Production - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 243

Players will receive their own new tools at certain levels.

l

Gloves

Trowels

Hand rakes
l Players will receive their choice of decorative pots as rewards for
precise watering and choosing the correct mulch.
l At the final garden party and show, players will get to choose
their favorite flowers, whether they grew them, or someone else,
to be potted and given to them for their apartments. Other
residents will be able to attend the show, vote on their favorites,
and purchase flowers for their own rooms.

Special prizes are awarded at the end of the class:

l

The player whose flowers are chosen more than any others by
class members wins a prize.

The player whose flowers are chosen more than any others by
FVRC residents wins a prize.

The player who leveled the farthest by successfully growing the
largest number of plants wins a prize.

The guild whose flowers are chosen more than any others by class
members wins a prize.

The guild that leveled the highest wins a prize.

Others?

Whew! The gardeners among you readers will have realized I know nothing
about gardening. I had the luxury of making things up as I went along. So do not
copy precisely the above for your planned gardening class, or the flowers will
probably never grow. But you should now have an idea of the size of that raft of
ducks you need to line up before production begins. Of course, more ducks may
be added, too. And yes, the collective noun for

“ � “ �

ducks in the water is a raft.

You really don ' t want to line up ducks once they are in the air. They are hard to

net, and they ' ll usually line up on their own.

One idea that is important to consider when designing a multiplayer classroom
are the types of reinforcement called the variable ratio schedule and the variable
interval schedule . These are concepts long known to game designers, film-
makers, and book authors, even if they didn ' t know the terms for what they

were doing.