Are you game and green enough?

Teh Jen Lee, The New Paper 3 Dec 08;

WE'VE heard it time and again. It's important to recycle. It's important to prevent mosquitoes from breeding.

But students might not heed the messages because of other distractions.

Now there's a new way to spread such important messages, through board games designed by students who took part in a competition organised by the National Environment Agency (NEA).

The winning entry for the secondary school category is Mozzie Buster, which was invented by 10 Secondary 3 students from Maris Stella High School. They won $1,000.

The game, which can be played by up to six people, revolves around using various weapons to fight mosquitoes in different locations represented on a map of Singapore.

The game locations have different prize values simulating the risk levels of the actual locations.

The areas that allow players to score the most points are the areas where dengue is known to be more prevalent.

One of the Maris Stella group members, Choy Bing Han, 15, said: 'The most fun part about designing the game is learning how to prevent mosquito breeding. We all can do our part in preventing dengue.'

Between May and July, the team met after school and during school holidays for up to three hours a week to work on the game.

They found out about the competition from their geography teacher.

Augustine Koh, 15, said the team got ideas from other games by going to a board games exhibition.

'The most difficult part was at the start when we had a lot of ideas but many of those didn't work,' he said.

For example, they wanted to use small mosquito figurines in the game but these were hard to make from recycled materials.

One of the criteria of the competition was that the game prototype submitted had to be made from recycled materials.

As part of the contest, NEA engaged Melchiz Pte Ltd, a training company which uses games as a medium, to provide three training sessions for the participants.

Bing Han said: 'They gave us ideas on how to make a successful game. For example, the objective must be clear and educational.'

One of the teachers supervising the team, Mr Low Tung Mun, 36, said: 'It was an interesting challenge - the process was quite meaningful. Not only was it fun but it teaches some important lessons on how to control dengue in Singapore.

'We didn't realise there are so many ways to fight dengue, such as breeding dragonflies that eat mosquito larvae. After research, we found a lot of basic stuff which can be done on a daily basis, like checking to make sure that plastic containers left outdoors are overturned so that they don't collect rain water.'

Mozzie-busting methods

So what examples of mozzie-busting methods will the boys be practising at home?

Bing Han said: 'Removing the flower pot plates, covering the toilet bowl when going on holiday. My family was already doing this but the message got reinforced after the board-game design experience.'

The winning team for the tertiary institution category was from ITE College Central (Tampines) who invented a game called Recycling Coaster.

Student Chua Boon Siah, 18, said: 'It's similar to Snakes and Ladders but there's the added objective of getting as many tokens as possible before reaching the end.

'Also, you can sabotage other players and switch places with them.'

Team-mate Leonard Cheng, 18, said he started using both sides of paper after joining the contest. He found out about it through posters on campus.

His teacher, Madam Fauziah Abdul Aziz, 52, said: 'We are now more conscious of the environmental message. It was also good to discover talent in the students. For example, all the illustrations in the game were hand-drawn. They were really impressive.'

Like the Maris Stella team, the ITE team also won $1,000. They also won another $300 for having the best illustrations.

NEA has produced 100 sets of the board games with plans to work closely with the South East Community Development Council to distribute the games to schools in the south-east district.

Mr Ng Meng Hiong, deputy director of the 3P (people, public and private sectors) partnership department of NEA, said: 'It's part of our outreach programme to the youths, engaging them in an interactive and fun way through games so that the message of environmental responsibility and ownership can be sustained.'