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. 2017 Apr 28;15(4):e2001984.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2001984. eCollection 2017 Apr.

Gut Check: The evolution of an educational board game

David A Coil  1 , Cassandra L Ettinger  1 , Jonathan A Eisen  1   2
Affiliations

Gut Check: The evolution of an educational board game

David A Coil et al. PLoS Biol. .

Abstract

The "gamification" of science has gained a lot of traction in recent years, and games that convey scientific concepts or themes are increasingly popular. While a number of existing games touch on microbiology, very few consider the beneficial (as opposed to the detrimental) aspects of microbes. We designed a board game called "Gut Check: The Microbiome Game" to fill this gap. The game is meant to be both educational as well as challenging and fun. Here we discuss the development of the game, some of the logistics of game development in this context, and offer suggestions for others thinking of similar projects.

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Conflict of interest statement

I have read the journal's policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests: DAC received promotional copies of the game from MO BIO but no financial compensation. The lab of JAE received a small amount of store credit from MO BIO as part of that partnership.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Gut Check: The Microbiome Game (commercial version).
(A) Promotional photo of the game showing the game board, instructions, player boards, cards, and box. (B) An example player board set up to have a microbiome containing both beneficial (teal), opportunistic (red and teal), and pathogenic (red) bacteria cards, as well as a unspecified nosocomial infection (orange) card in the lower right. Antibiotic resistance cards (blue) can be seen beneath two of the beneficial bacteria cards.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Evolution of a Gut Check card—from concept stage to the commercial version.
Throughout the whole process we continuously playtested the game, first for game mechanics, then for card readability, and finally for errors. (A) At the concept stage, “cards” consisted of text in a PowerPoint slide, which were hard to handle when printed. (B) Later, we obtained an open-access card template online that we modified for the prototype version as shown here [28]. This is the step in which the vast majority of playtesting occurred; a script for converting text in an Excel file to the cards greatly facilitated this stage. (C) More playtesting was required for the professional design used in the print-at-home version since we attempted to replace text with icons whenever possible. (D) A final round of testing was required with the new art for the commercial version.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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