Case Studies: Games for Education

SOAS

"I'm an Agricultural Worker, Get Me Out of Here" - a simulation about the (sometimes counter-productive) affects of fair trade initiatives on very poor, rural workers in Africa.

SOAS asked us to construct a game that would ease undergraduate and MA students into the subject of the more complex effects of fair trade incentives on very poor, agricultural workers. This is a classic example of how a large, confusing topic (the four-year study runs to over 200 pages) can, with the right approach, be broken down by isolating the main components and figuring out how they inter-relate. In this case, we devised a simulation that could be run in one lesson, where students are vying for work by performing routine, menial tasks, while simultaneously navigating the rigours and dangers of everyday life. The teacher can alter the market and other factors to simulate the introduction of fair trade schemes being started and the students then get to see who benefits from the schemes and whether their "lives" get any easier (hint: no, not really).

CAFOD

"Emergency" - a game about disaster preparedness and response for secondary schools.

CAFOD asked us to help them design some new teaching resources to be used in all their Secondary schools. The brief was for a game that would introduce the subject of diaster preparedness and response, highlighting how CAFOD work with local, partner organisations and the challenges - both logistic and cultural - inherent in this line of work. We devised a simple, printable board game that could be circulated and printed off very cheaply and scaled to all sizes of class, either split up into small groups or the entire class playing a lead game with the teacher. The response was exceptional, with both pupils and teachers writing back to say how useful it is and what a change of perspective it's given them.

Case Studies: Games for Training

CAFOD

"Emergency Training" - a game for internal training purposes explaining how CAFOD work with others during a disaster.

CAFOD so loved their Secondary School game taht they commissioned us to make a variation of it for internatl training purposes. We added some more detail and complexity to the game since the audience was a lot more sophisticated and that allowed us to model the fall-out of real disasters with greater affect. CAFOD now use this regularly for training new staff, team-building exercises (it's a collaborative game) and education purposes for conferences etc.

Case Studies: Games for Campaign & Marketing

Greenpeace

"Deepsea Desperation" - a game about the dangers and effects of deepsea oil drilling.

Greenpeace wanted to get the hard-won attention of journalists in a subject that had been reasonably emotionally exhausted: deepsea drilling, especially in the arctic. We designed a 15 minute, printable boardgame that could be handed out along with other printed materials such as press releases, studies etc. to journalists and other opinion formers. The tongue-in-cheek nature encouraged people to engage with the topic, even if they felt they knew it as they weren't being 'preached' to and it wasn't as intimidating as a page of text and depressing figures. The game of course had a serious message that comes through quickly upon playing it and the very fact they commissioned a professional games company to make a printable boardgame even became news in itself in some quarters.

Loco Film Festival

"In It Together" - snakes and ladders put through the distributative justice wringer.

The Loco Film fesitval is a comedy film festival held every year at the BFI Southbank. They asked for a game that could be printed in their sought-after programmes that would put people into a playful, active frame of mind, ready to engage with the festival - and the theme of "class" - in a deeper way. We decided to use the familiar trope of Snakes & Ladders, but change it so that each player starts on a different square, then challenge all the players to try and even out the inbalance that we'd just created. It's actually a playable version of Rawl's famous "Veil of Ignorance" thought experiment and the results are far more revealing than you'd ever imagine a game of Snakes & Ladders to be...

Case Studies: Games for Events

BFI

"Trickledown" - a game about economic inequality that plays havoc with the notion of a free bar.

This was devised as a "low impact game" for the launch of the Loco Film Festival where the great and the good are summoned together, along with ticket-holding members of the public as they mill around, waiting for the opening film. It's hard to engage a large, variable crowd in one game when drinking and socialising are forefront in their minds, so we decided to not tell people they were playing a game and instead used the free bar as a metaphor for economic inequality and divided guests up so they had different levels of access to the bar.