William Sizemore

Assignment Two- Game Analysis

1. Title of the Game: Quandary

2. Game Developer/Studio: The Learning Games Network, partnered with research teams
from Harvard, MIT, and Tufts, and produced by FableVision Studios.

3. Game Genre: Educational

4. Audience: Quandary is intended for players aged 8 and up. The website recommends aged
13 and up for the tablet version. I’m fairly certain my age bracket is not their target but I
enjoyed playing nonetheless.

5. Learning Objectives and Standards Addressed: Learning objectives include helping players
to recognize the many facets of ethical situations, developing critical thinking skills,
perspective taking, and decision making. The Quandary site notes that the game maps to
standards for reading, speaking, and listening, in the English Language Arts Common Core
State Standards.

6. Context: Quandary is available on all major platforms: PC, Mac, Linux. It is also available as
a tablet/smartphone app from both Google Play store and the iTunes App Store. The game
has been in development since 2011 and has been available to play since 2012. Quandary
was released in America and is available anywhere the app can be accessed. The game is
available in two languages: English and Spanish.

7. Goals and Rules of the Game: The goals of the game are simple: to teach players to
negotiate ethical dilemmas by considering all sides of a potential disagreement. The rules of
the game are to choose which “captain” the player will be and follow on screen instructions
to complete episodes.

8. Storyline/Narrative: The narrative is fairly straightforward. The player assumes the role of
Captain on the human colony of a planet, Braxos. As Captain, the player is expected to help
the settlers decide issues that they cannot decide amongst themselves.

9. Number of Players & Player Interaction: Quandary is a single player game. There is
no game play interaction with other players.

10. Spaces or Environments: Quandary is a digital, card-based game. It takes place on the
fictional planet Braxos. The spaces encountered by the player are two-dimensional
illustrations of the environment where the player’s character, the captain, engages with
the community members. There are not game levels per se; instead, there are a series
of ethical circumstances (puzzles) the player must encounter (solve) to move through
the game episodes. The space is navigated via a series of on-screen commands, mostly
using next and back buttons to move through the game.

11. Core Mechanics: The game consists of moving from episode to episode by clicking on
which episode the player might want to play. Standard game play offers four episodes the
player can engage with in any order. For example, a player could complete episode 3
William Sizemore

before episode 1, without causing any disruption or losing any information between
episodes. Main verbs include selecting and reading, reading is followed by engaging the
Bloom’s taxonomy cognitive processes: evaluating, creating, understanding, analyzing,
etc., to solve the episode’s dilemma.

12. Description of Gameplay: Playing Quandary is simple and straightforward. The player can
play as a guest or become a registered player. Once the player clicks “Play,” the game
begins a brief comic book explaining where the player’s character is and what that
character’s job is, which is essentially to arbitrate disagreements between colonists when
they are not able to come to a satisfactory conclusion amongst themselves. The player
chooses an episode, 1-4, and follows the prompts on the screen, reading to understand the
issue at hand. Once the issue has been described, the player chooses “Done” and the next
screen appears, offering individual colonists’ perspective on the problem presented in the
episode. The captain reviews the individual perspectives and categorizes them into “fact,”
”solution,” or “other opinion.” The card sorting is accomplished by clicking and dragging a
colonist’s card into the desired category. Once that is complete, the player selects “finish” to
move to the next screen. The game tells the player which colonists were accurately
categorized and the player is allowed to return to the previous screen to make adjustments
if needed. Once the player is satisfied with the category choices, he is taken to the next
screen to narrow down the solutions to two. Clicking “finish” on this screen will take the
player to a screen asking the player to investigate colonist’s viewpoints on the potential
solutions.
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Once that has been accomplished, it is time to make a decision on which solution is the best
for the colonists. The captain presents the selected decision to the council, which then
decides if more information is necessary, or if they simply agree with the decision.

13. Audiovisuals: The visuals are illustrations overlaid onto computer generated graphics. There
is some background music, and the dialog can be read by the computer if the player so
desired. The design is simple and uncluttered. The methods for navigating the game are self-
explanatory and the player needs no training and little to no instruction to figure the game
out.

14. Progression & Levels: The game does not force the player to follow a specific sequence.
There are 4 episodes and the player can choose them and complete them in any order
with no negative impact on the game play. The level of difficulty is essentially generated
by the player. They can stay in any episode and explore it to their satisfaction. The game
allows the player to return to previous screens and make adjustments on previous
decisions to improve the accuracy/appropriateness of their response.

15. Academic Content: The game does not include any academic content, per se, nor does it
require any academic content to achieve game goals.

16. Cognitive Processes Required: All of the levels of Bloom’s taxonomy apply to Quandary.
The player, as Captain, must remember what each citizen’s stance is on a topic. The captain
must understand why each aspect of an argument is important. It is critical that the captain
apply that understanding to his or her decisions. The captain must then analyze the results
of any decisions made for the community, and evaluate potential changes. Finally,
Quandary allows for creativity by letting players create their own characters and using
them in the game.

17. Learning Theories Embodied: Quandary has a significant amount of constructivist theory
built into the game by forcing the player to build knowledge and understanding based upon
interaction and input from colonists, rather than making decisions solely based up his own
opinions and beliefs.
William Sizemore

18. Instructional Strategies Incorporated: Engagement strategies incorporated in the game

include the way the game is built to walk the player through each episode screen by
screen. As the player makes decisions for each screen, the game requires reflection on
those decisions and evaluating additional information presented to incorporate into the
process and eventual decision. The game also asks players to assess colonists for potential
changes in perspective based upon added information.

19. Overall Evaluation: The strengths of the game include its simple visual design and the ease
of navigation through the episodes. Weaknesses include the limited amount of episodes
available for completion. A suggestion for improvement would be to add additional episodes
with new ethical dilemmas, possibly aiming for an older player demographic. Another
suggestion I’d make would be to make sure the mobile app had all the functionality of the
computer app. I downloaded the app to my iPhone and tried to register but the app would
not present the full registration screen. So, I registered without issue on the computer, but
the mobile app should be reviewed for bugs.

20. Reflection: I enjoyed playing Quandary. Seeing as how the game is used in primary through
secondary school levels, I thought it would be relatively simple to engage in the game and
complete the episodes. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the episodes were much more
challenging that I initially thought. After completing the first episode, the final window that
appears say something to the effect of, “Not the results you expected?” And, indeed, it was
not. My solution was not the panacea I had expected it to be for the colony. The game
suggests that the player return to the beginning of the episode and try different solutions
and see different outcomes.