🍔 Click here for the Japanese version 🍔
Cooking up the Spice of Data
Cooking in video games can probably be attributed to the introduction of Pac-Man back in the 1980s.
The creator Toru Iwatani often claimed that - the character of Pac-Man was designed after the shape of a pizza with a missing slice while he was at lunch
Ever since that, we have seen an evolution of food representation in video games, from being just a means of restoring your characters' health; to resource management, crafting systems, and engaging mini-games. It has become a way of reflecting and showcasing regional cuisines and traditional dishes from the real world, to enhance storytelling and world-building. Popular examples like "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild," "Stardew Valley," and "Final Fantasy XV" illustrate how cooking systems can encourage exploration, creativity, and player engagement. Here are some more you may recognize:
For this month's challenge, Team #GamesNightViz is very excited to be collaborating with the food-lovers over at Data Noodle World Tour !!!, led by Tacchan and Ganese! This project aims to connect Tableau users worldwide through the common theme of noodles. Last year, they conducted a survey on noodle preferences and recommended ramen restaurants, creating visualizations based on the collected data.
Make a pie chart or a donut chart, we promise we'll love them all the same! Join us as we start a new revolution of "Cooking Data". In hindsight, cooking has many parallels to data visualization as we need to find the data (ingredients), visualize the data (do we boil, steam, fry or bake?) and present our insights (presentation and garnish) so we'd love to see what fantastic ideas everyone comes out with!
The Datasets
We have curated some really cool data to get you started on vizzing. But of course, feel free to viz on ANY video game with food-related data points!
- Dish Recipes from Breath of the Wild (Source: Kaggle)
- Stardew Valley Crops Information (Source: Kaggle)
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons Recipe (Source: Kaggle)
- Cat Food Stats for "Adorable Home" (Source: Kaggle)
- Valheim Food Dataset (Source: Kaggle)
- Dave the Diver Recipes (Source: Fandom)
- Harry Potter Potion Recipes (Source: Kaggle)
- World of Warcraft Cooking Profession (Source: Wowpedia)
Or choose one of the data sets from the #GamesNightViz Data Archive 💾 ... or even leverage on the current Data+Movies IMDB dataset from Tableau too!
Get started here > https://www.tableau.com/community/movies
And of course, feel free to bring your own data! If you find anything interesting, we'll love to know about it too!
Additional Notes:
Please check the copyright and secondary use information by each viz publisher. For example, Nintendo allows some degree of use.
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/networkservice_guideline/ja/index.html
Inspirations from the community
Here are some great vizzes from the Tableau community to give you an idea what can be done.
🏆Bonus 🏆 Free #GamesNightViz T-Shirt for the best work
As a special treat to our participants, we will be selecting three of our favorite vizzes and the authors will be receiving one of our #GamesNightViz T-shirt of their choice. We can't wait to see what everyone comes out with! 😍
How to Submit
- This challenge will run for two months, because telling a great story takes time (we know!). So, we will be extending the deadline to midnight PST 🔔 16th Sept 2024 🔔
- Post your submissions on Twitter with the hashtag #GamesNightViz, #data_noodle,+ #JTUG and tag the team @WJSutton12, @datavizlouis, @consult_ant, @tad_ao, @ganese and @covellicreative so we don't miss your great work!
- Submit your work the project tracker here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScMRc4dJ089gPvHMtFVPZ7DVgcwrqqxkonffLF5apAZOzFX3A/viewform
