2009

H2.0

Mike Malinics & Ian

Schofield

[WHITE PAPERS]
The summary of work for years 2008-2009. Includes documentation on research,
surveys, and company structure.
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Table of Contents
Introduction............................................................................................. ...................3
Problem............................................................................................. .........................4
Solution........................................................................................... ...........................5
Game Basics...................................................................................................... .........6
Research............................................................................................................... ......7
Research: The Housatonic River.................................................................................9
H2.0’s Organization................................................................................. .................10
Company and Game Names.....................................................................................11
Citations........................................................................................... ........................12

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Introduction
Here at H2.0, we try to combine two things: fun and learning.
This is why we have come up with the game “Effusion.” We hope
Company Name:
this game, set on a beautiful river, which is increasingly being
H2.0
flooded with trash and waste, will teach today’s youth, and the
Slogan: Knowledge
games players the importance of having a clean and pristine
Flows
environment. We have looked at what middle school-age kids
Game: Effusion
actually know about the environment, and water pollution, and
Focus: Water
have Pollution
tried to tie the needed learning into a good story therefore
giving children an incentive and reason to play. We are hoping
that these young gamers will have fun and the need to prevent
pollution will be embedded into their minds.

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This obvious water

pollution in India is
what

H2.0 is trying to
avoid all over the
world.
Quick Fact: 1% of
Earth’s water is Photo courtesy of
drinkable, and extinctearth.org

pollution threatens
it daily

Problem
Eighty percent of our Earth is covered in water, and only one
percent of that is drinkable water. Where do we get this water
Gaming from?
is a great
Mostway
of this drinkable water is stored within aquifers; the
to help kids learn about
rest is purified ground water. However, while water can be
the environment and go
Green purified and recycled, the supply of drinkable water is
threatened by pollutants ranging from oil to litter.

Going Green is a growing trend, as people strive to not

only save the environment from global warming, but to protect
nature from pollution as the human population grows. As time
passes it grows clearer that while the adults of today act try to
protect our water supply from pollution, it will ultimately be a job
for the adults of tomorrow. To get across this message, we are

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H2.0 canrelying
help students
on gaming to reach our audience. Gaming provides an
get involved in stopping
entertaining way for children to acquire new knowledge and it
water pollution
leaves a lasting impact.

However, while games are interesting, not all games are

able to get across a message behind the entertainment. Here at
H2.0, we believe we’ve found the solution to get the next
generation actively involved in saving our water from pollution.

Solution
Is there a simple solution to stopping pollution? No. We at H2.0
feel that
By instilling while changes will take time, we need to work with the
healthy
habits,next
Effusion
generation
can to make sure they don’t face even worse
help gamers
problemslearn how
than we do now. But in order to make a real difference
to stop pollution and
in a young child’s every day life, learning new habits needs to
apply this in real world
provide fun while giving the child something they can apply to
situations
real world situations. By creating a game that provides a fun
learning environment, we are helping children instill into their
minds the importance of not polluting and to make proper
choices that will save ecosystems from destruction.

While most games want children to learn by providing

Effusion them with a long list of information which they have to read, our
teaches
through game
playing,
is simple and to the point. By playing Effusion, our
keeping the game fun
gamers learn how to save the environment through action, thus
yet educational at the
same timehelping them understand the damage a few pieces of litter can
do to the water and the environment. Keeping our game simple
ensures people will want to play it over and over again, thus
reinforcing everything they have learned.

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Game Basics
Effusion is an innovative game designed using MIT’s program
“Scratch.” Our game is based on a fisherman going to his

The player helps

Fisherman Jones pick
up pollution by
dragging and dropping
it into the appropriate
bins

favorite fishing hole on his boat and discovering that it is

As the game goesThis
polluted! on, makes fisherman Jones angry when he’s fishing on
the background
his boat gets
Bantz, so he decides to do something about it. Our
lighter and the levels
game is a drag and drop game, where the player becomes Mr.
get harder
Jones, and uses their fishing hook (mouse) to hook (click on) and
reel in the trash (drag) to his boat. This game is simple,
enjoyable, and it is appropriate for almost all ages. It starts out
with a murky background, depicting the effects of pollution on
the environment. As trash gets picked up, the background
begins to lighten up, showing that every little bit makes a
difference. When a piece of trash is brought aboard the boat,
the pollution meter on the left changes to show how much more
trash has to be picked up to move onto the next level. The
game gets harder as time goes on, as the trash will start to
move faster as the current speeds up making it much more
difficult to grab all the trash and move it to your boat.

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Research
When it came to the making of Effusion, we felt the need for a
solid storyline that would not only make the game entertaining,
but

We surveyed local
middle school students
to find out how much
they knew about water
pollution

educational as well. In the early stages of creating our game we

thought about the type of game we wanted to make based on
our own personal experiences with online games. We wanted to
create a game that is fun and addictive, which could change the
habits of our gamers to not just think Green, but live Green. The
age range of middle school students and up was chosen

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because when children are younger it is easier to learn new facts

and habits. Middle school children are also beginning to form
their own ideas and opinions, making this age range opportune
for understanding that water pollution needs to be stopped now.
But how can an educational game be entertaining without
overdoing the educational aspect? To create this perfect
balance, leading members of H2.0 journeyed to Rochambeau
Middle School in Southbury,
Connecticutto conduct a
survey. Within this survey,
students were asked multiple
choice questions which briefly
addressed questions such as
“Who does water pollution
affect?” and “Which issue is
more important?” Rather than
just ending the survey with
these quick questions, we had
our participants expand on
their choices to give us an
idea of how well they understood the concepts of water pollution
and global warming. It turns out that in fact all of the students
surveyed had witnessed some form of water pollution and many
had ideas of how to stop it. Thus, with these facts in mind, the
game design team at H2.0 decided to create a game where the
learning would take place through interaction rather than just
reading. This visual learning experience helps create habits we
hope to instill within our gamers throughout their lifestyle, while
providing a moderately fast pace gaming experience.

