Trend: Serious Gaming

A new generation of video games immerses people in the real world, based on real global issues and political situations.

Trend Description:
A new generation of video games is starting to explore the educational potential of gaming. Advocates, who argue that these so called “serious games” can be more than just fun, and nonprofit groups have teamed up to research new ways to educate young people about today’s political issues (right now mainly the Middle East and the war on terrorists). Starting with Howard Dean in 2003 politicians started to use games to illustrate their ideas, campaigns, the election system. The success of these games is based on two reasons. First of all: Games are good to illustrate complex situations and teach people how complex systems work. And second: The target group of gamers, young people entering the workspace and still idealistic enough to want to change the world, grew up with Super Mario and co. They are familiar with gaming and open to use games as just another good tool to communicate and solve problems. The games have matured with their users.

Case Studies:

Peacemaker
Peacemaker is a game about the crisis situation in the Middle East. It lets the player either act as the Israeli prime minister or the Palestinian president. Based on the decision of the player, the computer generates the results which – just like in real life – either anger the one or the other side. The game is designed to be played over and over again until the situation is solved or the entire region explodes in violence. Asi Burak, the Israeli-born graduate student who developed Peacemaker with a team at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, also showed the game to Israelis and Palestinians. Of course, all of them were at first most interested in playing their own side, but as he pushed them to switch sides, they all developed a deeper sense of understanding for “the other side” and the pressure the politicians have to deal with.

Food Force
Food Force is a game released by the United Nations to help people understand difficulties of bringing aid to war zones. It has been downloaded by four million players, which comes pretty close to gaming block-busters like Halo or Grand Theft Auto.

A Force More Powerful
A Force More Powerful teaches the principles of nonviolent strategy. Ivan Marovic, co-founder of Otpor (Resistance), the Serbian youth movement known for helping to bring down Slobodan Milosevic, helped developing the highly complex game. Players have to instigate democratic uprisings. But of course, each decision, each action brings unexpected consequences. Players learn by trying things out. Of course the disclaimer states, that “not all tactics will work as well in the real world”, but players learn certain principles, like starting with gentler tactics first and just moving on to more aggresive ones if there is enough support.

Darfur is Dying
Released by MTV’S college channel, Darfur is Dying was played by 700.000 people in the first month alone. The goal of the game is to escape the Janjaweed while looking for water supplies to support ones village. Tens of thousands became so engaged that they even entered the “action” area of the game, to send e-mail messages to politicians to demand action on Dafur.

Trend Impact:
So far there are not many studies about the effectiveness or benefits of “serious games”. Most of these games are still on the prototype level. Experts and serious game advocates also fear, that with the rush of nonprofits to publish their own game, there soon will be too many bad or boring games. It is simply hard to mirror complex situations and build them into a “fun” game. And this is the major challenge for game developers and political institutions. Still, even simplified political crisis situations, packed in a game, will stir discussion and involve everyone who gets his hands on it – at least as far as thinking about the subject. Another pro for video games as an educational tool is that they let the player become a different person – at least for the duration of the game – and therefore help him to see the situation from a different perspective. Even established organizations have discovered this: The McArthur Foundation for example started to grant money for persuasive gaming, including a US$1,5 million joint gift to James Paul Gee, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin, and GameLab, a New York based game design firm.

Peacemaker

Darfur is Dying

A Force More Powerful

Food Force

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