This presentation was delivered on October 20, 2022 at the Transformative Play Initiative Seminar 2022: Role-playing, Culture, and Heritage.
Description:
Games have the power to raise awareness of crises in society, build agency and empower search for solutions. In the article I present the transformative role of RPG on raising awareness on the humanitarian crisis on Polish-Belarussian border among students and their willingness to change attitudes. “The people” RPG simulates a social system in the area of humanitarian crisis affecting a small town. The game models in a simple way the environment of a village on the Polish-Belarusian border during the existing, migration crisis. Its purpose is to reflect on the complexity of refugee crisis environment and raise awareness of the shortcomings of existing solutions in Poland. “The people” is a RPG-based mix of a board game with card drafting and simultaneous action selection. Participants take on the roles of citizens in the border zone and act according to their hidden profiles (hidden motivations) and social roles. They face the illegal presence of the asylum seekers in the forest nearby: either support hosting the refugees or their expulsion to Belarus. Their actions are limited to the cards reflecting existing solutions available for the citizens. In the end, participants come up with their own ideas for card actions that should be introduced to the game and in the real life. In the article I summarize the qualitative feedback given by 30 participants during 6 games, including shift in awareness, knowledge and willingness to change attitudes*. The project hasn’t finished yet, thus the full explanation will have been available by the end of June.
Bio: Weronika Szatkowska. Researcher at the Center for Simulation Games and Gamification (Kozminski University) in Warsaw, game designer and a mountain guide. Creates games and gamifications for business and NGOs in the area of urban systems and innovations, social skills, culture heritage and popular science topics.
Click here to read PDF of slides.
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This seminar is hosted by the Transformative Play Initiative in the Games & Society Lab at the Department of Game Design, Uppsala University Campus Gotland. This seminar is made possible by financial support from the Sustainable Heritage Research Forum (SuHRF). The Transformative Play Initiative explores the use of analog role-playing games as vehicles for lasting personal and social change.
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Graphic Design by Liliia Chorna. Music by Elias Faltin. Video edited by Rezmo (Mohammad Mohammad Rezaie).