Online Gaming for Civic Engagement – Seminar 1

Euclid Network and the Social Innovation Park held their first seminar under the Emergence by Design project on the 12-13 July 2012 in Bilbao (Spain). The seminar looked at how we can use ICT - digital games - to steer society towards sustainability and sustainable innovation.

Since even before the times of the ancient Egyptians, gaming has been a way to engage people, challenging them to find new solutions. Nowadays, millions of people commit billions of hours a year to playing online games. They use their energy and time to solve quests, fight others and to win levels and gain strength or points. However, these games are often self-centred in nature and promote a culture of individual consumerism in a world with infinite resources, without a sustainable outlook.

We explored the question of whether we can use this enormous commitment by gamers and the intense energy put into gaming to address issues of sustainability, creating a socially sensitive society. For this reason, we invited a small number of experts from businesses, game designers, academia and civil society to actively look for ways to use online games (see participants' biographies) for a sustainable society.

The seminar introduced different concepts but was more 'hands-on'. Participants were invited to state their challenges and were asked to develop a game - or a gamification process - that addresses the problems. Nine different issues were discussed:

• How to use games to support local heritage?
• Creating a linkedIn for young people using games to assess skills
• Engaging experiences for students
• Developing a 'crazy tractor race' to get children excited about locally produced food
• Exploring how games can be used to involve young people in research proposals
• Developing games for policy making
• Games for intergenerational communication
• Crowdsourcing gamification for social change
• How to use games to make people interested in EU politics

Learning networks have been built around these issues after initial brain-storming and prototyping to further develop the ideas.

The agenda for the seminar can be found here.

Find the report here.

Presentations given during the seminar:

Download Indigenous-infused Digital games - A new model for sustainability and social impact by Pita Jelly Benz

Download Videogames design to engage, stimulate and train by David Moreno

Download Gamer Power - Solving the Coming Energy Crunch by Maria Sayans

Download Exploring Online Gaming - Can gaming promote civic engagement? by Thomas Komair

Further resources:

Download The Civic Potential of Video Games by Joseph Kahne, Ellen Middaugh and Chris Evans

Download Renascentia - A Journey beyond Tomorrow by Domenico Zungri

Find out more about GALA (Games and Learning Alliance) - Network of Excellence for Serious Games here

Find out more about Only the Brave Foundation and its flagship initiative the Millennium Villages Project here

Find out more about the potential of ICT for the socio-economic inclusion of groups at risk of social exclusion and poverty and Digital Games for Empowerment & Inclusion(DGEI) at the European Commission Joint Research Centre – Institute for Prospective Technological Studies

Find out about Vodafone's Foundation Smart Accessibility Awards 2012 and its contest to promote the development of IT applications

Discover the presentation by Bala Iyer: Understanding Gamification: From Commercial to Social

Join the Fun & Serious Game Festival in Bilbao from 26 Nov – 2 Dec 2012

Check out Preloaded - purveyors of finely crafted game goodness since 2000

Learn more about the creation and distribution of social impact games that serve as critical tools in humanitarian and educational efforts at Games for Change

Find out more about the new Academic Center on Games and Impact at Arizona State University here

Help and inspire one another and make sense of it all. Edgeryders is a social game with the aim at building a nurturing environment. Find out more here.

Download publishing methodologies for social impact games by Alan Gershenfeld.

Developing a roadmap for Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion - Joint JRC IPTS – DG CNECT DGEI Stakeholder Workshop. Download the report

Find James Stewart  and Jan van Looy's document detailing DGEI Stakeholder Opportunities and Challeges here

.