A Digital Enhancement for the Environment Boardgame TERRITORY
In this master’s thesis, we present a Digital Enhancement for the environmental boardgame TERRITORY. This game is used as an introduction for Environment Science students to introduce them to the conflicting interests that exist in real life landscape planning.
The digital enhancement that we present in this thesis has as main goal to relieve the players of some of the practical worries when playing the game, so that they can focus more of their strategy and the environmental issues, rather than, for example, keeping track of scores and complying with the rules of the game.
The Digital Enhancement for the TERRITORY boardgame consists of a tablet application that shows the scores of the different habitability tracks, as well as the global objectives that the players should try to achieve. The app also gives players the option to choose the language they want to play in, as well as to consult the rules of the game or tips and tricks. In addition, there is an RFID reader, which can read the RFID tags that have been applied to the game pieces. Players must have the game pieces they use on a turn read by the RFID reader so that the tablet application can adjust the scores of the habitability tracks according to the rules of the TERRITORY boardgame.
To evaluate the usefulness and usability of the Digital Enhancement we conducted a user study with 7 participants in two different sessions. During this user study, the participants played the TERRITORY game with the Digital Enhancement. After they finished the game, the players were asked to fill out the PSSUQ questionnaire (a standard usability questionnaire). The questionnaire was supplemented with some additional questions about the usability and usefulness of the various aspects of the digital expansion. The results of this user study showed that the Digital Enhancement makes it possible for players to focus more on their strategy and the environmental issues, but that there are still some improvements possible.