Introduction / Background
After playing a couple of digital narrative games and reviewing them in a previous blogpost, my professor asked me to create a similar game of my own. It took me a while to settle on the topic of the game, but I think I finally got it. My game is going to be about what it is like taking an online exam. More precisely, an online exam during the first few months of COVID 19 lockdown. The storyline of the game is going to be something very similar to a situation that I have been in, where the student / player is going to unfortunately face unforeseen technical issues (due to an online proctoring program), putting him/her at an unfair disadvantage. It is also important to note that out of 40~ students taking the course, 3 including me had the same issues. I hope that through this game I can convey the amount of stress and anxiety that students can go through when dealing with online proctoring programs, and how similar programs that are designed to keep the exams fair for everyone can actually do quite the opposite.
Gameplay
This will be a decision making, time controlled game where depending one what the player chooses to do, the ending or the “final grade” would change accordingly. The user interface of the game will be based on screen shots of the actual online proctoring software that has been used for my course. This will in my opinion allow for maximum immersiveness, which I feel like is one of if not the most important things in digital narrative games. I am also planning on separating the game into two parts. The first one will be about managing the different issues regarding the proctoring software. The second part will consist of 5 or so simple MCQs where the player has to choose the correct answer in a short amount of time. This will simulate an exam where the student had lost a considerable amount of time.
This is a FANTASTIC idea! This is already my favorite game !! Some of the technical elements might be tricky to do, but let’s work on that… we can use a timer on Google slides or PowerPoint. I’m not sure how you can get screenshots from Respondus, though? Let me know if I can help with that.
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