HOW WE CAN USE GAMES TO SAVE ACCRA

Driving in Accra can more often than not be an arduous task, while you are stuck in a sea of unmoving taillights and the symphony of honks, even a 15 minute drive to the supermarket becomes dreadful, tiring and boring. I remember vividly how as a child returning home from primary school in the school bus, the children in the bus, myself included used to play a game. Locally, we call it "six six kaloo". Playing this game, one had to be vigilant and alert because you had to identify double numbers on the number plates of passing cars. We would spend the whole bus ride looking out the window for cars with the number plates that had recurring numbers such as 1 1, 2 2, 3 3 3, 9 9. One would then shout the number and add "kaloo". This would be recorded as one point. This would be done the entire journey of the bus ride with the person having the highest point being the winner! Amusing right! This game managed to make a 2 hour bus ride feel like an adventure to look forward to. The bus ride which under normal circumstances would have been boring became an engaging contest heavily punctuated with shouts, shrieks, jubilation and sheer exhilaration.
Those were the games we played as children amongst numerous traditional games inspired by culture. Obviously things were different back then, but the point is games had and still have the power to make everyday boring tasks fun and something to look forward and to an extreme, losing track of time.
Away from the nostalgic throwback, the question is how can we harness the power of games to solve real life shared problems and drive social change more. There lies the perceived notion in Africa that games are played for leisure and some kind of passive retreat from reality and "escapist" but in a time where globally, we now play over 30 hours of video games a week and 97% of youth play computer and video games, It's high time we look at the underlying elements in game deisgn and game thinking and how we can channel this engagement and use games as a purposeful escape, that is thoughtful and most importantly helpful to society. We can use the lessons in game design to socially positive ends be it in our own lives, our community and business.
Bernard Suits clearly highlights the importance of games in this excerpt "It is games that give us something to do when there is nothing to do. We thus call games “pastimes” and regard them as trifling fillers of the interstices of our lives. But they are much more important than that. They are clues to the future. And their serious cultivation now is perhaps our only salvation."
Ladies and gentlemen, the messiah is here and it is time for salvation. That concept is one called Gamification which in essence is the application of basic elements that make games exciting and fun to things that aren’t really considered a game. The mechanics involve capturing the user and making whatever they are doing interesting by giving them reason
How is Accra doing this?

Photo by William Martin
A group of multidisciplinary and talented individuals known as Enter Africa- Accra trained in the elements of game design, gamification, game development and interactive storytelling is, through gamification tackling the problem of sanitation in Accra. They are creating a location based game, first of its kind in Africa which would involve users playing the game in real time and real locations while interacting with the environment dubbed GAMIFY YOUR CITY FUTURE in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut.

It is stunning to know that Accra was ranked as the most polluted city on earth, according to numbeo.com, a website that tracks several countries with respect to developmental challenges such as pollution, health, and crime.According to the pollution survey report released in 2016, Accra led with a pollution index of 102.13 as reported by graphic.com
As a people, our concepts of problem solving are somewhat constrained by having observed only a single instance of the possible solutions. Sometimes even highly technical problems require a little bit of play to solve. A remarkable project by all standards is a game called Foldit developed by a team of medical scientists, computer scientists, engineers, and professional game developers. In the game, players with the use of spatial reasoning remodel and manipulate protein structures in a 3D virtual environment. Once they’ve got the hang of it, they’re encouraged to try to predict the shape of a protein that scientists haven’t successfully folded yet, or to design a new protein shape from scratch, which researchers could then manufacture in a lab. Amazing right!
Games are inventive and effective ways to intervene in social crisis. Over the years games have managed to change the way we think and act in everyday life.
Jane Mcgonigal posits in her book Reality is Broken that "The great challenge for us today, and for the remainder of the century, is to integrate games more closely into our everyday lives, and to embrace them as a platform for collaborating on our most important planetary efforts. If we commit to harnessing the power of games for real happiness and real change, then a better reality is more than possible—it is likely. And in that case, our future together will be quite extraordinary."
Let’s harness the power of play through gamification to solve problems and drive social change. For Enter Africa-Accra, I volunteer, let the games begin.