Serious Games
Learning with Serious Games
Play the game, make a difference
What are serious games? How might desktop and mobile-based games provide learning experiences that are engaging and immersive? Serious games situate students in authentic learning contexts through role-play and real-play around critical social issues. Four broad categories of games are presented: simulations, exploratory games, casual games, and games that promote real play.
Simulations
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Real Lives |
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What is it?
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“Real Lives is a unique, interactive life simulation game that enables you to live one of billions of lives in any country in the world. Through statistically accurate events, Real Lives brings to life different cultures, human geography, political systems, economic opportunities, personal decisions, health issues, family issues, schooling, jobs, religions, geography, war, peace, and more!” (source: http://www.educationalsimulations.com/)
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Why is it relevant?
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Real Lives enables students to role play as characters with a wealth of different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. By “playing through” their life from birth to death, students are presented with a series of choices that determine significant outcomes of their “life”. As the simulation is based on real-life data, students are able to learn about life choices in modern times.
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Peacemaker—Play the News, Solve the Puzzle
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What is it?
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“PeaceMaker challenges you to succeed as a leader where others have failed. Experience the joy of bringing peace to the Middle East or the agony of plunging the region into disaster. PeaceMaker will test your skills, assumptions and prior knowledge. Play it and you will never read the news the same way again.” (source: http://www.peacemakergame.com/)
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Why is it relevant?
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Peacemaker enables students to role play as either president of Palestine or the president of Israel. Peacemaker challenges students to make decisions that affect the outcome of peace in the Middle East. Students must take diplomatic, military, and reconstructive actions, while balancing public opinions in the Middle East, the United States and the United Nations.
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Exploratory Games
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Global Conflicts, Latin America
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What is it?
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““Global Conflicts” is an award-winning educational game series used for teaching citizenship, geography, and media courses.The series allows students to explore and learn about different conflicts throughout the world and the underlying themes of democracy, human rights, globalization, terrorism, climate and poverty. The game series is easy to use for teachers and is developed with close attention to curriculum requirements and ease of use in classroom teaching.” (source: http://www.globalconflicts.eu/)
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Why is it relevant?
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The Global Conflicts series immerses students in playing the role of an investigative journalist in Latin America. Students must investigate topics ranging from genocide, human trafficking, pollution, and border conflicts. Throughout the process, students must collect different perspectives on the issues from in-game characters, and prepare a convincing argument that they use to confront the people in power.
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Build-it Yourself Exploratory Games
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Thinking Worlds
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What is it?
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“Thinking Worlds is a globally unique 3D engine and authoring environment. Thinking Worlds enables designers to create and publish highly immersive simulations - fast. It has been designed from the start around the needs of designers and enables them to carry their designs forward and quickly develop 3D simulations themselves.” (source: http://www.thinkingworlds.com/)
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Why is it relevant?
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Thinking Worlds provides a straightforward approach to designing simulations. Thinking Worlds “Learning Journeys” are well suited towards discovery-based learning applications that require the use of rich narrative, while supporting a highly interactive student experience that is capable of branching based on choices made as the learner plays the simulation. As of the next release of Thinking Worlds, students will be able to keep an in-game journal.
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Casual Games
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Games for Change
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What are they?
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‘Casual games’ is a term that commonly refers to games that are web-based and delivered using Flash player (installed automatically on most browsers). Most casual games can be played in less than 30 minutes (and in many cases in less than 15)—in contrast to longer game play times for their more “immersive” counterparts. Many excellent casual educational games can be found at “Games for Change”.
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About G4C:
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“Founded in 2004, Games for Change is a non-profit which seeks to harness the extraordinary power of digital games to address the most pressing issues of our day, including poverty, education, human rights, global conflict and climate change. Games for Change serves as a platform for organizations, individuals, government agencies, academics, journalists and the game industry to share best practices, exchange knowledge, incubate new projects and provide access to those seeking to use digital games to positively impact society.” (source:
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Why are they relevant?
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Games for Change provides links to serious games (casual and immersive) that immerse students in role-play in meaningful and in sometimes controversial topics like immigration detention. There are numerous serious, casual games.
