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Gamification for Youth Engagement GLOBAL BROADBAND AND INNOVATIONS ALLIANCE WHAT’S NEXT September 2020 WHAT’S NEXT: Would You Like to Play a Game? By Seth Corrigan, Senior Director of Assessment and Game-Based Learning, Southern New Hampshire University INTRODUCTION This chapter is designed to inform USAID and USAID broadly relational aspects of learning and behavior implementing partners of promising developments in change. Second, role playing games – both digital and the use of games and gamification to support civic board-based role-playing games – are gaining engagement. As communities come to increasingly face recognition for their capacity to support effective volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous decision- deliberation and planning among community members. making environments, games and gamified experiences Examples of games and gamification efforts are will have a growing role in informing and gathering input discussed throughout. Third, while gamification of from the public, provide means for engaging citizens e-participation is not new, current uses often leverage in fruitful deliberation, establishing supportive norms for the approach to engage community members in idea civic engagement, and forming social ties valuable for generation, sensing activities as well as city planning public participation. Youth engagement is emphasized and policymaking. Lastly, newsgames are also noted throughout. Also discussed is the current evidence base for their ability to support the critical understanding of for use of games and gamification to support public complex systems and events; increasingly the focus of understanding of complex systems and issues, civic policymaking in environments that are volatile, uncertain, engagement as well as key opportunities and barriers complex, and ambiguous. Themes associated with civic to their use for that same purpose. Existing games are engagement for youth, as well as USAID programs and described with references provided for those who their implementing partners, are emphasized. wish to learn more. Games and gamified experiences supported by USAID and its implementing partners are Growing Awareness of Human Development and also noted. Social Relations Use of simulations, games, and gamified experiences is DEVELOPMENTS IN GAMES AND well established in fields as diverse as business planning, GAMIFICATION policy making, military planning, medicine, public Four major developments have impacted the world of health, and education, among others. Over the last two games and gamified experiences. First is a growing decades, their design and use have increasingly reflected sophistication in game design regarding players’ needs. sophisticated approaches to teaching and learning, Designers are becoming increasingly aware of the deliberation, and behavior change. Specifically, there importance of making games that are developmentally has been a consistent transition to developmentally appropriate for the intended audiences. Game design appropriate approaches to learning and relational practices are also beginning to better reflect current approaches to deliberation and behavior change. science of human motivation and behavior as those practices increasingly come to emphasize the social and Developmentally appropriate approaches to learning Global Broadband & Innovations Alliance | 1 purposefully account for the age-appropriate needs of targeted users. Over the last two decades, awareness of the importance of meeting the developmental needs of young adolescents and young adults in the context of civic engagement and education has been increasingly recognized.1 That awareness has been reflected in game and gamified experiences that are designed to meet the intellectual, social, and psychological needs associated with different stages of development. Exemplary attention to child and youth development is exhibited in Worm Attack!, Family Choices, and 9-Minutes, well recognized educational mobile games for example, is a new theory of learning that aims to funded in part by USAID and developed as a part of create consequential connections between youth interest the Half-the-Sky movement that are targeted to young driven cultural participation, learning, and civic action.4 adolescents. Another example is Cards Against It has been leveraged by researchers and designers in Calamity, sponsored by the National Oceanic and game design and development efforts conducted at the Atmospheric Administration and the Wilson Center. Institute for Play, GlassLab Games, and broadly among members of the Connected Learning Alliance.5,6 Relational approaches to deliberation and behavior change are backed by a growing body of evidence regarding the importance of network dynamics in individual decision making and action