Real Life Culture and Game Culture Considerations in Games for Social Change

When constructing games for social change there are many mediating factors, as in games for health behavior change. In social change, however, the greatest level of change can be accomplished at the community/group levels and policy levels. In particular, the group and community in which individual players are situated play significant roles. This is because a player is always effected by cultural norms (Klimmt, 2009). One must always plan to address the real life cultural when creating a game, in particular with regards to the message design.

However, games as a system of delivery for social change messages provide a unique twist: the game culture. When the individual enters the “magic circle” of the game, they are in turn entering a distinct system based culture with rules and procedures far different from the everyday cultural norms, otherwise so many players would not be drawn to games such as Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt. In this way, games also embody their own, self contained culture, what Ian Bogost defines as cultural activities with a “social practice of playing” (2008).

What does this mean? This means we can use the culture of the game to introduce more controversial messaging and more drastic change to a player who might be resistant to such messages in other media formats.

Klimmt (2009) defines three mechanisms related to this particular effect of games:

1. Games reduce the resistance of change messaging, through entertainment and in game cultural/social structures.
2. Multiplayer modes provide a sense of community that legitimizes the change messages, including more controversial messages.
3. Multiplayer modes can facilitate communication and discussion related to the understanding of messages and persuasion of individuals within the supporting group.

Because of these mechanisms, and perhaps more, designers can create “possibility spaces” where it is easier to “make claims about cultural, sociological,” and other human factors (Bogost, 2008). In this same space, players can be invited to expose and understand hidden ideologies, allowing reflection on their own actions and beliefs. They can also allow players to more easily play Devil's Advocate, by taking a position contrary to their own personal opinions on a given message (Bogost, 2008). These are powerful ways to begin allowing players to evaluate their mindsets in order to incite them to make changes.

In this way Bogost argues that videogames are a new form of literacy, perhaps cultural literacy. This literacy, if cultivated, allows the player to use a constructed culture to allow a critique of our world (Bogost, 2009). This, I believe, is probably primarily addressed most in science fiction genres in other media formats and more recently fantasy. Perhaps the “world apart” of those novels and movies provide a similar alternate culture option—but then, those genres attract a very specific audience (perhaps already predisposed to this kind of human analysis), whereas games have a diverse body of players.

What is important to take away here, is that creating a culture in game play is as valuable as tailoring messaging to address a specific culture.

Works Cited

Bogost, I. (2008). The rhetoric of videogames. In K. Salen (Eds.), The ecology of games: Connecting youth, games, and learning (pp. 117-140). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Klimmt, C. (2009). Serious games and social change: why they (should) work. In U. Ritterfield, M. Cody & P. Vorderer (Eds.), Serious Games: Mechanisms and Effects (pp322-343). New York, U.S.A.: Routledge.

National Institutes of Health (2005). Theory at a glance: A guide for health promotion and practice. Retrieved August 15, 2010 from http://www.cancer.gov/PDF/481f5d5363df-41bc- bfaf5aa48ee1da4d/TAAG3.pdf