Battle of Values / Værdikamp
The Danish Broadcasting Corporation announced a competition to create the best Public Service Game, and Værdikamp was my entry.
It won the first prize: The Golden Joystick.
Værdikamp is a cooperative dual-player game set in an abstract realm, where players battle to free passing thought bubbles before they are censored by the evil ‘thought police.’
After each level, the players get to express their own opinion on each of the freed thoughts (basically voting them up or down), and they can score points by guessing whether other players have generally agreed or disagreed with the them.
After the game, players are asked to enter their own thought or idea, which then becomes part of the game for the next players.
Outside of the game, on a separate webpage, a list of all the submitted ideas and their popularity scores is available.
The public service component consists in facilitating that people freely and anonymously bounce ideas off each other, test the general reception of their own ideas, and test their own knowledge of other people’s way of thinking. Both other players online, and the other ‘dual’ player beside them.
Please remember that this was in the early days of social networks. For example, before Facebook was opened to public users (Sep 2006), so people were largely unaccustomed to the idea of internet-facilitated debates on the personal level.
The trophy
Year: 2006
Platform: Flash / ActionScript 2.0
Developer: Creative Spark Studios
Genre: Public Service Game / Serious Game
Distribution Channels: Web / Danish Broadcasting Corporation
My role in the production: Everything, except music.
