Games and Advocacy

Games are becoming used to enhance learning experiences. If you watch a show or movie you can feel involved and connected but when you’re playing a game, your actions cause different outcomes. This makes the players really think and put themselves in the game. By putting oneself inside of a game or in someone else’s situation, they will start to have a better understanding of what they are going through and can develop empathy. “It’s difficult to have empathy if you can’t put yourself into somebody else’s perspective. Video games allow you to assume perspectives in an embodied form”(Campbell). Games that can shift emotion can also shift behavior in real life. Some games even donate when players achieve certain levels and others base on time played. These games send a good message while also giving back the more they are played. There are a number of growing games that are both political and activism-focused.

These games do not lecture there players into doing the right thing. It just puts them in a certain situation that could change the way they thing. “Nathan Piperno insists that the key to changing minds is subtle messaging. Unless a developer wants to simply ‘code to the choir,’ messaging should meld seamlessly with the rest of the storyline.”(Brown and Alexander). Nathan is saying that activism-focused games should be subtle and not over pushy. If the game is just a normal fun game with subtle hints at lets say sustainability it will be better received. This could be done buy maybe your player picking up a piece of trash in a game, starting their own home garden, or taking a bike instead of a car. I think that all games should at least have one subtle hint of good will.

Brown and Alexander, Chpt. 14: “Procedural Rhetoric, Proairesis, Game Design, and

the Revaluing of Invention” In Play/Write: Digital Rhetoric, Writing, Games. Anderson, SC: Parlor Press

Campbell, Colin. “Here’s Why the UN Is Getting Interested in Video Games.” Polygon, Polygon, 24 Jan. 2017, www.polygon.com/features/2017/1/24/14364864/unesco-video-games-report.

Ament, Rachel. “Screen Saviors: Can Activism-Focused Games Change Our Behavior?” NPR, NPR, 23 July 2017, www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/07/23/538617205/screen-saviors-can-activism-focused-games-change-our-behavior.