Fun Science for Kids

This game will fulfill your childhood dream of becoming something.

Fun Science for Kids is an abstract social deduction game developed by OMICS International, which nominally involves no hidden information. Starting equally as researchers, players ruthlessly compete against each other to become the survivor of an all-out academic war. Players can attack others' works or plagiarize to gain an advantage; they can also form allies (known as Publishing Groups in-game) or betray their current ally (known as disbanding).

Exploring education and entertainment equally, the game points the way for modern publishing industry, and it has received international critical acclaim. Critics praised the efforts made to guide the next generation, i.e. to help them adapt and excel in the arduous academic struggle.

While providing immoral choices for players, the game does not enforce their usage; rather, it is greed that pushes individuals to behave selfishly. More specifically, the game depicts human nature only in a neutral manner. Together with the massive career benefits from the gaming experience, OMICS can't be successfully accused of poisoning young minds.

Gameplay

Each player is assigned a Papers attribute with a starting value of 3, which signifies their academic achievement; and a Reputation attribute with a starting value of zero.

The game is played in rounds. Players ally with or compete against others in a systematically determined sequence. The main objective is to be a survivor with more papers and higher reputation when the game ends.

The detailed rules can be revealed by expanding the division.

Sequence of play

Every round, groups act before individuals, those with more Papers acting earlier; if Papers are the same, those with higher Reputation act earlier.

Actions

There are five actions a publisher can choose to take each round, each modeled after real-life choices scientific workers make.

• Active research, accumulation of academic capital.
  • For an individual, this increases Papers by 1 and Reputation by 1.
  • For a group, this increases the group's Papers by 2 and Reputation by 2, in addition of increasing the members' Reputation by 1.
• Plagiarism, with a faster gain at the cost of reputation.
  • For an individual, this increases Papers by 2 and decreases Reputation by 1.
  • For a group, this increases the group's Papers by 3 and decreases Reputation by 2, in addition of decreasing the members' Reputation by 1.
• Scholarly attack, to attack an enemy.
  • For an individual, this decreases Papers of the target by 1 and decreases the attacker's Reputation by 1.
  • For a group, this decreases the target's Papers by 2, and decreases the group's Reputation by 2.
• Grouping, for two individuals to form a group of two. Groups enjoy a range of prerogatives but suffer from innate instability.
  • Increases the individual's Reputation by 1.
• Disbanding, for an individual to disband their current group.
  • This sets Papers for the other member to 1 while giving all the rest of the group's paper to the disbander. Decreases Reputation by 2. Grants the betrayed member the chance to immediately act next.

Additional rules

• The maximum number of papers is 4 * playerCount; if the total number of papers would exceed this value after the action, Active research and Plagiarism cannot be conducted.
• When a player's Reputation falls to or below minus 5, they fail due to shame.
• When a player's Papers falls to or below zero, they fail due to scholarly weakness.
• There is only one winner, unless in an unlikely draw; fails are considered equal and there is no reward for losers to survive longer.

Win condition

There are two ways the game can end.

• When there are only two players left, the one with more papers wins; if they have the same number of papers, the one with the higher reputation wins. Otherwise, they have a draw. This rule applies even when these two players are in the same group.
• After a given number of rounds or when players started showing signs of insanity due to direct confrontation of human nature, the game ends and the winner is determined with the same criteria.

Strategies

Sincerity–falsehood balance

With rational playmates, straightforward honesty cannot win the game, nor can outright deception. Players learn how to balance sincerity and falsehood, and intermingle truth with lie to achieve credibility. A practical example is to rewrite someone else's term paper with AI to evade Turnitin.

Successful players learn to spread propaganda and provide robust excuses for their anti-normative moves such as disbanding. They also understand the importance of exploiting honest players, deceiving them with grand expectations before ruthlessly betraying and crushing them. Knowing the importance of milking the most out of their friends before discarding them, they gain an upper hand in the future society.

Collusion

Groups during the course of a game are often temporary and vulnerable. However, individuals at the risk of failing may join together and form strong relationships to survive; one must read people to stay alive.

