Postcard from 2006 Games For Change Annual Conference
- Educating to Mobilize the Masses - Sande Chen

The second to last session on Tuesday, June 27 at the 2006 Games For Change Annual Conference, while covering community activism, was actually two presentations about two different games. David Williamson Shaffer, Assistant Professor of Learning Science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, discussed epistemic games, in particular the urban planning game Urban Science, while Doug Nelson, CEO of Kinection, and Nelson Layag, Director of Technology at CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, talked about their experiences creating the Community Organizing Toolkit and its computer-based component, the Organizing Game.

According to Shaffer, video games can help where schools have failed. Video games with real-world interest especially can relay a new way of learning. In a recent survey, 63% of high school students couldn’t locate Iraq on a map and one third didn’t know where Louisiana was on a map, even after being told that it was the state where Hurricane Katrina had caused destruction. Instead of separating education into the traditional topics of science, history, English, etc., it might make more sense to introduce students to real-world fields of study like journalism and urban planning. Epistemic games can do this.

“A game is always a culture,” stressed Shaffer. A game is not merely about the instruments, like dice or spreadsheets of statistics, but the culture that surrounds it. In a game, a person needs to assume a certain identity and care about things in the game. Every game has an epistemic frame that marks what is important in the game. By emphasizing what is and isn’t important, the player can begin to relate to the world in that way and transfer that way of seeing to tackling other real-world problems.

Subject matter experts do this every day within their practicums, or fields of study. In the beginning, a person might reflect upon an action and talk about it with a peer. Over time, the person gains the knowledge to have reflection-in-action, or thinking that reshapes action during the action, and does not have to consult a peer. Epistemic games recreate the ways experts think.

To create an epistemic game, one would need to understand the structure of the practicum to simulate it. A subject matter expert would be the best person to consult. Of course, there might be some professions with no practicums. For instance, there aren’t good existing models to build a game about teacher education.

Urban Science introduced students to the professional practices of urban planners. The students needed to determine the consequences of changes to a major boulevard. They interviewed people who used the street to find out their preferences. Then the students had to present a suggested model of changes to the planning office. The game allowed the students to learn that from one change, many things are impacted.

To gauge the change in thinking after the game, the students had been asked beforehand what a town do if there was too much garbage. “Get a new landfill” was the answer. After the game, the answers to the same question were more thoughtful. They included raising taxes, exporting the trash, and not closing down the recycling plant.

The Organizing Game, developed in collaboration with CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, Kinnection, and the Center for Third World Organizing, also strives to teach specific skills to people. The Organizing Game is the computer game component of the Community Organizing Toolkit, which teaches local community activists to knock on doors and pitch their cause. The Community Organizing Toolkit uses classroom training and role-play in addition to the computer game.

Door knocking is a difficult technique for some people. The Community Organizing Toolkit allows them to practice door knocking in a safe environment. The Organizing Game is a series of mini-games rather than Sim Door knocking. The subject matter experts, the Center for Third World Organizing, didn’t feel like a simulation was needed. The people were already motivated. They simply needed to learn specific skills and practice them over and over as if in a batting cage.

For instance, for the step labeled “Break the Ice,” players of the mini-game have to determine which object in the room is most important to the resident. Once they learn the skill, they would know which object would be the best one to talk about to start a conversation with the resident. There’s a Tutorial Mode, in which a senior door knocker serves as a mentor to a junior door knocker, and a Practice Mode.

Both Nelson and Layag stressed the collaborative effort. They felt that the game would not be as effective if they had worked with advisors instead of true collaborators. A lot of experimentation went into the look and feel. They went through several design firms before arriving at the final look and feel.

Nelson and Layag offered the following advice for a successful project:

• Define outcomes and tailor the game to those outcomes.
• Partner with subject matter experts, game designers, instructional designers, and non-profits.
• If possible, build on an existing model and open source the result.

The Organizing Game, available from the game's official website, is freely available, open source, and extremely easy to localize and adapt content. So far, organizations report that players like the game and it has been effective in teaching specific door knocking skills.