O n f e r e n c e

 
Game-design: Catch me, if you can
!
During the collaborative game students have to play in small teams in order to identify 
and catch a serial killer who is going to commit another crime. The game requires at 
least one group of players and has no limitation on the number of groups that can play in 
parallel (the server concurrent connection capacity being the only limiting factor). The 
more players participate in the game the more challenging and competitive it becomes. 
First, the supervisor uploads to the server a file indicating the groups of students who will 
play. Each player is assigned a role (each group has one detective and one or two 
policemen) and game-task: whilst the detective is given the task to coordinate the 
investigation providing his/her policemen with relevant hints on how and where to find 
witnesses of previous crimes (hints are sent from the game server), the policemen are 
asked firstly to identify the witnesses and then, to share the gathered information via 
text-
chat with their respective teams. During the entire game players’ identities are 
hidden so that none of them know who are their teammates. Additionally by providing a 
text-chat function within the App, we prevented learners from using alternative 
communication channels to communicate amongst each other. Students were 
encouraged to use solely the target language as their chat conversations would be 
assessed later on by the lecturer.
Figure 3: Q-R Code and screenshot of a video-clip 
The game is based on finding witnesses to identify the murderer. For this purpose our 
App includes several virtual witnesses which provide some key-information through short 
video clips. Witnesses are located in different places that are activated by loading QR 
codes (
see
Figure 3). Hence, before playing the game, the supervisor has to place the 
QR codes provided by the App in suitable locations so that students have to move 
through the playfield to complete the task. QR codes could be printed on papers or 
sticker boards, for example, and their positions could be described. For example, the QR 
code for the witness in the bar could be placed in the cafeteria of the Faculty, and that of 
the garage in the entrance to a parking lot. When the game starts, the detective receives 
key-information that he/she has to communicate to the policemen using the text-chat 
function. The policemen then have to go to the indicated locations and scan the QR-codes 
in order to get the clue. When clues are sent back to the detective, they are entered in 

---

-64- 
2014 CALL Conference 
LINGUAPOLIS
www.antwerpcall.be 
his/her App (which includes, unlike the app of the policemen, a notepad). If the clue is 
correct, the players of each team are notified and a new task is issued. 
The game which we have designed for the present study contains a total of 24 different 
clues which refer to two murders. Clues are being displayed randomly so that players can 
repeat the game several times by facing each time a new challenge.
Furthermore the App has been designed in such a way that the supervisor can easily 
modify and/or increase the number of clues and murders, if desired.