Offline Games for Online Safety

Inventing childhood games, playground games, & board games for privacy & security

A #teachtheweb offline game prototype

During this year’s Global Sprint, we’ll be leading an Offline Games Challenge as part of the Mozilla Privacy Arcade project. The big idea is to invent childhood games, playground games, and board games that teach online safety in communities with limited access to the web. That access might be limited economically, geographically, or even politically.

We want to invent games people feel safe playing and sharing offline and in the open that teach strong, transferable online privacy and security habits to their players.

We might create games that:

• Model how the Internet works.
• Explain encryption.
• Show people how to communicate securely online.
• Show people how to make secure passwords.
• Show people how to avoid surveillance by connected devices and tracking by websites.

Imagine a game of tag where the objective is to escape players representing cookies. Imagine a game of keep away or capture the flag where the objective is to split up a message and get all of it across a field or empty lot without being tagged by players representing data collectors. Imagine a board game about moving pieces across the board as quickly along multiple pathways while passing through the fewest hubs of corporate or government activity (but more fun than that). Imagine a treasure hunt that shows what it’s like for information to travel across a Virtual Proxy network (VPN). Part of this challenge is combining games we know and love in local communities with privacy and security concepts we can teach through them.

You might love contributing to this project if you:

• Love storytelling.
• Love designing playful learning experiences.
• Love designing or sketching assets for games, prototypes, and storyboards.
• Love playing outside.
• Love playing board games.
• Love teaching and learning with young children.
• Love adapting technical concepts for local audiences.
• Love championing online safety for local community members, especially youth.

If any of those things sound like you, to contribute you might:

• Invent and test childhood games.
• Invent and test playground games.
• Invent and test board games.
• Contribute design assets and prototypes for game ideas.
• Create and illustrate facilitation guides or how-to videos for childhood and playground games.
• Adapt an online game about privacy and security for offline play.

In May and June, we’ll help offline game developers connect with one another and prep for the sprint. Then, during the sprint itself, on June 1st and 2nd, 2017, contributors can work together to invent or further refine their designs and prototypes for games that teach about safety and inclusion on the web.

Go here to register for the sprint and see if there are any local sites near you. If you’re interested in hosting a site — which is like organizing a meetup to work together face-to-face on June 1st and 2nd — let us know!

If you’re curious about connected devices or any of the Internet health issues at play in this challenge

1. Visit the Offline Games Challenge repo.
2. Sign in or create a GitHub account.
3. Click on the “Issues” tab near the top of the page.
4. Visit Issue #1 to introduce yourself to our community of contributors.

If we can provide any more information or answer any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask! Look for another post next week about getting ready for the Global Sprint.

Follow the Mozilla Privacy Arcade project online with @Mozlearn and #mozsprint.