Designing Games to Effect Social Change
Journal article
Abstract:
Serious games, persuasive games, news games – these are
all terms used for games which let players gain an
experiential understanding of real world issues through play.
Many in this growing class of games deal with social
causes; recent examples include Peacemaker, about solving
Middle East peace, The Redistricting Game, about
congressional redistricting and redistricting reform, and the
online game series published by the New York Times that
includes Food Import Folly (which is about the FDA
limited inspection policy on U.S. food imports). The field
has a number of good examples that let users learn about
social issues, however, to date, the field is short on
examples of games that achieve measurable results in the
real world.
This paper addresses issues of design, theory, and activism
pertaining to games about social causes. The author is an
experienced designer and scholar who deals with all three
of these issues in his work.