BURLINGAME, CALIF. - Tending to your crops on "FarmVille," lining up those "Tetris" blocks perfectly or exploring a mass-multiplayer online world like "World of Warcraft" are all ways that videogames amuse and addict. But can those same underlying game mechanics be used to make videogames that can help spur educational, social and environmental change?
A movement over the past decade toward "serious games," or games with a higher purpose beyond entertainment, has game developers, companies and now even the White House saying "Yes, they can."
"I've grown up with games and I've seen how powerful they've been and can be, and to think that that potential is just left to being entertained would be a disaster," says Ben Sawyer, a game developer who cofounded the Serious Games Initiative in 2002 at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C. "Games have the ability to depict a problem in a much more multi-dimensional fashion than other media, and give the ability to dive deep into the factors."
If a game is done right, even young children will be able to grasp complex social and environmental issues. "MiniMonos" is an eco-friendly version of "World of Warcraft" for kids. Founded in 2007 in New Zealand, it's a Web-based world where children from around the globe control animated monkey avatars. Instead of moving up the game levels by hunting monsters or fighting enemies, "MiniMonos" players get rewards for doing things like cleaning up the lagoon or recycling garbage. The aim is to inculcate values of sustainability, generosity and community without inducing yawns.
"When I was looking at environmental games out there, they had you read all this stuff about how the habitat works, and then you played a little game at the end and had a quiz, and I said, 'Oh my God, that's so boring,' " says Melissa Clark-Reynolds, chief executive and founder of the MiniMonos game company.
The "MiniMonos," site now has more than 12,000 registered users. Clark-Reynolds says users are communicating across Twitter and game fan blogs, and some players have started their own real-world initiatives, such as "Pick Up Trash Fridays."
"Armchair Revolutionary," meanwhile, was just launched in beta in April and is aimed at an older audience. Cofounded by Ariel Hauter--who also helped found one of the largest social change organizations in the entertainment industry, The Hollywood Hill--"Armchair Revolutionary" can be described as "FarmVille" meets activism because it combines social gaming with Internet activism. Players can make 99-cent donations to the projects the game supports, ranging from health care to sustainability projects. Under the game rubric, they can also complete social activism tasks like e-mailing real-life influential executives or taking quizzes to better understand the work of an activist.
Another part of the appeal of serious games is the ability to make dull or difficult tasks fun and addicting. Mangahigh, a U.K.-based casual games website, for instance, aims to make the repetitive parts of math education, like memorization or drills, entertaining through games like "Pyramid Panic." Mangahigh was founded by Toby Rowland, who also founded one of the biggest European casual games portal King.com, and Dr. Marcus du Sautoy, a University of Oxford math professor.
"We get students building skills that may be repetitive in a worksheet environment, but when you do them in an online game, they are a lot of fun, and in competition, are exciting," says Rowland. He also says the site is meant as a complement to teachers' curricula, freeing instructors to train students in problem-solving skills instead. The U.S. version of the site catering to schools just launched in January and has already reached 300,000 users per month.
In addition to the Serious Game Initiative, a number of other organizations like Games for Change and Games for Health have been started to promote videogames for various causes. Big companies are interested as well: Microsoft gave $1.5 million in 2008 to form the Games for Learning Institute with New York University and other universities. The Institute researches how games can be used to encourage an interest in math and science among middle-school students.
Even the White House has gotten on board with the idea that games can do more for society. In March First Lady Michelle Obama launched the "Apps for Healthy Kids" competition, challenging game developers to create tools and games that would help children eat healthier or cut down on childhood obesity with top cash prizes of $10,000.
Not everyone was impressed by the White House's announcement, however. "This contest reads as PR more than politics," Dr. Ian Bogost, an associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and founder of Persuasive Games, wrote on his blog. Such contests, he argued, "promise a magic dreamworld in which cute carrots somehow eradicate a century of politics and economics…"
In general, Bogost believes the real potential of serious games is not necessarily in their ability to change behaviors, but in their power to encourage players to consider the pros and cons of their actions. He cautions against over-hyping the power of games to change the world and thinks the genre still has a long way to go.
Sawyer, too, says serious games shouldn't be used as a cure-all. "It's not like we're going to solve the world's problems singularly through games," he says. But he adds that games should be viewed as an increasingly useful tool to promote social change. Says Sawyer: "It's the same as the way music and videos are everywhere and helpful in various modalities."
