The Drum Beat 405 - Games for Change

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Games of various types - ranging from board/card games and those used to "break the ice" in interpersonal settings, to computer-based games - have been drawn on as an entertaining yet educational strategy to address a variety of development issues. This issue of the Drum Beat opens by providing a bit of context for this communication approach, and then highlights a few of the myriad ways in which it has been used, around the world.

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CONTEXT: GAMES AS UNITERS, OR DIVIDERS?

1.Playing with Fire: How do Computer Games Influence the Player?

by Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen and Jonas Heide Smith

"In the debate on children, youth and computer games, the question of whether computer games are harmful is often posed....Questions concerning the harmfulness of computer games often seek simple "yes" or "no" answers, while the research reveals a more complicated picture....With an aim to clarify and bring some order to the area, the Danish Media Council for Children and Young People has conducted an investigation that provides some insight into children's and young people's use of computer games..."

2.A Force More Powerful - The Game of Nonviolent Strategy - Global

Featuring 10 scenarios inspired by history, this interactive teaching tool is designed to allow players to independently learn nonviolent tactics to overcome oppression, hopefully practicing methods for influencing or changing their political environment. Designed for use by activists and leaders of nonviolent resistance and opposition movements, the simulation computer game is also intended to educate the media and the general public on the potential of nonviolent action, as well as to serve as a tool for academic studies of nonviolent resistance.

Contact Miriam Zimmerman mzimmerman@yorkzim.com OR afmp@yorkzim.com OR game@nonviolent-conflict.org

3.Video and Computer Game Report Card

by David Walsh, Douglas Gentile, Erin Walsh, Nat Bennett, Brad Robideau, Monica Walsh, Sarah Strickland, and David McFadden

This MediaWise Video and Computer Game Report Card is the tenth issued by the United-States-based National Institute on Media and the Family. One finding of the research reported here is that in 2005, "every new study and all the latest research pointed to the same fact: video games are excellent teachers. Just as activity simulators can help train players for real-world tasks, violent video games coax players into actual aggression and antagonistic attitudes. If there was ever any doubt about the impact of video games on children it has finally been laid to rest. Everyone in the scientific community agrees, whether an ally of the industry or a critic of its practices...that video games are powerful in potential and effect, for good and for ill. It is this fact that should compel parents, educators, and policy-makers to pay attention to video games."

4.Promote or Protect? Perspectives on Media Literacy and Media Regulations

Contributors to this sixth Yearbook from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)'s International Clearinghouse on Children, Youth and Media explore the issue of whether a single measure - such as promote or protect - is sufficient to support children and young people in their interactions with the media. One of the chapters is titled "A Practical Response to Classification of Convergent Media in the Australian Context: The Combined Guidelines for Films and Computer Games".

GAMES IN THE CLASSROOM

5.Talking Tactile Tablet (TTT) Project - Global

The Baruch College Computer Center for Visually Impaired People (CCVIP) and Touch Graphics, Inc. have developed an inexpensive computer peripheral device that runs interactive audio-tactile applications used by visually impaired individuals. Among the software items available for purchase are a crossword puzzle game and a match game. The latter, which is designed to appeal to children from age of 7 and up, is a tactile 8 by 8 grid; players take turns pressing on squares to hear their alphanumeric addresses, and then hold their fingers down longer to "uncover" hidden sounds. Players earn a point each time they discover a matching pair of sounds. This game "permits children who are blind to compete on an equal footing with their sighted contemporaries, thereby working to neutralize feelings of 'otherness'; it also helps to foster good spatial imaging and memory skills and is really fun." TTT is now used as a platform for the speech-assisted learning (SAL) Braille Literacy Courseware.

Contact Steven Landau sl@touchgraphics.com OR Dr. Karen Luxton-Gourgey Karen_Luxton-Gourgey@baruch.cuny.edu

6.Neverwinter Nights in the Classroom

by Ami Berger

This article explores the potential role of educational games in the classroom. Manufactured by Canadian gaming company BioWare, Neverwinter Nights (NWN) is a "Dungeons and Dragons"-type computer game set in a medieval fantasy world. As part of a media course at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication (SJMC) at the University of Minnesota in the United States, the game was adapted to feature a modern world of a small American city called Harperville. The student plays the role of a rookie reporter covering a train accident - taking notes in a reporter's notebook, "filing" a story, getting a printout of the notebook, and writing a 1,000-word news story with the information gathered. The instructor has access to the log of each student's movements through the game; students must also turn in their reporter's notebook and their stories. "[T]his project is showing us that games can be much more a way for students to pass the time...they can be an engaging and effective way to teach and learn."

