Conspiracy code game

Students play the game as two teenagers named Eddie and Libby living in the near future community of Coverton City. The scenario that the game lays out is that a secret organization called Conspiracy Inc. Eddie and Libby, under the guidance of a sentient computer named Ben, have to race to find clues to unravel the conspiracy. The clues just happen to be historical information that students would ordinarily learn from textbooks or classroom lectures.

Along the way the students will meet important historical characters and witness historical events in an interactive adventure that are really assignments. For those not in the field of educational or instructional technology, I firmly believe that Richard Clark is to educational technology what John Dewey was to education. Anyway, there was a slide that he included in his keynote session that I thought was appropriate for this discussion.

Notice the middle bullet point. This belief was actually influenced by the works of Clark, among others. Based on that kind of criteria, Clark tells us the research has shown teaching using games to be less effective and more expensive. That was two and a half years ago!

To date, I have not seen any empirical, methodologically reliable, external research conducted on student learning using these game-based courses. TrackBack URI. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam.

Learn how your comment data is processed. Twitter: mkbtuc. This part of the game is fun for trying to get the MacGuffin, but what does it have to do with American history? The learning goals of the game are better achieved by other portions, however. Once the player has collected enough historical clues, he can use his wristwatch to hypnotize citizens into stating what the citizens perceive as historical fact. Normal citizens will be able to recite accurate historical information.

Conspiracy agents, however, have been brainwashed into believing that the rewritten history is the truth, so they will spout lies when interrogated. If the player recognizes that the "citizen's" info doesn't mesh with history, the player can mark that person as an agent and then challenge him. At this point, the player must fill the blank in the historical sentence with the right word or phrase.

Do that enough times, and the agent will be defeated and disappear to Eddie's confusion. This part of the gameplay does a better job of reinforcing the primary learning goal than the exploration. It asks the players to recall information that they have picked up, and it tests to see if the players can distinguish lies from the truth. The clues they collect are also available for them either in the game or on their account, if they ever need to refer to it.

User Experience Controls for Conspiracy Code are pretty basic. The player moves with the WASD keys and examines things with the mouse. The player can right-click on many objects to bring up a menu of options for that object, such as talking to an NPC, hacking a camera, or checking for clues. If the player moves his mouse too far away from the menu, however, that menu disappears until he right-clicks again.

In the bottom left corner, the player has a HUD that he can use to switch between characters, use that character's powers, check his suspicion levels, and open menus. This much of the HUD is fairly transparent and doesn't really interfere with the player's experiences in-game.

Your pause menus are all rather intuitive and straightforward. The map screen shows the whole area you are exploring, the room you are in flashes with white borders, and your destination room flashes with red. Your acquired clues are organized into an outline that you can expand by clicking on the main topics, and you can read them by clicking on the clue itself. These kinds of menus are helpful resources that the player can access any time, and they only mean to pause gameplay at the player's command so that he can check this menu.