Games for social change?

edited in General
I'm keen to start a discussion on is it possible to create/play games that can bring about positive social change? I ask this as today I watched an awesome documentary on Minecraft, in which they briefly discussed an educators efforts to use Minecraft in the classroom, he even sells a custom version online, www.minecraftedu.com The Minecraft bug never really hit me so I'm curious to ask others. Have any games had any social change on you? I did a search on social gaming and I don't want people to get confused by the term, I'm not asking about FarmVille or similar games.

Comments

  • Hey I am really interested in this topic and I think a lot of social changing games are popular within communities, sometime small ones. The truth is when we start playing games we are introduced into a new environment, where it is safe to discuss the game events as a sort of sub-culture. The change in the game directly affects all who are linked through it and it is the most popular change that would be significant. :)
    Thanked by 1hanli
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    Anyone interested in this topic (and havnt read it yet) I highly recommend Jane McGonigal's book "Reality is Broken" which is exactly on the subject of how games can be used for social change. May also be worth having a look at the type of games she has made/helped make.

    I am currently working on an app for a university project based on the idea of Ingress to help with awareness of community projects and artworks in and around Pretoria (#shamelessplugforsomethingthatwillprobablyneverseethelightofday).
    Thanked by 1hanli
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    Short answer: Yes, games can bring about social change.

    Long answer: Yes, games can bring about social change, I used to get paid to do exactly that. From building games to teach math skills to girls in rural Mpumalanga, to designing puzzles to go onto air-dropped aid packages that would also get kids to their nearest clinic, to working alongside Jane McGonigal on EVOKE for the World Bank, there's been a lot of this sort of stuff out there.

    The trick is finding ways to make your gameplay part of the message instead of undermining both what you're trying to say and the way you say it with poorly-matched gameplay to content. Often games for social change have educators behind them and that tends to break pretty much any and all worthwhile fun that could have carried meaning. Think about the way that playing Fifa isn't going to make you as a player able to tackle someone like Otzil, but playing Championship Manager is going to help you have a conversation with Sir Alex Ferguson. That's the key difference.

    Also, finding easy points of entry into social change topics is difficult. You need a place to start that makes sense to people who haven't spent years working in and around this sort of thinking, the game has to offer a relatable path to making a difference, or at least give people a structure they can work in on their own time. I think that's why systemic games seem to work better than interventionist games, but that might just be an artefact of how intervention requires activity outside the game world to succeed. But yeah, games for social change = totally possible. Step 1: Define your problem really well, the rest flows from that.

    -edit-

    Forgot to add that there are projects where simply getting people to play games (any games) with each other in a communal setting is a good thing. City of Cape Town is working on projects to get games playable at some of their community centers in previously disadvantaged areas and other areas with gang-related problems. The same project had us teaching groups of underprivileged kids how to play "non traditional" european-style boardgames because those are much better at fostering positive interactions than say, Monopoly.
  • http://www.gamesforchange.org/
    A good resource for these types of games.
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    I thought this game funded by Channel 4 in the UK was really great:
    http://www.gamesforchange.org/game/sweatshop/
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