Games & Social Impact review

Heidi Boisvert is artist in residence at Creative Learning Lab. Read her review about the event she organised last week: Games & Social Impact

Despite the ominous and raging storm outside, a diverse group of individuals converged on the Waag, Nieuwmarkt, Tuesday night (June 28th) to participate in an experimental, hands-on masterclass I conducted on Games and Social Impact. Participants were engaged and energized. And many stayed until the wee hours to share their final game concepts with the group. Issues explored ranged from climate change, community engagement, social entrepreneurship, sustainable tourism, and elderly care.

The evening was broken into two parts: 1) a theoretical presentation, and 2) a four-part modular open design process. I began the evening with a 30 minute presentation intended to demystify common assumptions about video games, discussed the critical aspects of game mechanics that could be appropriated from commercial games to engage new audiences in understanding often complex, contemporary social issues, and why games are a potent force today to reach large, diverse and younger audiences with our social messages.

I shared some examples of games emerging out of the rapidly growing games for change movement, Darfur is Dying, Peacemaker, World Without Oil, and September 12th to highlight the breath of issues and game genres designers are exploring. Then concluded this section by looking more granularly at case studies of my own work at Breakthrough, a global human rights organization, on ICED: I Can End Deportation, Homeland Guantanamos, and most recently our award nominated America 2049, and the type of impact they can have in terms of awareness raising and potentially changing the frame on specific issues in the media or policies as a governmental level.

The remainder of the evening was devoted to exploring a new methodology I have been cultivating over the past year for working with non-profits as co-creators of serious games. The process involves four critical stages that build upon each other, moving participants from the rational to the emotional then onward to the visual, spatial and temporal through unpacking system's thinking. In the final stage, participants will combine all of the accrued knowledge and documentation from the first three stages into a paper prototype of a game concept based on mods (modifications) of familiar commercial games.

During the process, participants identify their target audience, and uncover what the core values, problems, solutions and actions are of their issue, and translate it into a simple narrative with characters and a clear message frame. Then, through a four discrete "imprinting sessions" drawn from French psychologist Clotaire Rapaille, they deconstruct the "culture code" of their issue, which allows them to see the inherent resistance and challenges to communicating their issue. Next up, they explore mapping, diagramming and cataloguing their issue to begin visualizing the organizational and causal systems at play in their issues. With these three prismatic ways of looking at their issue, they now possess all the ingredients for building a game. Before diving into this, though, I provide each team with both a set of key questions they must address within their game concept (goal of game, core game mechanic, rules and constraints, setting and backstory, scale and duration, competitive or cooperative dynamics et al) as well as a description of popular games they can mod or use as a starting point for their brainstorm, inspired by Mary Flanagan's Values at Play cards.

At the close of the workshop, each group pitched their design concept. Some very ambitious ideas emerged. Suffice it to say that I, too, learned a lot from the experience. Thanks to the Waag Society for hosting this fun and rewarding event!

Pictures

Photographer: Karien Vermeulen