Game Metadata

Name: Interland

Designer/Developer: Google in collaboration with experience design company North Kingdom.

Goal: Interland is an online game that teaches children about internet security, cyberbullying, hackers and phishing.

🎮 Play it here!

Learning Objectives

The game is designed for students from 2nd - 6th grades. It is an adventure style game with 4 different lands to explore that follow the very familiar Google color palette. Each land has its own story line and learning objectives. Each adventure ends with applying the newly learnt knowledge to test in the form of an interactive Q and A session.

🟢 Kind Kingdom - It’s Cool to Be Kind

With the use of emoticons, the player has to go around collecting hearts and sharing “good vibes” with fellow Internauts. The prior knowledge of use of emoticons and their perceived meaning is assumed.

🔴 Reality River - Don’t Fall for Fake

A multiple choice Q&A style which teaches kids about how to identify scammers and other red flags on the internet. Some questions are time sensitive and most assume the basic knowledge of forming passwords and interaction with email.

🔵 Mindful Mountain - Share with Care

Perhaps one of the hardest lands in this game, Mindful Mountain teaches - whom is it okay to share content with online. It does not assume prior digital knowledge but the the game is built around lasers (which show content traveling through the internet) and mirrors.

🟡 Tower of Treasure - Secure your Secrets

This is easily the easiest adventure in the game. It teaches kids to form strong passwords and keep personal information safe online.

Opportunities of transfer of knowledge

Through various adventures, the game introduces different kinds of perils that live on the world wide web. To a large context, the game is trying to tell the player how to bypass these perils.

To be able to bypass them, the player must learn how to identify them by means of characteristics and behaviors. Once the player has this knowledge - they might be able to identify the red flags as they interact with people in real life. On spotting characteristics of phishers and scammers online, the player may be able to associate these and be alert of people who they think are trying to scam them.

Game Elements

Mechanics and systems:

Each adventure has its own set of rules.

Most of these use the arrow keys for input and space bar for processing the input. (I found it a little annoying that the enter key was not processing input)

The upward arrow key allowed for a higher jump in multiple adventures.

Game vocab:

Nouns: Internaut (you - the main player), lands, tokens, emojis

Verbs: Navigate, phishing, sharing, scamming, protecting, collecting, jumping

Systems:

The Internaut traverses different lands and learns about multiple concepts of digital literacy. The player exists in a 3D space where they have to go from Point A to Point B to collect the adventure token to move on.

Gameplay:

The core loop requires the player to answer questions/ share good vibes/ defeat monsters/ secure personal information based on the different adventures in the game.

I’ll deep dive into the loops for “Kind Kingdom” as it has intersecting loops in the gameplay.

Basic loop: Collect hearts to distribute and share with the sad Internauts to make them happy.

Secondary Loop: Collect megaphones to call out the mean monsters so that they obliterate off the land. If you use the megaphone at a fellow Internaut, you make them sad. After picking up the megaphone, the player loses the ability to spread good vibes. They first have to yell at the monster, get rid of the megaphone in their hand, and then go on to spreading good vibes.

Tertiary Loop: Block the monsters by pressing a huge red button and save the Internauts from getting tortured by the monsters.

The hearts in this level keep on replenishing which is both a good and a little confusing till the player realizes the hearts don’t have actual points - the points are attached to making other Internauts happy and saving them from Monsters.

Additionally, the other adventures also have a main loop where there is a phisher/scammer scheming on taking personal information - and the player has to navigate and save it.

Player Experience:

• There’s a sense of discovery as the player goes through each adventure. The rules change and the tasks are different.
• Each adventure brings its own sets of challenges that are unique and are the means of earning points. The player is exposed to new kind of perils that can exist online and learns best practices on keeping personal information safe.
• There are some elements of fantasy and a narrative that goes along to keep the players engaged. There are always other characters (both good and bad) that lead to a cohesive story formation.

Learning Mechanisms

Multiple learning mechanisms are at play at any given time in the game.

• Segmenting: The different adventures teach different aspects of digital literacy.
• Quizzing/Application: Each adventure ends in a quiz format where the digital peril is defeated.
• Feedback: On making a mistake, the monster takes away some of your personal information and you lose points.
• Activate preconceptions: From the beginning, the game assumes basic digital knowledge of email, emojis, information online and uses it in the introduction to set the stage.
• Variability: Each adventure brings a different peril to defeat.
• Anchored Learning: The player can learn how to identify perils on the web and there is a potential of knowledge transfer that might help the player connect the dots and make them realize that there can be perils in real life interactions with people as well. (Example - someone asking for you personal/banking information on phone)

Will these work?

Between these learning principles at play - segmenting, application and variability look the strongest mechanisms.

The player gets to learn different concepts of digital literacy as they navigate through different adventures. The game might become monotonous for an adult as some of the principles are repeated (the player has to choose strongest password 15 times from a given option in the 3rd level of “Tower of Treasure”) but this might work out as a reinforcement tactic for kids.

Final Rating

🟡 🟡 🟡 🟡 ⚫ (4/5)

Elements that I loved:

• The aesthetics and sound keeps the player engaged.
• The changing game-play gives a sense of discovery.
• The pop quizzes at the end give a sense of achievement.
• The password names were hilarious. Such as - brown!eLl@ma
• The player gets a cool certificate after each adventure and a final one saying “You’re Internet Awesome”.

Not-so-great elements:

• The “enter” key does not process input. Only the space bar does.
• The “Reality River” adventure is Q&A style adventure which feels more like an exam. The “game” in that is not very apparent except when the player answers incorrectly they fall in the river and lose points. Not the most exciting mechanics.

Google_Interland_Roogway_Certificate_of_Awesomeness(1).pdf