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Highlighted Examples:
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Oiligarchy
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Purpose:
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“Now you can be the protagonist of the petroleum era: explore and drill around the world, corrupt politicians, stop alternative energies and increase the oil addiction. Be sure to have fun before the resources begin to deplete.” (source: http://www.molleindustria.org/en/oiligarchy)
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At Risk
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Purpose:
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“At-Risk is an interactive, game-based simulation that aims to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness in order to reduce the number of students with undetected or untreated conditions. Addressing the fear and stigma of mental illness is one key to preparing university faculty and staff to assist students exhibiting symptoms of mental illness, such as depression, anxiety, and thoughts of suicide.” (source: http://demos.kognito.com/atrisk/launch.html)
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Climate Challenge
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Purpose:
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“Climate Challenge is a single-player game about climate change, playable for free on the BBC website. It is a sandbox-style strategy game based on real climate change data, where the player can try out different approaches, learn about the issues and have fun at the same time.” (source:
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Fate of the World, by Red Redemption, coming Q3, 2010
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““Fate of the World” is a nail biting set of global warming scenarios covering 200 years of Earth’s existence. At the heart of the game are 10 'Masterplans' where the player calls the shots for all mankind including 'Apocalypse' where the gut wrenching goal is to raise the planet’s temperature a lethal degree; 'Lifeboat' where the goal is to save only the player while abandoning everyone else to whatever catastrophes await them; and 'Utopia' where a player can try to build a perfect society while battling population growth.
'Fate of the World' lets players explore the next two centuries, trying out geoengineering, fusion power, wildlife adaption, and many other brain teasing and sometimes alarming, options. The balancing act of protecting the Earth's resources and climate versus the needs of an ever-growing world population, who are demanding ever more food, power, and living space, creates a challenging videogame containing many surprises. “ (source: http://red-redemption.com/fate-world/)
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Other Casual Game Examples:
Ayiti (Flash): http://www.unicef.org/voy/explore/rights/explore_3142.html
Purpose: To immerse students through role-play as a family in Haiti. Ayiti helps players learn about factors and circumstances that contribute to impoverishment.
Darfur is Dying (Flash): http://www.darfurisdying.com/
Purpose: To immerse students through role-play as a resident of Darfur. Darfur helps to highlight the crisis of genocide in Darfur.
Homeland Guantanamos (Flash): http://www.homelandgitmo.com/
Purpose: To immerse students as investigative journalists to research the treatment of immigrant detainees in the US.
Climate Change: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/climate_challenge/
Purpose: To immerse students in the policies, politics, and science of climate change
Oiligarchy: http://www.molleindustria.org/en/oiligarchy
Purpose: To immerse players through role-play as an oil-baron. Oiligarchy provides a satirical look at the politics of oil.
Freerice.com: http://www.freerice.com/index.php
Purpose: To provide a progressively difficult word game that enables players to support world hunger awareness with every correct response.
Games Promoting ‘Real Play’
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Alternate Reality Games
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What are they & why are they relevant?
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Alternate reality games let people engage in “real play” in “real life”. Game scenarios are acted out on a day to day basis. ARG’s are usually “mission-oriented”, with players adopting a role and living that role in their real life. Player actions in this way can have tangible, real-world results.
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Examples:
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World Without Oil
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What is it?
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“WORLD WITHOUT OIL is a serious game for the public good. WWO invited people from all walks of life to contribute “collective imagination” to confront a real-world issue: the risk our unbridled thirst for oil poses to our economy, climate and quality of life. It’s a milestone in the quest to use games as democratic, collaborative platforms for exploring possible futures and sparking future-changing action. WWO set the model for using a hot net-native storytelling method (‘alternate reality’) to meet civic and educational goals. Best of all, it was compellingly fun.” (source: http://worldwithoutoil.org/)
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Evoke! A crash course in changing the world
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What is it?
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“ EVOKE was developed by the World Bank Institute, the learning and knowledge arm of the World Bank Group, and directed by alternate reality game master Jane McGonigal. “ “EVOKE is a ten-week crash course in changing the world. It is free to play and open toanyone, anywhere. The goal of the social network game is to help empower young people all over the world, and especially young people in Africa, to come up with creative solutions to our most urgent social problems. “ The first season of the game ended on May 12, 2010, representing the first “graduating class” of the Evoke network. (source: http://www.urgentevoke.com/)
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