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Systems Mapping to Support Interdisciplinary Understanding in Serious Game Design
Abstract
This article discusses the advantages and limitations of systems mapping as a method of approaching serious game design on the highly complex social issue of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in an interdisciplinary team. The method of systems mapping has been evaluated for the research and design phase of a yet unfinished game. It has been shown to be useful as a tool for research, design and interdisciplinary collaboration. Systems mapping does not provide new knowledge in the respective research area nor does it offer direct solutions to difficult design problems, but it supports the process and makes it more structured and substantial.
Digital simulations are increasingly used to educate about the causes and effects of poverty, and inspire action to alleviate it. Drawing on research about attributions of poverty, subjective well-being, and relative income, this experimental study assesses the effects of an online poverty simulation (entitled Spent) on participants’ beliefs, attitudes, and actions. Results show that, compared with a control group, Spent players donated marginally more money to a charity serving the poor and expressed higher support for policies benefitting the poor, but were less likely to take immediate political action by signing an online petition to support a higher minimum wage. Spent players also expressed greater subjective well-being than the control group, but this was not associated with increased policy support or donations. Spent players who experienced greater presence (perceived realism of the simulation) had higher levels of empathy, which contributed to attributing poverty to structural causes and support for anti-poverty policies. We draw conclusions for theory about the psychological experience of playing online poverty simulations, and for how they could be designed to stimulate charity and support for anti-poverty policies.
Evidence demonstrates that exposure to prosocial video games can increase players' prosocial behaviour, prosocial thoughts, and empathic responses. Prosocial gaming has also been used to reduce gender-based violence among young people, but the use of video games to this end as well as evaluations of their effectiveness are rare. The objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of a context-specific, prosocial video game, Jesse, in increasing affective and cognitive responsiveness (empathy) towards victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) among children and adolescents (N = 172, age range 9-17 years, M = 12.27, SD = 2.26). A randomised controlled trial was conducted in seven schools in Barbados. Participants were randomly assigned to an experimental (prosocial video game) or control (standard school curriculum) condition. Experimental and control group enrolled 86 participants each. Girls and boys in the experimental condition, but not their counterparts in the control condition, recorded a significant increase in affective responsiveness after intervention. This change was sustained one week after game exposure. No significant effects were recorded for cognitive responsiveness. Findings suggest that Jesse is a promising new IPV prevention tool among girls and boys, which can be used in educational settings.
Human beings are active agents who can think. To understand how thought serves action requires understanding how people conceive of the relation between cause and effect, between action and outcome. This book presents the question, in cognitive terms: how do people construct and reason with the causal models we use to represent our world? A revolution is occurring in how statisticians, philosophers, and computer scientists answer this question. Those fields have ushered in new insights about causal models by thinking about how to represent causal structure mathematically, in a framework that uses graphs and probability theory to develop what are called causal Bayesian networks. The framework starts with the idea that the purpose of causal structure is to understand and predict the effects of intervention. How does intervening on one thing affect other things? This is not a question merely about probability (or logic), but about action. The framework offers a new understanding of mind: thought is about the effects of intervention and cognition is thus intimately tied to actions that take place either in the actual physical world or in imagination, in counterfactual worlds. This book offers a conceptual introduction to the key mathematical ideas, presenting them in a non-technical way, focusing on the intuitions rather than the theorems. It tries to show why the ideas are important to understanding how people explain things and why thinking not only about the world as it is but the world as it could be is so central to human action. The book reviews the role of causality, causal models, and intervention in the basic human cognitive functions: decision making, reasoning, judgment, categorization, inductive inference, language, and learning. In short, the book offers a discussion about how people think, talk, learn, and explain things in causal terms, in terms of action and manipulation.
Jede vierte Frau in Deutschland erlebt Gewalt durch einen Beziehungspartner. Die Folgen sowohl für die Frauen als auch für die gesamte Gesellschaft sind beträchtlich. Den Betroffenen steht ein differenziertes System an Unterstützung zur Verfügung, das aber nur von einem Teil in Anspruch genommen wird. Petra Brzank untersucht in einer Sekundärdatenanalyse der deutschen Repräsentativstudie das Hilfesuchverhalten bei Partnergewalt mit einem umfassenden theoretisch und empirisch begründeten Einflussfaktorenmodell. Etliche Faktoren stehen im Zusammenhang mit der Hilfesuche der Frauen; den stärksten Einfluss auf das Hilfesuchverhalten zeigt die Schwere der erlittenen Gewalt. Aus der wissenschaftlichen Aufarbeitung leitet die Autorin Empfehlungen für die praktische Unterstützung und Intervention sowie für die Politik ab.
