As a eager gamer and somebody who often dips out and in of the business, the idea of “video games for change”—or what’s extra not too long ago known as “influence video games”—has at all times been one thing I struggled to totally perceive. I’ve by no means fairly linked the dots between advocacy and video games. The framework of a sport didn’t appear to lend itself to addressing real-world issues or triggering significant behavioural change in society.
However my perspective was challenged in the easiest way potential.
The immediate – designing for goal
Once you stroll right into a workshop led by Glenn Gillis, CEO of Sea Monster and chair of Video games for Change Africa, you understand you’re not simply there to play video games. You’re there to interrogate what play means, the way it shapes us, and extra importantly, the way it can drive change. Throughout this 12 months’s Fak’ugesi Pageant on the Tshimologong Precinct in Johannesburg, I discovered myself seated amongst a various group of people from quite a few industries, able to conceptualise a sport—not for enjoyable, however for influence.
This concept did make me assume – how typically can we have interaction with media that genuinely asks us to do one thing past passive consumption?
Our process was deceptively easy – select a real-world concern and develop a sport idea that addresses it. With a Sustainable Growth Aim (SDG) as our anchor, we started brainstorming. With our group of six, concepts flew throughout the desk—wild, formidable, and sometimes nonsensical. However Gillis’s steerage anchored us. “Don’t intention for good,” he mentioned. “Goal for actionable.” His phrases reminded us that influence gaming isn’t about grand gestures; it’s about small, significant steps that encourage customers to assume, really feel, and act in another way.
Our group settled on a cellular community-support sport wrapped in a color-coded protected area, designed to foster connections and supply psychological well being sources, obtainable over platforms akin to WhatsApp. The method was messy, and the thought was removed from polished, but it surely was a glimpse into the probabilities of gamified problem-solving or moderately, on this case, creating an interactive area that would help people who had been a survivor of some type of abuse.
Gamers might stage up by finishing duties that mirrored real-world options—sharing tales, studying coping mechanisms, and supporting others. It wasn’t flashy, but it surely was impactful and lent itself to intentional engagement, and that was the purpose.
Reframing video games as instruments for change
Gillis opened the session with a provocative assertion, “Video games are essentially the most highly effective engagement device of our time.” Video games, as he defined, are distinctive as a result of they immerse gamers in lively problem-solving. They require participation. They encourage empathy. And so they typically succeed the place lectures or campaigns fall quick.
This sentiment was bolstered throughout our sport design session. Whereas the instruments we used had been easy – pens, paper, and dialog – the concepts leaned into the profound. Gillis’s insistence that video games will be autos for change, whether or not via elevating consciousness, offering schooling, or sparking behavioural shifts, reframed how I believed concerning the medium, regardless that we’re nonetheless simply making video games.
Africa’s Position in World Impression Gaming
The next day, Glenn opened the Video games for Change Africa convention on the broader Fak’ugesi Pageant, with a rallying cry for African innovation in gaming. “It’s not about the place we’re from; it’s about what we are able to do,” he mentioned, addressing the viewers. He spoke of the necessity to reclaim Africa’s narrative, making certain that its expertise and concepts aren’t exploited by international powers however celebrated and scaled from inside.
This sentiment was echoed by quite a few studio heads in my conversations all through the week. Africa has world class expertise, world class work already being produced, and there’s a sure knack to that, a sort of working with what we now have the place too typically there isn’t any entry to funding, that in my very own view, lends itself to a selected angle, temper, and even flavour to what comes out of the continent that one doesn’t see elsewhere.
As Gillis reminded us, Africa is not only a participant within the international gaming business – it’s a frontrunner in rethinking its potentialities. “We’re not taking part in catch-up,” he mentioned through the workshop. “We’re innovating in methods the remainder of the world can’t even think about but.” African builders deliver to the desk: resourcefulness, cultural depth, and a recent perspective on what gaming can obtain. He known as for extra funding in native expertise and extra alternatives for African voices to form international narratives.
From Concepts to Motion
Reflecting on the expertise, the fantastic thing about the workshop wasn’t simply within the concepts it generated, however in the way it enabled me to take a look at gaming in a brand new means. I’ve at all times cherished video games, however I had by no means actually thought of them as mechanisms for real-world influence. Gillis’s method to gamification reframes the medium completely – video games aren’t simply escapism – they could be a approach to have interaction deeply with the world’s most urgent challenges and current revolutionary options.
Take Chowtown, a monetary literacy sport developed by Gillis’s Sea Monster studio on Roblox. It’s a primary instance of how influence video games could make studying each accessible and efficient.
it this manner, it appeared as a blueprint for the way creativity, group, and goal can intersect. Whether or not it’s via educating monetary literacy, tackling psychological well being, or reimagining cultural narratives, influence gaming presents a chance to assist form the world. And with the worldwide gaming inhabitants rising exponentially, this potential might quickly grow to be a actuality.