Video Games & Social Issues
Nonprofit organizations and issue advocates now view video games as an effective medium for communicating ideas and generating support among young tech savvy consumers. Computer and video games have become successful vehicles to teach important values, engage a new generation of voters and bring the problems facing other countries to the front door of new audiences. Able to unite and inspire, social issue games bring a holistic element to the entertainment software industry and provide public education campaigns with a 21st century way to spread their messages.
Globalization
Traveling to other countries, especially those stricken with poverty and war, can make a powerful impact that affects a person long after they’ve returned home. But many people, especially children and young adults, do not have that opportunity. As a result, organizations have developed video games that provide a window into these worlds with the goal of revealing to new audiences the hardships and perseverance of other cultures.
To reach young Americans and raise awareness of difficult issues such as hunger, disease and war, groups are turning to the popular medium of video games. University of Southern California students created Darfur is Dying to raise awareness about genocide in Sudan. High school students participating in a Global Kids of New York after-school project created Ayiti: The Cost of Life, a video game that focuses on poverty in Haiti.
Food Force, created by the United Nations World Food Programme is another example. Designed by U.N. officials to educate children about world hunger, players become humanitarian workers stationed on a fictional famine-stricken island. One year after its launch, the game had more than four million players worldwide. It was so popular that Suzanne Seggerman, president and co-founder of NGO Games for Change, participated in the Daesung Global Contents Forum to persuade entertainment software firms to make more games like Food Force.
Impact Games’ Peacemaker allows players to act as the Israeli prime minister or Palestinian president in simulated negotiations between the two nations. Inspired by the real events of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the game challenges players to assume leader positions and bring peace to their territories before their term in office ends. Players choose from three difficulty levels: calm, tense or violent, and face the consequences of their actions through opinion polls and indicators that signal progress towards peace.
Issue Advocacy
Video games are being used to educate young people on a variety of issues including Internet safety, bullying, encouraging healthy lifestyles and protecting the environment. For these efforts, the games adopt the “moral of the story” approach that popular television programs have used for decades. By teaching a lesson through an entertaining avenue, these video games help tackle the social issues facing many of today’s adolescents.
Web Wise Kids is a unique organization that teaches kids about essential safety and privacy issues – such as social networking, blogging, online romances, cyber stalking, and identity theft – through video games that are based on actual criminal cases. Web Wise Kids’ game Missing recruits players to rescue a boy who mistakenly agreed to meet a predator after he misrepresented himself in an online chat room. The game has educated millions of children in all 50 states. The organization has also created three other games, Mirror Image, AirDogs, and It’s Your Call. In Mirror Image, players work with a detective to catch a criminal who stalked two girls after promising modeling contracts. AirDogs teaches players the repercussions of illegally downloading software and explains the lifelong legal and social consequences that can result from online crimes. In March 2009, the organization launched its newest online game, It’s Your Call, that is designed to teach school children how to use cell phones and the Internet responsibly.
Other games address issues of school violence and bullying. Cool School: Where Peace Rules is a computer game developed by a team of human development scientists, teachers and government mediators that teaches elementary school students how to resolve conflicts in a peaceful manner. Inanimate objects – such as pencils, schoolbooks and baseballs – come to life in the game, and act out 52 different scenarios depicting common conflicts. Players must decide how to handle each argument, choosing between threatening the peer, telling the teacher, forgetting about it or talking things through. Players are rewarded for choosing positive solutions to resolve conflicts with letters they collect to win.
In March 2010, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) launched its “Apps for Healthy Kids” competition as part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign to end childhood obesity. The competition calls on software developers, game designers and students to create innovative, engaging applications and games based on USDA’s health and wellness data sets that encourage children to eat healthier foods and be more physically active.
Protecting the environment and practicing a “green” lifestyle is a value many of today’s parents are trying to teach their children. Nintendo is now facilitating in that effort through titles such as Super Mario Sunshine and Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol. These games challenge players to improve the environment around them by revamping a rundown park and cleaning up a vandalized island. Academic and science communities are also working to develop conservation-themed games for older audiences. In April 2009, the University of Virginia unveiled its Chesapeake Bay Game, in which players assume the responsibilities of local fishermen, farmers, developers and policymakers. As they make decisions based on these roles, such as how much fertilizer to use on their crops, the game uses scientific data to simulate that action’s impact on the bay.
Politics
Organizations and individuals have begun utilizing entertainment software for political purposes, either by creating games that highlight a divisive political topic or by harnessing a successful game to bring increased attention a political cause.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, video games garnered the most attention ever in a U.S. federal election. Then-Senator Barack Obama became the first candidate to advertise within a video game, purchasing virtual billboards in the games Burnout Paradise and Madden ‘09. Senator John McCain's campaign Web site featured Pork Invaders, an original flash game parodying the classic arcade game Space Invaders.
TheorySpark, a developer specializing in political games, released President Forever 2008 + Primaries which creates field managers out of players who must manage all aspects of their candidates’ campaigns. The company created the game to package the political and cultural process in a way that was creative and stimulating to provide an educational resource for students.
The issue of immigration has been debated by the U.S. Congress, reported on by the media, scrutinized by political pundits and now is the subject of video games. The personal lives of immigrants, along with their reasons for leaving their home countries, are dealt with in several games. For example, Breakthrough, a New York-based human rights organization, developed ICED! to shed light on the challenges that immigrants face. Additionally, a PBS Web site maintains a collection of games dealing with immigration, including The Maria Sisters, a game about conditions faced by immigrants in chip manufacturing plants in Silicon Valley.
In 2008, the 5th annual Games for Change conference hosted at Parsons The New School for Design concluded with a keynote address by the Honorable Sandra Day O’Connor, who discussed her plans for an online, interactive civic education project that uses the educational power of video games to educate 7th through 9th-graders about civics. Developed in collaboration with Georgetown University law school and Arizona State University, Our Courts launched its first online civics games in August 2009. Supreme Decision invites students to act as a law clerk who must watch an oral argument before the Supreme Court, listen in on the justices’ deliberations and identify which side of the issue they agree with. In Do I Have a Right?, students are charged with managing a constitutional law firm, and must decide what clients to take on based on their understanding of the rights contained in the Bill of Rights and other constitutional amendments.
Go Figure
- 20 years - The jail sentence given to an online predator, identified by a 15-year old girl named Katie who realized after playing Missing that a man she met online could be dangerous. Katie is now the Ambassador to Youth for Web Wise Kids and shares her story with parents and teens to educate youth on internet safety.
- 1.5 million - The number of times Ayiti: The Cost of Life,a video game that focuses on poverty in Haiti, was played within the first two years of its release.
- Over 240 - The number of supporters of presidential hopeful Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) that took part in a January 1, 2008, virtually political rally in World of Warcraft a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) published by Vivendi Universal.
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