Make Up Workshop Week 4

In the makeup workshop this week we broke up into groups again and spent some time developing ideas based around the user groups we identified last time. As a reminder, these were: Businesses, Residents and Procrastinators.

I somehow ended up working with procrastinators again which was fine with me because I know how they think. All too well...

Procrastinators are attracted by shiny, flashy things that distract them from what they are doing and them get them hooked without them even realising. We thought the best way to do this was with cartoons and browser based games that are simple and addictive.

Garden Survival

We had an idea for a multiplayer game called "Garden Survival" where four players would compete to grow and maintain the healthiest garden with the highest yield of vegies and flowers. The game would be turn based and players would only have limited resources to work with each turn. The aim would be to strike the balance between yield and durability. Every few turns random "events" would happen such as floods, drought, locust plagues and human/animal interactions, both positive and negative. Different crops and gardening methods would produce different outcomes depending on the event and the player who's garden is best suited to withstand certain events could deflect the event onto the other players for additional damage or even summon new events to target certain players.

Scores would be posted on an online leaderboard and people with the best scores at the end of each season would get to pick the plot of their choice in the real UC garden for the next season.

Garden Life

Another idea we had was for a cartoon series called "Garden Life". Which would involve characters based around what was growing in the actual UC garden that would come to life when nobody was around and talk to each other. The storylines would generate interest in the garden by representing what was actually happening there in real life and would be used to give the gardeners tips about the how to look after their plants, the best things to plant for the coming season and the characters would comment on the garden's users and either praise them for their efforts or take the piss out of them depending on how well they were caring for their crops.