#zombiepox

  It's like Pandemic, except it doesn't feel like work.

Mechanically, POX most resembles Go, and if you have a firm background in Go, you’ll probably find that similar containment strategies apply. However you are hampered by the people that are unable to (or refuse to) be vaccinated, and if they contract the disease they will immediately die. You will learn to hate these people.

Seriously, Jenna, please just take your pseudoscience protest and go away.

Tiltfactor did actual scientific testing of players to see if the underlying “message” sank in. I think the most surprising lesson that they found was that the more the design distances and abstracts itself from “message,” the more effective it is.

POX comes in three flavors, regular board game, iPad app, ZombiePOX. Perhaps not shockingly, players actually internalized the ideas behind the game most strongly when playing the zombie flavor. I wish Mary had spent more time dwelling on this, but she presented two theories as to why this is.

One, being too explicit with the message doesn't inspire critical thought. How many of us have played “educational” games that were ridiculously on-message like Captain Novolin?

It’s the videogame equivalent of a very special episode about drug abuse. Tiltfactor’s games, to their credit,  mask their message in gameplay instead of wearing it on their sleeves.

For example, Buffalo is another game by Tiltfactor, where players draw two cards and are challenged to name a famous person matching the combination, like “optimistic soldier” or “glasses-wearing heartthrob.” The beauty of Buffalo is that it’s a stealth drone targeting the public’s general lack of knowledge about certain populations. By sheer chance, eventually you’ll come up with combinations like “female scientist” or “asian-american sports star.” If we can only name one, or even worse no celebrities at all, what does that say about us? Would Buffalo be as thought-provoking if players were told up front that they were playing a game about bias and stereotyping?  Probably not.

Two, adding flavor elements for the sake of engagement helps players think critically about the message,  even if they have nothing to do with the message.  Mary recounted working on another public health game, and deciding, “this game’s setting is just not very fun.” After prototyping a number of alternate designs, they found that a variant set in the 16th century involving buckets of leeches and plague masks was much better received.

How could this not make a game more awesome?