Transmission: A Game about Networks
Transmission is a game developed by Science Museum to celebrate centuries of innovation in communication networks. The game essentially traces developments in networking technology since the 1800s. Starting at telegraph networks that only involve transmitters and receivers, it moves on to telephone networks, computers, broadcast networks, satellites and more.
The idea of the game remains the same across levels. The player must connect existing nodes with edges, building a network that successfully passes information for the transmitter to the receiver.
At each stage, new ‘technologies’ are introduced in the game. For instance, telephone networks introduce the concept of transceivers, which can relay information forward. Broadcast networks bring to the game broadcast stations, which can simultaneously supply information to multiple receivers. Further, the quantity of information increases every round. As a result, the game quickly progresses from trivial two-node graphs to more involved, multi-loop, multi-node graphs.
Though the game intends to educate about communication technologies, it serves as a better introduction to networks and graph theory than the technologies themselves. Simple ideas such as nodes and edges are inherently built into the game. Paths are also intuitively understood as the player proceeds to connect the nodes into a graph. Further, more complex technologies such as broadcast stations introduce the idea of bridges in a graph. As the player plays the game, he realizes that some nodes are more crucial to the overall flow of information than others. Such nodes form bridges between two connected components of the graph.
This app is available for free download in Google Play and the Apple App Store.
Developer Website:
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/online_science/apps/transmission.aspx
App Store/ Google Play:
https://itunes.apple.com/app/id917778256
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lojugames.games.transmission&hl=en
