

and we should do user testing with...

[Aja] Our classmates. [Nasya] Our friends.

[Laura] Yes.

[Nasya] Tonight we're gonna be finishing up our prototype,

and tomorrow we're gonna be user testing our game

with some of the students from our school.

[Laura] Good luck. [girls] Thank you.

[Jolie] Bye. [Laura] Bye.

Hi. My name is Aja.

I'm years old, and I'm in th grade.

My favorite activity is to play softball.

I'm an infielder. I like the action.

Over the summer, I won this trophy.

We got third place in the tournament,

and I was, like, really proud of the team.

This is my brother Amin.

Hello.

Bye.

Bye!

[upbeat music]

♪ ♪

[Nasya] Today we're at my school, Farnsworth.

Farnsworth is different from other schools

because we mainly focus on aerospace and flight.

We actually have flight simulators.

It's like sort of virtual reality

simulated that you're flying a plane.

♪ ♪

We're gonna be doing our user testing today.

We're observing if they're confused about anything

and what we need to work on.

[dramatic music]

[Nasya] Hey, guys. [girls] Hi.

[A'mya] Have a seat at each table.

[Aja] Thank you guys for coming to play our prototype.

Thank you for coming to play our prototype.

So what you guys will be doing is testing the prototype.

So this is our survey,

and we're gonna give it to you at the end of the game.

If it goes over minutes, we will be stopping you guys.

You guys are not allowed to ask us questions.

We're not allowed to give you guys answers.

And your time starts now.

♪ ♪

[girl] Action one,

draw one action card and play immediately.

Action two, draw one material card

or trade material card

with someone who is on the same space as you.

Action three, check and play the digital component.

Work together to fix the spaceship.

We get to be a pilot, engineer, medic, and mechanic.

Start digital component

and follow instructions on the screen.

We're supposed to place one of these on one black hole space.

[Nasya] We're not allowed to talk to them,

because we just want to see if the instructions

are thorough enough that they can follow it.

[boy] Engineer, gather two toolbox material cards.

Pilot gathers three control panel material cards.

I don't get,

like, how we're supposed to be doing these.

Check and play digital component.

What does that mean?

[girl] Okay. [laughs] [boy] How do you press start?

[whispering] They seem so confused.

I feel kind of bad.

[A'mya] It kind of made us a little frustrated

that they were doing it wrong.

Get to the spaceship.

[indistinct chatter]

I was so irritated. [laughs]

[girl] Space is dangerous. Meteor save this turn.

Do you have an oxygen t*nk?

Here, do you want to read it and try to figure it out?

They weren't following all the steps in the core loop.

They didn't really know the mechanics,

like the cards, the black hole, the app.

[boy] So, if you don't end up fixing it,

then the game is over?

I don't know.

[Nasya] Time's up.

But you guys didn't really lose or win.

When the -minute limit was up, they hadn't gone far.

I think if we had just made the instructions more specific,

then they would've gotten further into the game.

Okay, so you guys are gonna be taking a survey as a group.

"Did you understand the instructions"?

[boy] I didn't really understand the black hole

and what we were supposed to do with the extra material cards.

I didn't really get the game.

The black hole-- that was confusing

'cause we got so much right here.

The part that was mostly confusing was the actions.

[girl] Everything was out of order.

And then it's kind of hard for us to understand.

[girl] What do you like about the game?

One thing that was cool

is that they added a computer to the game board.

I liked how the objective was to work together as a team.

I liked the character cards.

We each get to be a different character.

[girl] Did the digital component

make the game more interesting?

[both] Yes.

[Nasya] When we started hearing

all these positive things,

like, we were always trying to look on the upside

because we just had to tweak some issues out

and, you know, like, make it better.

Thank you guys for coming in to test out our prototype.

[Aja] Bye, guys. [all] Bye.

[Nasya] User testing was a great experience.

It was nice to hear the feedback.

[upbeat music]

♪ ♪

I think our instructions,

like, they were very thorough and everything.

It's just they were kind of all over the place.

We should write down some ideas

that we could change.

[Nasya] Make instructions more specific.

They're supposed to have two actions per turn,

rather than just pick one action.

The digital component only affects the person

whose turn it is. [girls] Yeah.

[Nasya] Go more into detail

when we're talking about trading,

because for our second group,

they were trading when it wasn't their turn.

[Aja] Okay. [Nasya] That sounds good.

[upbeat music]

♪ ♪

[A'mya] We added things. We took things away.

We fixed our cards.

We worked on the digital component a little more.

Aja--she worked on the instructions

for, like, the whole game.

Nasya and Jolie

worked on the material and action cards.

[Nasya] In order to be ready

for the game showcase tomorrow,

we still have to get a lot done.

So it looks like we'll be working late into the night.

[whistling]

[insects chirping]

[upbeat music]

[Aja] The game showcase has begun, and I'm very excited.

I'm scared. I'm scared. I'm ridiculously scared.

Oh, my gosh!

[Nasya laughs] Game, I won.

There are a lot of other game designers here.

They're all presenting their games.

[Aja] They're very good. [Nasya] We're intimidated.

Whoo! Dang it! Aah!

No!

We're up next.

[laughs]

[cheers and applause]

[Nasya] We worked together to create a prototype game

called "Icarus the Space Dog."

"'Icarus the Space Dog' is a tabletop game

played with four players, and it's a cooperative game."

So the main idea is that you're stuck on the Moon,

and to get back to Earth, you have to collect specific items

so that you can fix a spaceship to get home.

"We only had one week to do this,

and we also did user testing."

"Please come to our booth and see our game,

ask us questions, and let us know what you think."

Thank you.

[cheers and applause]

[upbeat music]

This is a cooperative game.

You work together to get everyone back to Earth.

Every time his turn is over,

the black hole keeps moving this way.

Whenever you pick up a material card,

you decide if you want to keep it or trash it.

[Nasya] All of the people who came to try out our game--

they all seemed very interested.

They enjoyed playing it.

[Aja] Everyone liked our game

and thought it was, like, pretty fun.

[Evva] Hi, everyone. [girls] Hi!

I'm so excited for "Icarus the Space Dog."

[Nasya] When Laura and Evva came up,

I felt proud-- I felt really proud.

I was just like, "Yes, this is what you guys

have helped us accomplish-- thank you."

Good job.

[excited chatter]

[Aja] Laura and Evva-- they were really good mentors,

and they were fun.

[all] Bye!

We had so much fun doing this.

[Nasya] The thing that I'll remember the most

about this whole entire experience--

the feeling of accomplishment,

being proud of how hard we had worked,

being able to even be here,

and, man, we should really start

appreciating game designers, man.

[all] One, two, three, Icarus!

[music ends]

Yeah, just download our app, Ocean Aid,

and enjoy delicious lemonade

while you learn about the ocean.

We've got flavors you can only get here.

We've got mermaid lemonade, pirate punch,

jellyfish juice.

[mellow music]

[Izzie] Fun fact--jellyfish are older than dinosaurs.

Not so fun fact--fish and sea turtles in the ocean

eat plastic bags thinking they're jellyfish.

Not cool.

Jellyfish juice coming right up.

[dramatic music]

It's not real jellyfish.

It's lychee fruit. Cool, huh?

[Izzie] Coral cider, fun fact--

coral looks like plants...

[continues as overlapping chatter]

We did it--

sold out of lemonade and raised money for the ocean.

The votes for flavors are in.

Oh, what?

Cheezy-Poof lemonade?

I snuck it in there.

It's a hit!

Ew.

♪