The original iPad version of the game won several awards, including “Best Overall Digital Game” at the Meaningful Play Conference, Gold in the International Serious Play Awards and the Association for Communication Excellence Gold Award for Interactive Media Program.
Source: NMSU Newsroom
Managing money can be scary, and many aspects of financial literacy, such as credit scores, can lead to more questions than answers. A team from the New Mexico State University Cooperative Extension Service has launched a web version of the financial literacy game “Night of the Living Debt” to help solve those problems.
The media production team from NMSU’s Innovation Media Research and Extension and Learning Games Lab in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences developed the new web version with support from the Extension Foundation’s New Technologies in Agricultural Extension, in partnership with the University of Idaho Extension. In 2016, the original iPad version of the game was produced with support from CoBank and is still available.
“This is a redesign of a game that is already successful. It was originally designed for iPads, and we saw the need to scale that to be more accessible for people playing in a web browser,” said Matheus Cezarotto, Educational Technology Extension specialist with Innovative Media Research and Extension. “We also improved the game accessibility by making it fully playable with keyboard controls for users with motor needs. To better support players’ cognitive needs, we’ve added an introduction about how the game works, and more feedback on the content of the game for players to understand the results of their actions as they play the game.”
The original iPad version of the game won several awards, including “Best Overall Digital Game” at the Meaningful Play Conference, Gold in the International Serious Play Awards and the Association for Communication Excellence Gold Award for Interactive Media Program.
“Every time we have showcased this game, people always get very immersed in the game and the content,” Cezarotto said.
In addition to the new version of the game, a teaching guide for how to use it in the classroom is available. The resource includes videos, which will be available soon, from Luke Erickson, Idaho associate professor and Extension specialist – personal finance, discussing how the game teaches real-life skills.
To learn more or play the game, visit https://nightofthelivingdebt.org.
