When we set out to design a game about wildfire resilience, our core design team knew very little about wildfire. This is common on serious game teams, and is usually mitigated by consulting with subject-matter experts (SMEs). In our case, we were fortunate to be working in collaboration with fire scientists and civil engineers, not just as consultants but as team members. These research partners were developing scenarios and simulations based on extremely realistic and accurate data. 

With game development, one of the values is the fantastical nature -- there are no limits, you can make just about anything. But with a serious game, there is a risk...people playing will be learning from the content in your game, and if you take liberties with the data you may unintentionally be teaching inaccurate information, potentially even leading to come away with wrong ideas entirely. So we worked hard to ensure our games were following the science and replicating realistic situations. 

In Firewise Residents, this means a realistic simulation of vehicles evacuating -- while not based on true evacuation data, we emulate the simulations created by our civil engineering partners. We also use a wind system to blow embers which start fires further ahead, which we learned about as a mechanism for fire propagation from our fire science partner. For Firesafe Friends, it means creating a semi-realistic burn simulation with materials in the game acting as they would in real life (e.g. wood materials will burn and crumble away, brick and stucco are sturdier but still risk being destroyed if embers get int through vents and burn from the inside). In terms of visualizing the simulation, we were fortunate to be able to participate in a real-life burn demo, which supported our inspiration and direction for the fire visualization. Similarly we used realistic costs for the upgrades to support learning and understanding of the challenges homeowners face with home hardening. Both the costs and the likelihood to burn or crumble are based on a materials assessment produced by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety. 

Our games are designed with a great deal of care and effort to ensure realistic, authentic, and true-to-life experiences that build on real scientific data as a foundation. Here are some of the references we used throughout the process: 

https://ibhs.org/guidance/wildfire/

https://berkeleyca.gov/safety-health/fire

https://emergency.marincounty.org/pages/fire

https://www.berkeleyfiresafe.org/

https://www.fire.ca.gov/prevention

https://www.fire.ca.gov/prepare