The James Hutton institute is one of the largest research organisations in the UK, with a focus on Agriculture.
 
We were engaged by James Hutton Institute to develop a farming game using real source data, to demonstrate the effects of different types of farming on outcomes. In the game, a 3D landscape model of a farm can be explored on foot, on quad or through flight. The farm is divided up into different areas, with fields, buildings, wind turbines, a water course and forestry.

The user is able to see their position on an onscreen minimap, and can also open a larger map and click to teleport anywhere in the farm. The land is populated by animals (cows, sheep, deer) which move based on AI, and will run away as the user approached. The trees blow in the wind and the sun filters through the crops and leaves, creating realistic dappled light and immersive sound. The user can text chat to other users who are also using the application at the same time.  

There are various information points embedded within the farm, giving information about the landscape and its functions. These are real world objects such as info boards which the user can approach and read, as well as links to external websites, which can be viewed within a window in the application.

The key element of this project is the ability to enter a game mode from the UI. On entry, the view is elevated to high above the farm giving a birdseye view, and a new UI is presented, with a range of crops and animals which the users can drop onto the outlined fields below, and also a range of interventions they can take, represented as booster cards.

Each field has 4 scores - soil quality, biodiversity, community amenity and commercial value. Each crop/livestock has 4 modifying scores that affect these, as do the boosters. The aim of the game can be to either maximise the commercial value (money score) to the detriment of the other scores, to maximise the other scores to commercial detriment, or to balance them.

Once all fields are planted with crops or populated with livestock via dragging and dropping items from the UI into the fields, the user can press 'Go' to play through the farm's year and see the effects of the choices they have made.

After 10 years (rounds), they get a final score and can see how the individual factors have fared. The power of the gaming experience comes when they play through several times with different goals in mind and are able to appreciate the decisions and interventions they can make and how they can take a balanced approach to farming which preserves and regenerates the environment by having a positive effect on soil quality, biodiversity and community amenity, whilst also providing commercial viability.

The game can also be played over 50 or 100 years to illustrate multi-generational effects, and also played with fields values starting as either 100% (undamaged environment), 50% (partly damaged environment) or 0% (badly damaged environment).
 
The game was debuted at the Royal Highland Show in Edinburgh, the premier agricultural and countryside show in Scotland to a hugely positive reception, with a number of farmers expressing the desire to use the tool with their own farm for what-if modelling, as well as two government ministers enjoying playing it for more than 20 mins, highly engaged with the possibilities! Subsequently it has also been used in schools, allowing teams of children to collaboratively aim for different goals and seeing what the end effects are. A variant of the game, Digiflock, focused on livestock and biosecurity, has subsequently been developed.

To discuss the possibilities of a data-driven game for your organisation please contact us.