in general. Current research views social networks as dynamic systems in which behavior change can be viewed as a form of complex contagion, with multiple recommendations may Relational approaches to deliberation and behavior be needed from contacts in order to initiate and maintain change reconceive of the targeted user from lone rational new behaviors.7 Importantly, network dynamics also actor to networked individual immersed in and motivated appear to exhibit tipping point behaviors that may allow by social interactions and social currents within sets of behaviors or beliefs among a minority to influence those 2,3 friendships and acquaintances. Connected learning, of the majority.8,9 Evidence for the contagion perspective 1 Obradović, J., & Masten, A. S. (2007). Developmental antecedents of young adult civic engagement. Applied developmental science, 11(1), 2-19. 2 Ito, M., Martin, C., Pfister, R. C., Rafalow, M. H., Salen, K., & Wortman, A. (2018). Affinity online: How connection and shared interest fuel learning (Vol. 2). NYU Press. 3 Wortman, A., & Ito, M. (2019). Connected Learning. The International Encyclopedia of Media Literacy, 1-18. 4 Ito, M., Soep, E., Kligler-Vilenchik, N., Shresthova, S., Gamber-Thompson, L., & Zimmerman, A. (2015). Learning connected civics: Narratives, practices, infrastructures. Curriculum Inquiry, 45(1), 10-29. 5 Ito, M., Soep, E., Kligler-Vilenchik, N., Shresthova, S., Gamber-Thompson, L., & Zimmerman, A. (2015). Learning connected civics: Narratives, practices, infrastructures. Curriculum Inquiry, 45(1), 10-29. 6 Kafai, Y. B., & Burke, Q. (2016). Connected gaming: What making video games can teach us about learning and literacy. Mit Press. 7 Pinheiro, et al., 2018 - Pinheiro, F. L., Vasconcelos, V. V., & Levin, S. A. (2018). Consensus and polarization in competing complex contagion process es. Unpublished Preprint (arXiv). 8 Centola, D., Becker, J., Brackbill, D., & Baronchelli, A. (2018). Experimental evidence for tipping points in social convention. Science, 360(6393), 1116 - 1119 . 9 Andreoni, J., Nikiforakis, N., & Siegenthaler, S. (2020). Predicting Social Tipping and Norm Change in Controlled Experiments (No. w27310). National Bureau of Economic Research. Global Broadband & Innovations Alliance | 2 on behavior change and tipping point dynamics have Criminal Case, Farm Heroes Saga, YoVille, Pet relevance for games designed to initiate social change10 Society, and Vector. Popular social networking as they suggest the importance of social interaction and games outside of the Global North include EVOKE, social network structure. Many of these findings are published in Africa and funded by the World Bank to increasingly reflected in social networking games. engage participants in solving challenges associated with economic development; Tunisia’s League of Social networking games are online games that are Legends community is one of the largest in Africa with hosted and accessed via one or more networking approximately 30,000 members. services such as Facebook, MySpace, Discord, Reddit, Steam, or Twitch. They support asynchronous play, casual multiplayer involvement, and some form of coopetition that combines a need to collaborate with other players while also trying to maximize outcomes for oneself.11 Social networking games have been attributed to development of social capital within the game environments themselves.12 In some cases, social networking games have also been identified Cooperative Role-Playing Games for Fruitful with development of social capital outside the game Deliberation environments that is thought to advance real world civic Carefully designed cooperative role-playing games engagement.13 Counter evidence exists for both of these engage participants with opportunities to assume claims.14 alternative identities, roles, and interests in ways that avoid positional bargaining and stalemates and Popular social networking games require popular facilitate discovery of creative solutions and pathways networking sites for their environment in addition to the to consensus in spite of differences in resources and many characteristics that make for a successful game. interests.16 Players in role-playing games are typically Social networking sites that have achieved notoriety tasked with accomplishing one or more goals by moving outside of the Global North include Orkut (Brazil), Hi5 about in dangerous or unfamiliar environments and (India and International), RenRen (China), Kaixin001 by overcoming challenges with the help of objects or (China), Weibo (China), Skyblog (North Africa), and resources within the game. Players’ primary tools in Gnaija15 (Nigeria). serious role-playing games are their abilities to assume new perspectives on the problem(s) at hand, create Current, popular social
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