I have just under 10 years of experience as an educational game designer and programmer. My job was to take some understanding of reality and express it as a set of challenges and expectations for players. If done well, each problem presented will pull the player just beyond their current ability, and they will ultimately succeed. If designed poorly, the game will be dismissed, and the players won’t engage.
“Appropriately escalating challenge” isn’t enough to keep someone’s attention. Good game design involves successfully managing a tangled mess of experience to optimally empower a player. A huge part of that experience is communication: Are the goals expressed clearly? Is it obvious what actions are allowed, and what actions are invalid? Is feedback given to let a player know whether they are on the right track, and is it given in a timely manner? (Often in video games, the window for feedback is measured in milliseconds!) Is it clear which information is immediately important, and which is not? Are we able to express all this information given the limited patience of a player?
These considerations, without modification, are applicable to the role of a teacher. When left unmet, students respond with complaints like “how was I supposed to know that?” or “you didn’t say that was going to be on the test!” or “this teacher is terrible”. By contrast, a well designed curriculum will build off what students already know, will make students aware where they are failing, will provide clear expectations for recovery, and will leave students feeling like success is in their control.
Good Problem Design goes beyond education: As movie viewers or book readers, we expect to be given every piece of an unfolding puzzle in a way we, the audience, deem fair. Even the characters in these stories are shown cause and effect in turn to enable them to finally overcome Some Great Evil. Our job titles have likely been filtered through layers of specialization, posing problems manicured to be solvable by a person with X experience and Y training. If we’re lucky, there’s an HR department waiting to smooth any bumps we can identify.
The stories we consume, the puzzles we conquer, the tests we take, and in many ways, the work we do, has been designed for consumption and resolution. Where the problems can’t be fabricated, we do our best to ensure they get custom tailored and triaged according to what level of challenge we are able to take.
At the time of writing, we’re all one week into a civilization-wide quarantine in response to the SARS-CoV2 virus (“coronavirus”). Many demand the problem be doled out according to certain expectations- What is our goal? What can/can’t we do? How do I know if I’m doing alright? Who can I trust?
A well-designed virus would exhibit symptoms immediately. It would have a consistently timed window of transmissibility. It would infect only within a precise distance, and only over a precise period. There would be a pill that prevents it, and another that can cure it. It would turn the infected blue (temporarily) to clearly signal to others. It would give those who quarantine a gold star. It would kill only those who don’t.
It would clearly telegraph its emergence on the global stage. (One for seven- could be worse!)
This virus isn’t entirely well designed, because it wasn’t designed. In spite of that, scientists and doctors are making progress toward the understanding, tailoring, and triaging of this thing. Until that process has time to develop, we have no choice but to play by the virus’ rules. We won’t know if we’re “overdoing it”, we won’t be rewarded for good behavior, and we won’t coerce it into telling us “how long this will take”. This problem isn’t catered to our interest and ability, won’t challenge us proportionally, and won’t express its needs clearly. If we don’t engage anyways, many more will die.
The problem may not be designed to be solved, but that doesn’t mean we can’t solve it.
Despite national leadership’s best efforts, reliable institutions persist. Through the unnecessary noise, they have come up with a few metrics- attempts to scramble together some coherency from something that was never intended to be coherent. These guidelines are the best ammo we have to win against this thing. However, my experience as a game designer has shown me that, when you give players a boundary, the first thing they do is cozy up to its edge. (You can’t hold more than 100 health packs? I’ll hold 99. You have to hold within 5m of target to capture? I’ll stand at 4m.) That works well when rules are designed and engraved in code. This problem was not designed.
We shouldn’t come within 5ft of others, where possible: this doesn’t mean you should aggregate with others and stand 6ft away.
The average incubation (asymptomatic) period is 5 days: but has been shown to extend to 14 (we’ve only been quarantined for 7).
Washing hands for 20s should kill any virus on your hands: this does not render you sterilized, and it is known to additionally be transmitted by droplets in the air.
We should donate any masks and gloves, per hospital requests: this is BECAUSE they work, and it is important that first responding infrastructure is prioritized.
We should quarantine indefinitely, past many degrees of inconvenience: to meet a friend for a well-deserved respite to normalcy as a reward undermines your effort.
We should share information on the pandemic widely: if you let incorrect information slip through, you are doing more harm than good.
*I am a game developer, not a doctor, scientist, nor journalist. If you’re looking for who to trust, the WHO and CDC are a good start. I’ve done my best to source any information given, and will immediately update with any corrections.
In the coming weeks, we will face temptations to lump this into the mental bucket of something more familiar, something more suited to our current understandings, expectations, and schedules. We might find it shatters some of these containers. If it does, we can’t disengage. This problem isn’t shrinking to meet us where we are. We will have to rise to meet it.