An exploration of the way videogames mount arguments and make expressive statements about the world that analyzes their unique persuasive power in terms of their computational properties.
Videogames are an expressive medium, and a persuasive medium; they represent how real and imagined systems work, and they invite players to interact with those systems and form judgments about them. In this innovative analysis, Ian Bogost examines the way videogames mount arguments and influence players. Drawing on the 2,500-year history of rhetoric, the study of persuasive expression, Bogost analyzes rhetoric's unique function in software in general and videogames in particular. The field of media studies already analyzes visual rhetoric, the art of using imagery and visual representation persuasively. Bogost argues that videogames, thanks to their basic representational mode of procedurality (rule-based representations and interactions), open a new domain for persuasion; they realize a new form of rhetoric. Bogost calls this new form "procedural rhetoric," a type of rhetoric tied to the core affordances of computers: running processes and executing rule-based symbolic manipulation. He argues further that videogames have a unique persuasive power that goes beyond other forms of computational persuasion. Not only can videogames support existing social and cultural positions, but they can also disrupt and change these positions themselves, leading to potentially significant long-term social change. Bogost looks at three areas in which videogame persuasion has already taken form and shows considerable potential: politics, advertising, and learning.
Violent dad in child shoes: a moment before: ViDaCS serious game in a multidimensional action research promoting awareness about gender-based violence perpetrators
- C Arcidiacona
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Arcidiacona, C. and Di Napoli, I. (2021) Violent dad in child shoes: a moment before: ViDaCS serious game in a multidimensional action research promoting awareness about gender-based violence perpetrators, Federico University
Press.
Handbook of Research on Nature Inspired Computing for Economy and Management, Idea Group
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A typology of domestic violence: intimate terrorism, violent resistance, and situational couple violence
- M P Johnson
Johnson, M.P. (2008) "A typology of domestic violence: intimate terrorism, violent resistance, and situational couple
violence", Gender & Society, 25(4), pp 522-524.
Gaming the System: Making Games about Real-World Systems
- Colleen Macklin
Macklin, Colleen (2020) "Gaming the System: Making Games about Real-World Systems", Games for Change Festival 2020,
[online], https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Op4UlPq8gY.
Prom Week: Social Physics as Gameplay
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Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG 2011), Bordeaux, France,
June 29-July 1, pp. 319-321.
Gewalt gegen Frauen in Paarbeziehungen -eine sekundäranalytische Auswertung zur Differenzierung von Schweregraden, Mustern, Risikofaktoren und Unterstützung nach erlebter Gewalt
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- Nicole Ansorge
Schröttle, Monika and Ansorge, Nicole (2009) Gewalt gegen Frauen in Paarbeziehungen -eine sekundäranalytische
Auswertung zur Differenzierung von Schweregraden, Mustern, Risikofaktoren und Unterstützung nach erlebter Gewalt,
Berlin: Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend.
Coercive Control. How Men entrap women in personal life
- Michael Sellers
Sellers, Michael (2018) Advanced Game Design -A Systems Approach, Pearson Education / Addison-Wesley, USA.
Stark, Evan (2007) Coercive Control. How Men entrap women in personal life, Oxford University Press.
Systems Thinking for Social Change
- David Stroh
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Stroh, David Peter (2015) Systems Thinking for Social Change. Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, USA.
Völschow, Yvette (2014) "Partnerschaftsgewalt in ländlich geprägten Räumen: Implikationen für Frauenhäuser und
Beratungsarbeit", Frauenhauskoordinierung Nr. 1/2014, Schwerpunkt Gewalt im ländlichen Raum, [online],
https://www.frauenhauskoordinierung.de/.
Das kann man gar nicht erklären
- Yvette Völschow
- Wiebke Janßen
Völschow, Yvette and Janßen, Wiebke (2016) ""Das kann man gar nicht erklären." Partnergewalt im ländlichen Raum: Eine
Analyse subjektiver Theorien über Gewalt", Equit et al (eds.): Situationen der Gewalt, Beltz Juventa, Weinheim,
Germany, pp. 390-406.