1 Month Until EGX

I started developing Bee Kind in February and it's now just 1 month until its debut at EGX! A Beta version of the game is ready but it needs some final tweaks and polish. Most of the work that is left is art, music & sound. In this post I'll talk about the first stage of development: brainstorming!

In the beginning...

Bee Kind is a game I'm developing as part of my master's degree in Games Design and Development which I'm studying at the National Film and Television School. It's a 2 year MA, where the first year is spent learning and developing shorter projects, and the second year is spent working on a year long showpiece.

My passion is finding ways to take games beyond purely entertainment, and explore ways they can help shape how we think, how we learn and how we see the world. I wanted my final project to be an experiment in ways I could do this within a year, so I started thinking of concepts that would help me do this.

One of the things I've always been passionate about is the environment and, as you probably know, bees are really important to plants, flowers AND humans! As well as an important part of the global ecosystem. So I decided to make a game looking at the ways bees impact on human life, and how humans impact on bee life. I also decided that I wanted the game to be aimed primarily at children, to see if I could make a digital game that was also a fun learning experience that parents would approve of.

Let's do some research!

I spent a few weeks looking into the issues bees face. Since the 1920s, 97% of the UK wildflower meadows have gone, which is really not good for bees! They are also affected by commonly used pesticides called Neonicotinoids, which thankfully were banned by the EU this year. Climate change has also had an impact on bees, as they struggle to survive through the longer, colder winters we've had in recent years.

I also looked at the ways in which humans can try to help, as I'm a firm believer that if you're presenting a problem, you should try and present a solution too.

People can help bees by...

Letting their grass grow long

Avoid concrete and patios in their gardens

Planting bee friendly plants and flowers

Signing petitions to ban bee-killing pesticides

Participate in the Great British Bee Count to help Friends of the Earth track bee populations

Put bee baths in gardens for bees to drink on

Feed tired bees sugar water to help them get going again

Avoid the use of pesticides in their own gardens

Buying local, ethically sourced honey

That's a lot of things you can do to help! For Bee Kind, though, I thought it would be better to focus down on one issue, so I decided to focus on planting flowers. Many people choose to have patio or lawns in their gardens, but this has lead to not enough food to sustain the UK bee population. Plus, flowers are beautiful, so why wouldn't you want more of them? It's also something children can easily help with, both at home and in their schools.

So; now I had an idea of what I was going to make the game about. Next, all I had to do was decide what the game would be! Check back in later to learn about the next stage of development: design!