7.Game-Based Learning

by Rebecca Teed

This website discusses the paedagogy of teaching with games and offers a series of examples for using games with entry-level geoscience students. Game-based learning (GBL) is described as using competitive exercises to challenge students in a way that motivates them to learn better. Games are characterised as competitive, engaging, and offering immediate rewards. The games come in a number of different formats, including: video games (digital GBL), board and card games, scavenger hunts, and role-playing games.

8.Education Arcade

This consortium of international game designers, publishers, scholars, educators, and policymakers explores and supports the use of computer and video games as educational media. This interactive website supports the group's mission, which is to demonstrate the social, cultural, and educational potential of games.

9. Technologies of Play: Video Games & Gender

Launched by 2 graduate students, this interactive paedagogical tool attempts to demonstrate the significance of gender in the realm of video games and to explain why the relationship is important. In addition, the creators seek to understand the factors that contribute to the acceptance or rejection of such a gendered critique.

10.Build a Village - United States

Launched by the Church World Service (CWS), this interactive website uses simple colour illustrations and narration to educate children and families about the difficulties facing people in the developing world. "Build a Village" features several stories for different age groups, quizzes, colouring pages, and educational games. The website also enables visitors to send e-cards and make donations to CWS initiatives. The focus is on issues such as health, refugees, access to clean water, basic education, and agricultural food production.

Contact info@churchworldservice.org

11.Computer-Assisted Learning: Evidence from A Randomized Experiment

by Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Leigh Linden

This report presents preliminary results obtained after the first year of a 2-year randomised evaluation of a computer assisted learning (CAL) programme implemented by the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Pratham in Vadodara, India. As background, the authors note that, when used as a supplement to regular instruction, CAL can be a promising strategy for improving the quality of education in developing countries: "Good educational software can be reproduced at nominal cost, and well-designed educational games can sustain interest and curiosity even in an otherwise dull school environment." This approach could be especially fruitful in India, where the high-tech sector is both successful and visible. "Unfortunately, despite the general excitement, there exists very little rigorous evidence of the impact of computers on educational outcomes and no reliable evidence for India or other developing countries. Furthermore, what evidence that exists is not particularly encouraging..."

12.Ayiti: The Cost of Life - Global

This online game exposes players to impoverished conditions in Haiti as part of an effort to educate them about the obstacles to education and economic stability faced by children in developing countries. The role-playing video game, which is meant to be both entertaining and educational, was designed by a team of Global Kids youth leaders from a high school in Brooklyn, New York, USA who are part of the Playing 4 Keeps (P4K) programme. One young player has written that the game made her "think about consequences that a real family in Haiti would face without being preachy. There isn't a clear strategy to win this game, either. At the beginning, it gives you a choice of four strategies you can follow. However, if you play this game more than once you will see that it doesn't matter which strategy you pick - getting ahead is difficult...[j]ust like real life."

Contact info@globalkids.org

13.Bring on the World - Global

Launched by Oxfam just prior to the June 2006 World Cup (a global football (soccer) tournament), Bring on the World drew on the popular sport of football as a springboard to spur young people worldwide to explore the themes of competition, teamwork, and thinking skills in a fun and interactive way. It primarily used information and communication technologies (ICTs) - in concert with in-person classroom curriculum activities - to introduce students to global issues including the sportswear industry, whether competition is 'a good thing', and the inequalities between participating countries. Activities designed to engage and stimulate students included a 'country trumps' card game, mapwork, debate, and photo activities. (For teachers wishing to explore the global sportswear trade in more detail, a simulation game called "Looking Behind the Logo" (ages 13+) is also available.)

Contact Anna Luise Laycock alaycock@oxfam.org.uk

14.World Starts With Me (WSWM) - Uganda, Kenya, and Asia

WSWM is a web-based sexual health and HIV/AIDS prevention curriculum that combines building information technology (IT) skills and stimulating creative expression. It includes 14 lessons which usually start with a theme-based warming up period, followed by a presentation by virtual peer educators. The next step is often a game (such as the body change game, the personality game, the who's responsible game or the safe sex quiz) which serves to help students internalise information and explore opinions. An assignment follows; this is a creative activity through which students learn computer skills, creative skills, and life skills. Organisers state that the website features an attractive design and takes a playful approach to mediating complicated content, which is presented in a way that enables young people to recognise situations confronting them in their everyday lives. They have designed the programme to be easy to use and to enable quick adaptation.

