United States

Jotlandia deeply engages with 21st century literacy skills - through collaborative, intergenerational play.

The importance and need for 21st century literacy skills has become widely accepted. But designers and educators are still wrestling with exactly how to implement them - especially in informal and home environments. 

The design of Jotlandia elegantly goes to the core of these literacies. The “four Cs” of 21st century learning - critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication, are at the very heart of how Jotlandia works. In order to move through a story, players are required to communicate about how to solve problems together, navigating through the storyspace with creativity and critical thinking. 

The face-to-face interaction of Jotlandia helps make this possible. Virtual game worlds like Among Us or Fortnite do bring players together for creative play. But the benefits of collaboration are multiplied when we can interact face to face. Rather than being a world where players go inside a computer, Jotlandia players move through an imaginative world together in the real world, using smartphones as a catalyst for rich social interaction. Jotlandia encourages exploration and play through real-time collaboration, written and oral storytelling, and problem-solving, facilitating memorable moments for friends and family through social play.

The concept of design of Jotlandia has been informed by literacy scholars such as James Gee, who advocates for thoughtfully designed games that exist at the rich borderlands between engaging entertainment and enriching play.

Jotlandia is a project with several levels of engagement and design. As an interactive storytelling experience, we would like to make it widely available to children and adults on a range of smartphone and mobile devices.

Because Jotlandia is not a single story world but instead a platform for social storytelling, we envision working with a diverse range of writers to develop content for Jotlandia. This content could vary widely in terms of genre and target audience - always with the aim of content appropriate for children and adults to play together. The project could launch organically with a small amount of story content, and more could be developed as the audience and reach of the project grows.

As an additional layer of the project, we would like to make Jotlandia a platform for content creation. Similar to projects like Kahoot! (an interactive “quiz” creation tool used for fun by kids, and for teaching by educators), we would like the public to be able to make their own Jotlandia stories. This would involve a simple and easy-to-use tool akin to Twine, permitting users to write their own content and script their own stories, resulting in custom interactive narratives they could share and play with their friends. This is the most ambitious version of the project but would multiply its potential reach and benefits.

• Families with school-age children looking to play together in an environment where both fun and learning (reading and vocabulary) are important.
• Playful book readers and literary game players looking for collaborative experiences.
• A social icebreaker for groups of gamers and non-gamers alike.

Jotlandia has been in development for several months and the current state of the project is a fully functional, multiplayer experience on mobile phones with a sample storyline. 

Being awarded prize money would allow the company to put more resources into designing Jotlandia and accelerate its development. Funding would allow us to expand the project team - for example, bringing in outside writers to develop story content specifically geared for the audiences and impacts outlined here, or working with educational partners to assess the benefits and impact of the project.

As an experienced game development company with a track record of published games, we understand the importance of developing innovative ideas through an iterative research and design process.

The development team has the design and implementation skills required to create Jotlandia.

We would love to collaborate with educational and content experts that can help advise the project on how to best meet our goals for learning and literacy through creative collaboration. We look forward tremendously to participating in the community of grantees and organizational partners in order to get fresh perspectives on our project and heighten our potential impact. As commercial game developers (who are also university educators), we also feel we can bring helpful expertise to the grantee community.

We also would like to collaborate with a diverse array of writers to develop the project content and ensure that the stories in Jotlandia represent a wide range of voices and cultures. While we do have experience fundraising for and publishing games, releasing the project at scale might be facilitated by the participation of a publisher or other distribution partner. We feel participation in the Digital Thriving Challenge will positively impact all of these goals.