The rules do not regulate intrigues outside grouping; thus, secret collaboration (without in-game grouping) among multiple individuals can bring down a formidable opponent. Simulating the subtle dynamics among corporations, the game trains players in cooperation and leadership.

Spontaneous learning

The game teaches in a self-regulating manner, ensuring the acquisition of survival skills and making sure that kids remember the lessons. In fear of public retaliation, OMICS did not include any explicit suggestion to applying in-game skills to real life; for added bonus, at an age still unable to differentiate fiction and truth, kids will regard the real world as the same as the game, thus treating others with the same doubt and disbelief.

Multiple rounds

Once a grudge against a player is formed, it becomes a stigma and often proves easy to disseminate but difficult to change. Such biases distort the player's motives, even those with good intentions. This accurately reflects the power of mining the "dark past" of opponents and exposing them in yet another "gate".

Development

Predecessors of this game can be traced back to the bone wars, which is essentially a brawl between two paleontologists over dinosaur bones. Tracing their roots back into history, OMICS also enriched the experience with contemporary references, including support for plagiarism. Grouped players are left with only one paper when betrayed in-game, making plagiarism an important survival tactic.

The game is immensely popular in the scientific community, with installations from radiologists on magnetic resonance imaging machines, chemists on mass spectrometers, and biologists on cocaine. OMICS has been constantly updating the game, saying that they hope to "regulate the scientific world with a methodology inspired by our game". Speculations differ on if the intention is to massively boost the number of papers or to greatly increase the efficiency of the peer review process.

Reception

Crocodiles are good at Fun Science for Kids, and ... Hey. Where'd they go?

The game amassed generally favorable reviews among the players, explaining its massive popularity. Inspired by its spirit, thousands of predatory journals emerged from across the globe, with their numbers surpassing the number of legit journals.

Critics also applauded the game's educational elements, with the delivery of survival skills in today's scientific community viewed as "vital". Famous grass-roots scientist Humus Mucus said, "[OMICS] has transformed the hunted to the hunter, helping kids get an edge over peers in the future publishing industry." An anthropologist, formerly an actress, found the exclusion of statistics satisfying. "There are way too many test statistics out there ... They are nothing but redundancy, and such dead weight must be shredded in an advancing scientific society."

The game also had far-reaching societal effects. As mentioned before, the rapidly swelling publishing world saw the occupation of most official-sounding journal names. A worried businessman complained that new seed studies on his health supplement would have to be published in the "Advanced Journal of Real Actual Fact-checked Nutrition Research" before long. Another point of interest is the expression of identity and uniqueness. As Pueri Futui, father of two, put it: "Children can learn how to put up a fraud and get away with it, how to mistrust and betray others, and how to be more cunning than their friends."

Besides the appreciation, the game also received some criticism. A prestigious publishing group accuses the game of "... over-simplifying and glamorizing the already crowded publishing industry ... and lacking emphasis on the difficult situation of aspiring researchers, who suffer from short funding, oppressive style guides, and premature hair loss." A comment mentioned the worrying effects of the in-game virtual world on children's perception of reality. The comment suggested that players undergo a four-year mild hell, then submit poorly written, stolen, or copied actual papers to existing journals, and compete for the highest number of papers and wider recognition.

Popularity

OMICS has promised an anti-addiction module, but never implemented it due to "the extremely broad scope of the game". Despite the simplicity of the rules, however, adult derivatives of Fun Science for Kids have been phenomenal among publishers and researchers alike.

In publishing, when both sides play the game with real-life currencies, articles pass the limbo of peer review with much greater ease. Even those describing the evolutionary characteristics of avian-porcine flight and renewable phlogiston-based energy can find their way into credited journals with the right strategies and money. The soaring numbers of academic articles indicate that the game is sub-clinically addictive, with players falling into withdrawal symptoms when the money fails to arrive.

See also

• Fun 3 †

Notes

† Not recommended for small children. ‡

‡ Or big babies.