Contact Jo Reinders wswm@wpf.org

15.Uzbek Gamers Pick up Computer Skills

by Jo Twist

University of Washington (USA) researchers are testing the idea that computer games can be a way to get Uzbekistanians - especially youth - interested in exploring computers. "If games get people interested in using technology, they may also motivate them to eventually become involved in other ways", according to the research team leader. "Suddenly, they go from being consumers of information to producers of information. They become programmers, developers, designers, not just passive players." The idea here is that games are not just entertaining - they serve an educational function by motivating young people to build skills through engaging more innovatively with technology.

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PULSE POLL

It's time we stopped dividing the world into North and South.

Do you agree or disagree?

[For context, see The Drum Beat #401.]

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GAMES FOR HEALTH

16.What Would You Do? Computer Game - Global

Launched by the United Nations Children's Agency (UNICEF) in an effort to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS by empowering young people around the world, "What Would You Do?" (Ungefanyaje?) is a computer game about the lives and relationships of 4 teenagers. Offered in both English and Kiswahili, the game takes players through a series of interactive, relationship-based scenarios to highlight the importance of HIV prevention and testing. Players choose from different options as 2 male and 2 female characters embark on relationships; the idea is that - whereas it may not be possible to go back and change the course of events in "real life" - such freedom of choice is possible in the context of a computer game.

Contact voy@unicef.org

17.Freedom HIV/AIDS Game - India and Africa

This initiative draws on the intense and increasing popularity of mobile phones in India to create and deliver interactive learning solutions to teach people about HIV/AIDS. A key strategy for this role-play-based game involves capitalising on the popularity of the sport of cricket in India. On World AIDS Day 2006, as part of a partnership between ZMQ Software Systems and the Dutch development organisation Hivos, 2 mobile games were then launched in Kenya - in both English and the local language (Kiswahili), using local characters, familiar heroes, and colloquial phrases. Again, here, the theme of sports is a central strategy: "AIDS Penalty Shoot-out", is based on soccer, which organisers describe as a popular sport in Africa. Other games appeal to different skills and personalities, such as "Ribbon Chase" (an arcade-based game in which the player is the red ribbon and he or she has to deliver messages to different cities in the world with the HIV virus in pursuit), "Mission Messenger" (an adventure game for casual users), and "Quiz with Babu" (a live game-show-based quiz geared toward users who enjoy questions and reasoning).

Contact Natasha Singh zmq@vsnl.com

18.No Rubba No Hubba Hubba - New Zealand

This campaign by the Ministry of Health aimed to reduce high rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in teenagers in New Zealand. Among the media used was a website featuring a Flash animated game - "the Hubba Challenge".

Contact emailmoh@moh.govt.nz

19.Combining Community Approaches and Government Policy to Prevent HIV Infection in the Dominican Republic

by Deanna Kerrigan, Luis Moreno, Santo Rosario, Bayardo Gomez, Hector Jerez, Ellen Weiss, Johannes van Dam, Eva Roca, Clare Barrington, and Michael Sweat

This report shares findings from a study that assessed the impact and cost-effectiveness of 2 "environmental-structural" interventions in reducing HIV-related risk among female sex workers in the Dominican Republic. The communication strategy being tested in this research involves an environmental-structural approach that focuses on solidarity-building among female sex workers and those with whom they are in communication. "During the workshops, interactive games helped the women describe and define the different types of relationships they had with their sexual partners and together identify the HIV/STI risks for each kind of relationship. As a group, the women brainstormed how they could be more critical and objective in establishing relationships of trust and participated in role plays to develop communication and negotiation techniques they could use to ensure safer sex with different partner types..."

20.Games for Health - United States

This is a project produced by the Serious Games Initiative, a Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars effort that applies game technologies to a range of public and private policy, leadership, and management issues. Largely focused in the United States but also integrating voices and strategies from around the world, Games for Health is an online community and best practices platform for the numerous games being built for health care applications. One core goal is to bring together researchers, medical professionals, and game developers - in virtual as well as face-to-face encounters - to share information about the impact games and game technologies can have on health care and policy.

