Magsasaka: Farming Mobile Game
MICHELLE P. BANAWAN, Ateneo de Manila University
REY R. ALINO, ATENEO DE MANILA UNIVERSITY
CESAR A. TECSON, ATENEO DE MANILA UNIVERSITY
WILFREDO B. BADOY JR., ATENEO DE MANILA UNIVERSITY
ABSTRACT
Game development is now experiencing unprecedented growth in the local and global IT industry. With the introduction of a
mobile application: Magsasaka to the game choices of Filipino youth, an appreciation of the nobility of farming and an
understanding of the nature of the very critical role they play will be attained.
A software engineering framework appropriate to Game Engineering was used in the design and implementation of Magsasaka,
developed using GameMaker 8. This game was also evaluated using a heuristic appropriate for games.
With the deployment of the prototype to 30 players/users, positive scores were gathered from majority of the players in the areas of
gameplay, playability in terms of controls and navigation, interface and multimedia objects, and the level of fun.
Introduction
Zynga’s social game, Farmville, was a surprising hit and changed the way businesses earn revenues [1] With more
than 80 million users, Farmville was a distinct success [2]. Looking beyond the revenues that Farmville made, it also
has made more people understand the basics of farming, planting, using tools and labor, acquiring seeds, and earning
from its harvest.
Magsasaka is a mobile game that aims to simulate the farming processes in the Philippine setting. The agents of the
game and their actions are based on a functional requirements analysis of real-world farming procedures in Philippine
farms. The game roles, goals, and actions were determined from actual information requirements of the farmer to be
able to make better-informed decisions in managing the farm and used the Object-oriented Analysis and Design with
Unified Process framework in extracting actual events from a real-world setting. Game design and development
artifacts used include Use Case Diagrams, State diagrams and Sequence Diagrams for game-play and level design.
The goal of the farmer is to be able to maximize profit and increase farm land net value added [3].
Research Project Objectives
The objectives of this research project include the modeling of Philippine farming systems which entails the analysis
of information flows from planning and control to maximizing income from harvest yield. Conceptual models of
Farm Management Information Systems (FMIS) [4] were also studied and incorporated in the design of agent actions
and gameplays per level of Magsasaka. The specific goals of this research project include the following:
(1) To be able to design and implement a game using a development framework that is appropriate for games;
(2) To be able to translate the Filipino farmer’s goals, processes and context to the game;
(3) To be able to validate the implemented game using appropriate heuristics;
Methods
1
Game Engineering – the Development Framework
Game engineering is a software engineering genre that uses the rigors of software engineering, applied multimedia
concepts and literary disciplines in the development of a game. Games are the newest genre of software that has
dominated the “apps” market in mobile devices. Game engineering as a distinct domain of software engineering have
specific requirements and artifacts that cannot be addressed by software development frameworks or methodologies
alone.
Game development also go through the iterative development cycle of requirements elicitation, feedback, design,
production and post-production, and specific to games, the composition of the development team should be
interdisciplinary, requiring competencies on arts, music, HCI, psychology and information technology fields[7].
1.
The Narrative Elements of a Game
2.
Kishotenketsu. Games, being a creative work, may be considered as a distinct genre of literary art. Taking
into consideration the requirements of abstraction and interactivity of a game’s narrative elements, the
Kishotenketsu literary style is appropriate for most games that implement a storyline. Using this literary style
will give good (low) predictability factors of the gameplay which is more desirable. These genre of games
are sometimes referred to as Episodic Games [8] and the main strategy involved is to give content in an
episodic basis at strategic time intervals. The Kishotenketsu strategy, though, is not only limited to being
implemented via the storyline but also through the game structure or the gameplay. The Kishotenketsugameplay approach involves designing multiple levels. The first level almost always is very easy yet the
succeeding levels, which are initially locked, increase in complexity and difficulty. This has been the most
popular game design strategy in phenomenally popular games of different genres, i.e. casual, serious,
educational, etc.
Pearce discussed the play-centric focus in game development. The paper [9] also elaborated the importance
of the gameplay over the story. However, it does not discount that the story or the narrative can be used to
improve the gameplay and that the narrative has to be approached in a “play-centric” manner. Further, a
“play-centric”-narrative was described to be not “linear” in nature but interactive which gives better player
experience. The different approaches to incorporating narrative elements in a game are experiential,
performative, descriptive, augmentary, metastory and story system. According to C. Pearce, the experiential
narrative is a component of all games as it refers to the resulting narrative elements from the game goal and
is depicted in the gameplay as experienced by the players, while the performative, descriptive, augmentary
and even metastory (storyline) narrative styles can only be present in a game in a very abstract form or, at
times, not present at all. Game stories are not put in place to ”tell” a story to its ”audience”, rather the game
allows the players to make their own stories by their own gameplay and that a good game ”story”, will allow
these many stories to be created and experienced by the player.
The Multimedia Elements of a Game
Games are the more difficult genre of software to engineer as it is an interplay of multiple disciplines. Because of
their inherent aesthetic requirement, games should primarily be appealing and hence require the application of
multimedia concepts like graphic design in Angry Birds [10] and should further multimedia research areas like
2D and 3D integration (as in Fez [12]), digital and audio synchronization (as in Tap Tap Revenge [13]),
surrealism in digital arts (as in Plants vs. Zombies), among others. Every game, regardless of the genre, should
execute multimedia concepts correctly to be able to achieve the desired level of game experience. In his article,
Blow identified the different major areas of functionality requirements of games[11]. Some functionality
requirements that pertain to multimedia concepts are sound, simulation, fast 2d graphics, 3d rendering, collision
detection, spatial partitioning and search, scene management - rendering, 3d animation, world construction and
layout, scripted event creation, and audio/animation arrangement. As important as the other elements of the
game, the multimedia elements depict the over-all classification and genre of a game, e.g. hidden object, tower
defense, etc., and therefore, multimedia implementation and application in games cannot be discounted.
Results and Discussion
The Game
The Philippine setting makes the game play more innate and truly reflective of the country’s agricultural setting.
The player, taking on the role of the farmer, will, at many times and situations in the game, make critical decisions
that the real-world farmer needs to make to achieve his over-all objective, e.g. choosing the optimal distribution mode
to balance the trade-off between the cost of distribution and preserving the quality (and freshness) of the agricultural
produce [5].
Figures 1 to 3 are sample screenshots of Magsasaka.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Evaluation
Magsasaka is evaluated using usability tests and other physiological measures for game evaluation [6].
As game engineering results to a specific product, usability test is recommended to measure if a game is playable and
the gameplay is interesting enough so that the players will really play the game even without a priori knowledge on
how to navigate the game. A heuristic evaluation for game usability has been developed by Pinelle, et.al [14]. Their
heuristics were based on a survey of usability problems that were mostly encountered with video games. The
heuristics are (1) consistency, (2) customizability, (3) predictability, (4)proper views, (5) skip nonplayable content,
(6) input mappings, (7) controls, (8) game status, (9) training and help, and (10) visual representations. For the
Magsasaka Mobile Game prototype deployment, the evaluation of the game’s success were in three general areas,
namely: (1) gameplay, (2) interface and other applied multimedia game components, and (3) entertainment.
Thirty (30) players were randomly selected with ages ranging from 13 to 16. These players revealed that they were
not keen on playing or do not know any Filipino mobile games and all of them are familiar with (or have played)
Farmville. They were asked to answer a pre-survey form and a post-gameplay evaluation form that included questions
on Magsasaka’s gameplay, playability in terms of controls and navigation, interface and multimedia objects, and the
level of fun. In all three areas, Magsasaka scored a high above average rating.
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