Serious Games pt 2.

Games Beyond Entertainment Week is a series of conferences. Games for Health is one, and here is a couple of other partnerships:

The Able Gamers foundation

This is a charity that helps disabled people have access to video-games. They have community events, and modify game controllers for use.

Games for Change

(G4C) is a non-profit which seeks to harness the extraordinary power of video games to address the most pressing issues of our day, including poverty, education, human rights, global conflict and climate change. G4C acts as a voice for the transformative power of games, bringing together organizations and individuals from the nonprofit sector, government, journalism, academia, industry and the arts, to grow the sector and provide a platform for the exchange of ideas and resources. Through this work, Games for Change promotes new kinds of games that engage contemporary social issues in meaningful ways to foster a more just, equitable and tolerant society.

They have quite an extensive list of games here, let's take a look:

This is Third World Farmer and it is a good example of the type of 'games' that plague Serious Games. There is really not much 'gameness' to it, click a bunch of times placing 'crops', press the play button and see a read out of statistics telling you how your farm is doing and that some disease or another has killed half your stuff. Repeat. The characters do nothing, it is an empty land void of much interest, which is a barrier to it delivering any meaning to the player.

Why are so many 'Serious Games' like this? My first thought is that media is generally linear - film, books - but games are non-linear - they allow interaction on a different level than linear media. And these games forget that.

Case in point:

Agianst All Odds

I put together this step-by-step of what happens in this game.

1. "You are living in great danger and must flee your country. Will you survive? Test yourself!" - why? Why am I fleeing? Why should I test myself?

2. Choose a situation. - It can't be all that bad if I can choose what I would like to experience..

3."Who are you" - personalize the game here, put some of yourself into it if you want..

4. Cut scene...

5. "We will give you 10 statements to respond to".

6. A fun little drawing bit. Because everyone likes drawing.

7. Wrong choice response...?

8. See what happens if I doodle over here...

9. I get hit..

So if I doodle on the left side I get told off, if I doodle on the right side, I get 'hit'. Both responses seem to have no real effect as I get given another question right away.

They're trying to hit home some important messages in a very superficial way.
This 'game' is effectively a tickbox, result 1/result2. 

"I give up the right to vote"

Y: No Right to vote, no democracy! Result: Next question

N: Get 'hit' Result: Next question.