Breaking the 4th Dimension: Gamers as Forces for Social Good

re:publica 18 - Politics & Society

Video games have become more accessible to more people, now more than ever. It's now the primary medium where people voluntarily spend time and engage other people even without materialistic motives. In 2013, Spil Games reported that 1.2 billion people are now playing games worldwide, with 700 million of those online. That number has since increased, dramatically. In the last couple of years, the world saw the rise of social impact games such as Mini Metro, Papers Please, Democracy, This War of Mine. These games have had critically acclaim and are commercially successful without compromising their chosen advocacies. Given the positive impact it could generate worldwide, juxtaposed with the world as we know it today, there is a an urgent need to develop more and more social impact games to serve as critical tools in humanitarian and educational initiatives.

• Gwendelyn Foster
• Vincent Frederick Dancel

The session will be conducted as follows:

1. Demographic of Gamer Population
2. Case Studies of Commercially Successful and Critically Acclaimed Social Impact Games
   1. Democracy by Positech Studios
   2. This War of Mine by 11 bit Studios
   3. Mini Metro by Dinosaur Polo Club
   4. Papers, Please by Lucas Pope
   5. This is the Police by Weappy Studio
3. Analysis on Player Behaviour and its social impact.
4. Designing Games for Social Impact
   1. The JoomaJam Financial Literacy Arcade by Ritmo Learning Lab
   2. Dugas, a game on Martial Law by Ritmo Learning Lab
5. Breaking the 4th Dimension: How do you get players to care?

Presentation will be multi-media.

supported by BMZ