You Busy?

Student Category

By DePaul University / Studio Fire

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Description: You Busy? is a game about the various channels that people and information must flow through in order to complete work. Whether it be finding the correct person for assistance, receiving an approval on a task, attending a meeting, or tending to a fiasco… there are millions of things that one must keep on their radar during any given day.

The purpose of the game is not to criticize this structure but instead to shed light on the beauty behind this system and illustrate just how much is required of us to feel “productive” and how working together is the path to success.

Skills and Ideas Taught: The key thing is communication and it also illustrates how many extra things we need to do to “get that task done”. Its not always surface value and I believe people can feel very mentally unwell holding themselves to high standards at work or days you don’t feel you got a lot done. There is always more to the story and working with others and getting help and communicating makes that all easier.

Goal or Challenge: The idea is to as a team get as much work done as possible as a team (but also individually to illustrate the paradox there). The game doesn’t have a built in goal of work to complete but encourages users to play again with the same group to see if they can improve communication outside the game to get more work done. Typically, after a team plays through once or twice they start improving more and more every time.

Primary Audience:  Though anyone who is able to use an Xbox controller could play, I believe young adults and adults will appreciate the message the most.

Assessment Approach: The amount of “work” completed at the end of the day measures the communication but I feel the true message comes from after you have played in the reflection phase.

Game Engine: Unity

Operating System: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10

Platform: PC

Special Hardware: Xbox Controllers