GATES will develop a serious game-based educational tool for training professionals across the value chain on the capabilities and uses of SFT and their economic and environmental benefits.
The serious game will be available as an offline game with online capabilities and it will be accessible through different interfaces: Desktop (Windows), Mobile (Android and iOS) and Web (through web browsers).
The game will be divided in the following game modes:
The “Main Story” game mode will be split in stages, with each one of the stages focusing on increasing player’s awareness about the existing SFT and/or benefits deriving from their application for their farm management. Each stage will start with a mini tutorial informing the player about the stage tasks, while the tutorial character will inform players during the stage progress about the effects of each of their actions in form of info tips. The “Main story game mode” will be developed in such way to be playable and enjoyable not only from the end-users of the gaming platform, but also from people not related with agriculture. In this way, the awareness of SFT benefits will be expanded to general public. The “Main story game mode” will be available to all users free of charge.
After successfully completing the “Main Story Game Mode”, players will gain access to a more advanced SFT training mode. The “Become a SFT expert game mode” will be focused on deepening players’ knowledge on SFT, and the challenges will be divided into categories related to the various aspects of SFT, such as: sensors, machinery and equipment, services, software etc. During this mode, the tutorial character will also be available and the level of its assistance (low, moderate, high) would be defined from the players. The “Become a SFT expert” game mode will be available to users of the Premium version of the game.
GATES will also allow players to try their skills in real conditions, using “Simulation Game mode”. In this mode, data of previous years (including weather data, yield data, soil data, inflections data, etc) from at least 5 different crops in different climate zones across Europe will be used for simulating the agricultural environment. Through this game mode, players will be able to test their skills and their performance with real data for the selected year, crop and area and at the end of the season they will be able to see their performance and compare it with other players. By repeating these simulation scenarios, players will be able to change their crop management and SFT usage for learning to use SFT in an effective and efficient way in different farming conditions. The “Simulation Game mode” will be available to users of the Premium version of the game.