Research: The Housatonic River

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The Housatonic River is one of the main water arteries in the state
of Connecticut, and when the state was being founded in the early 1600’s
it served as a magnet for townships due to the ease of life it brought. Later
in America’s
The Housatonic hashistory these towns become Mill-towns, with huge cloth
making factories
been polluted over using the water power to run the machines. This may
centuries
havefrom local
helped bolster the economy, but it did no favors for the river; it was
Danbury hat-making
now polluted. One major contaminant that poses a serious health risk to
businesses
humans is the mercury that seeped into the river out of the Danbury hat
making businesses,
which still lingers in the
water today. In a study
undertaken by
Wesleyan
University they
found that “The Still

The riverRiver sediment

is polluted
with a large amount
samples of
have Hg
mercury
concentrations that range from 1000 to 60,000 ppb (parts per billion) Hg.
The highest Hg concentrations are found in fine-grained, organic-rich
sediments past the town of Brookfield, which was a secondary hat-making
center after Danbury. A core from the northern sector of the Still River
shows a Hg pollution profile with values up to 100,000 ppb” This problem
is really put into perspective when told that the average mercury pollution
GE had to pay forin Connecticut is a mere 200-500 ppb. While the Mercury
elsewhere
polluting the
problem may seem bad, there are still worse things in the Housatonic
Housatonic, which went
towardsRiver, suchand
the EPA as polychlorinated
for biphenyls, more commonly known as
contamination clean-up
PCB’s. For years General Electric (GE) dumped these harmful chemicals
into the Housatonic River from its manufacturing plant in Pittsfield
Massachusetts. However, in September 1998, GE was forced to pay for its
crimes, to the tune of 200 million dollars. That money will go primarily to
the Federal government’s Environmental protection agency, and the US

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Fish and Wildlife

The Housatonic shows Service, for cleaning up the contamination, and
that pollution is
replacing the damaged organisms.
everywhere, whether
What does
we want to believe it orthe polluting of the Housatonic Riverhave do with H2.0?
not The river helps demonstrate that pollution is everywhere, and that water
pollution can have a great impact on the environment. People often like to
put issues aside that do not seem to affect them directly, but the polluting
of the Housatonic helps people understand that water pollution is a large
issue and it must be stopped to save the Earth for future generations.

H2.0’s Organization
While most of our competition has one leader and the rest of its
members are followers, H2.0 tried something different this year.
In past years, Pomperaug High School’s CTIA companies have
H2.0 meets once a
been organized like the rest, and have seen many problems
week, but its leaders
come along
meet on Mondays to as they tried to complete their products. To remedy
make huge decisions
many of the at
problems, this year a new hierarchy of leadership
the Officers’
wasmeeting
created. At the top we have our President, Phil Simmons,
who oversees all of the company meetings, assigns tasks to
other members, and makes sure that everybody is staying on
track with our goals. Our Vice President, Tim Baird, oversees all
of the company’s meetings as well, and takes over in the event
that our President is absent. H2.0 also has a secretary, Joe
Addonizio, who writes important information that comes up
during the meetings. Our treasurer, Zack Sniffen, oversees our
funds as we try to promote our company. We then have our
department heads: Lucas Landaeta (Head of Game Design), Kori
Taylor (Head of Marketing), and Michael Malinics (Head of
Research). The rest of the members of our company have set
roles, but often find themselves doing tasks for several

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Phil Simmons: President departments. All of the members of H2.0 meet on Thursdays,

Tim Baird: Vice President where important issues are brought up, and essential work is
done during our work days. Because we have so many people,
Joe Addonizio: Secretary
we often find that we can not come to a consensus. To solve
Zack Sniffen: Treasurer
this, every Monday there are Officers’ meetings where the
Kori Taylor: Marketing President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, and Department
Lucas Landaeta: Game Heads meet to discuss the important issues within the company,
set deadlines, and make final decisions that could not be made
at a general meeting.

Company and Game Names

At the start of our company’s meetings, we first began by having

all of our members write reports researching major green
themes. We then voted on all of these, and came out with the
topic of water pollution which we began to focus our project on.
Because our company is trying to tie the Web 2.0 theme and
ideas with preventing water pollution, we combined the formula
for water, H2o and Web 2.0 to create H2.0. After searching
through Google, Yahoo!, Ask, and MSN search engines, we
concluded that this name was not patented and was available
for our use.

Citations
Binninger, Jerry. "What on Earth Do You Know About Water?". EPA.
11/14/2008 <http://www.epa.gov/gmpo/edresources/water_5.html>.

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Jallow, Billo. "MERCURY IN HOUSATONIC RIVER AND STILL

RIVER SEDIMENTS: A LEGACY OF DANBURY (CT)
HATMAKING". Weslyan University. 3/26/2009
<http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2003NE/finalprogram/abstract_51250.htm>.
Baver, Jay. "Save the Housatonic". On the Water. 3/26/2009
<http://www.onthewater.com/HousatonicRiver.html>.

"GENERAL ELECTRIC AGREES TO $200 MILLION SETTLEMENT TO

CLEAN UP THE HOUSATONIC RIVER". United States Department
of Justice. 3/26/2009
<http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/1998/September/441_enr.htm>.

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