Contact Ben Sawyer bsawyer@dmill.com

21.Wola Nani - South Africa

Wola Nani is a non-profit organisation established in 1994 in South Africa to help bring relief to the communities hardest hit by the HIV crisis; one major strategy is the initiation of the Condom Bashes programme. Wola Nani staff from the Family and Community Support Centre set up a "road show style site" at a high-traffic, open-air location within the townships in busy areas such as bars, taxi ranks, and bus and train terminals. At this heavy human traffic location, HIV/AIDS information leaflets are distributed while staff coordinate question/answer games, songs and role playing sessions, and discuss issues related to the prevention of HIV/AIDS, care for those who suffer with it, and issues relevant within the lives of those affected by it. A public address (PA) system aids this communication. Organisers believe that this combination of prevention information and song and game will stir interest amongst community members, and that they can absorb vital lessons about HIV/AIDS from such impromptu and informal moments. In addition, since the education is relayed through the preferred means of oral tradition, information is accessible and able to be clarified or detailed as needed.

Contact director@wolanani.co.za

22.Urban Lottery - Guadalajara, Mexico

This game was organised by the School of Communication, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO), Jalisco, Mexico. Based on the traditional Mexican lottery, this game represents the city in all its colours: its problems and pains, joys and traditions, institutions and activities, and memories and places. It consists of 45 cards with photographs, 10 sheets with 9 photographs each, one blank sheet with 9 squares, a guide, a book with texts about the city, and a bag with numbers. Photographs, which represent different aspects of the city, emphasise health issues like nutrition, HIV/AIDS, smoking, alcohol use, drug use, young mothers, violence, pornography, death, and poverty.

Contact Rossana Reguillo rossana@iteso.mx OR Margarita Hernández maga@iteso.mx

23.Camp Sizanani - South Africa

This development camp for Africans aged 10-16 years offers HIV/AIDS education through what are meant to be enjoyable, relationship-building interpersonal activities. The camp, which is located in the Magaliesberg mountains outside Johannesburg, South Africa, is designed to provide underprivileged children affected by HIV/AIDS with an opportunity to experience fun and games within an educational and life-skill development environment. According to the organisers, in many AIDS programmes, "too often the messages are thrown at young people by people they have no reason to trust. But after just over a week of eating, living, and playing together, the counsellors say they've built strong bonds with the boys and were able to discuss issues about HIV/AIDS with them that may not arise in a school or family setting....The idea is to mix fun and games with AIDS awareness, cooperation, and a lot of love - something that has been absent from many of these children's lives."

Contact Philip Lilienthal WorldCamps2003@aol.com

GAMES FOR THE EARTH

24.Xeko - United States

Launched on Earth Day (April 22) 2006, Xeko is a trading card game designed to teach children and adults about ecology and endangered species. Set on the African island of Madagascar, Xeko involves collecting paper trading cards to create a custom library and using the cards in a process designed to foster competition and cooperation while calling upon creative thinking and math/science skills. Xeko takes its cues from nature and science, casting actual animal species as the heroes and basing game play on ecosystem relationships. (Xeko cards are printed on recycled stock, with soy based inks. Players that send their card wrappers in to the game's makers are awarded Green Stars to encourage recycling. Four percent of net game sales are donated to Conservation International.) The Xeko website provides players with news on the game, as well as a portal to more information about the animals, biodiversity, hotspots, and conservation efforts that developers hope will lead kids, in particular, to take local action to save their environment. Various in-person events have been planned to draw on what organisers describe as the popularity, within the United States, of this game.

Contact info@xeko.com

25.HRIDAY-SHAN - India

This organisation has developed board games in English and Hindi (Enviro-I, Enviro-II, and Enviro-III) and an interactive CD game on environment and health. The games are designed to sensitise children of various ages about environmental issues (and possible solutions) by presenting topics in an enjoyable and challenging way.

Contact info@hriday-shan.org

26. Playing with the Earth (Hra o Zemi)

This environmental clean-up portal supports a campaign organised by Czech NGOs in association with the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development. Designed as a game involving controversial questions, it provides a glossary, a calendar of NGO actions related to the campaign, and an interactive section.

27.Spare the Air - San Francisco, CA, USA

In 1991, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) created a communication-based approach to curtail motor vehicle emissions. Conducted during summer months each year (June 1 through October 14), the Spare the Air campaign addresses ground-level ozone, a persistent pollution problem in the Bay Area, by fostering public education on health issues related to this type of pollution and the everyday actions individuals can take to avoid making the pollution worse. For instance, one section on the Spare the Air website features links to interactive resources for teachers and students, including the Smog City pollution simulation game.

Contact sparetheair@baaqmd.gov

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This issue was written by Kier Olsen DeVries.

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The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.


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