EAGER: Creating a Framework for Prototyping Science Missions.

这是一个探索性项目，旨在调查、制作原型，并演示用于开发科学任务游戏或基于游戏的虚拟世界的计算框架。在许多科学、技术、工程或以数学为基础的学科中，以任务为导向的科学是国家研究和发展议程中相当大的一部分。这些任务是复杂的努力，阐明了反复出现的社会技术和经济驱动过程的生命周期，如任务规划、车辆和有效载荷或仪器设计、发射、过境、到达、着陆和部署、资源收集、返回和汇报。越来越多的学生、教师、科学家、工程师、技术人员和其他人需要意识到、获得知识，并最终鼓励对新的科学任务的支持和热情。这项研究将阐明这样一个框架，并为采用这种新框架的科学任务游戏提供概念模型或原型的证明。这些结果可以作为开发特定科学研究机构感兴趣的新研究项目的基础，也可以作为创建新的、特定任务的科学游戏的程序的基础。这类游戏代表了一种沟通、教育和吸引对新的科学任务和重大科学挑战感兴趣的新一代的新媒介。通过设计，这种方法必须是独立于科学领域的，一个可重复使用的计算框架，用于生产可扩展的科学任务游戏，将代表一个新的、高价值的创新引擎，用于解决科学和技术的新挑战，并推进在科学学科内部和跨学科生产、共享和应用新的科学知识和技术实践的集体社会使命。以任务为导向的科学电脑游戏提供游戏机制和游戏体验，帮助玩家(1)获得意识，(2)获得科学知识，或(3)参与定制和扩展科学任务的特定细节，或在特定的兴趣领域进行探索探险。这样的游戏可以提供机会，让公众了解任务及其潜在后果，让学生了解表征该领域或任务挑战的科学基础，让领域专家或公民爱好者参与阐述、完善和优化此类科学任务的范围、规模、效率和有效性。

This is an exploratory project to investigate, prototype, and demonstrate a computational framework for developing science mission games or game-based virtual worlds. Mission-oriented science is a sizable part of the national agenda for research and development within many science, technology, engineering, or mathematically based disciplines. These missions are complex endeavors that articulate a life cycle of recurring socio-technical and economics-driven processes, such as mission planning, vehicle and payload or instrument design, launch, transit, arrival, landing and deployment, resources collection, return, and debriefing. Increasingly, students, teachers, scientists, engineers, technicians, and others need to become aware of, gain knowledge about, and ultimately encourage support and enthusiasm for new scientific missions. This research will articulate such a framework and provide a proof of concept mockups or prototypes for science mission games that employ this new framework. The results can serve as the basis for developing new research projects of interest to specific science research agencies or programs for creating new, mission-specific science games. Such games represent a new medium for communicating, educating, and engaging a new generation of people interested in new science missions and scientific grand challenges. By design, the approach must be science domain-independent, and a reusable computational framework for producing extensible science mission games would represent a new, high-value engine for innovation that serves to address the new grand challenges for science and technology, and to advance the collective societal mission of producing, sharing, and applying new scientific knowledge and technological practice within and across science disciplines.Mission-oriented science computer games provide game-play mechanics and play experiences that help players to (1) gain awareness, (2) acquire scientific knowledge, or (3) participate in customizing and extending the specified details of a scientific mission or exploratory expedition in a specific domain of interest. Such games can afford opportunities for the public to gain awareness of the mission and its potential consequences, for students to learn about the scientific foundations that characterize the domain or mission challenges, and for domain specialists or citizen enthusiasts to participate in articulating, refining, and optimizing the scope, scale, efficiency, and effectiveness of such science missions.