Guest editorial: games for learning and dialogue on humanitarian work Open Access

The nature of humanitarian work is evolving (Lagadec, 2007; IFRC, 2013). Drivers include environmental degradation, new disaster patterns due to a changing climate, more people at risk due to population dynamics and urbanization, and technological change. These and other trends rapidly increase the complexity and range of possible humanitarian decisions and thereby compound the workload of already overstretched humanitarian organizations. Humanitarian decisions need to be made faster, have a larger impact, and the consequences are more difficult to oversee due to the interconnected, fragile nature of infrastructures, and societies. For humanitarian workers it is crucial to anticipate shocks and trends, and to anticipate how different options may help prevent or mitigate human suffering. This requires an understanding of how the entire system works and to anticipate what can happen. To cope with the growing demand for humanitarian work, progress is being made in information and communication technologies, new analytical tools, and financial instruments; however, these and other innovative approaches are not being embraced fast enough to keep up with the increasing workload. The humanitarian sector needs to evolve toward knowledge-based entities that can rapidly absorb and act upon the increasingly reliable information about changing hazards, vulnerabilities, and capacities (Suarez, 2009). Such evolution requires an understanding of system dynamics shaping humanitarian work. Following Kolb (1984), we argue that system-based understanding can best be achieved through experiential learning and dialogue, and that games provide a promising vehicle to accomplish this.

Similar to the demand for humanitarian work, games have been evolving, and in a relatively short amount of time. Just a few decades ago the world saw the introduction of digital games with classics such as Pong and Frogger. Nowadays games are everywhere and played by anybody. While adult gameplay was once stigmatized as a “geek hobby,” games have now opened up to a broader audience. It is difficult to pin down specific numbers on the size of the game industry, due to confidentiality associated with sales numbers; yet several reports (e.g. Newzoo, 2013) have highlighted the magnitude of the game industry, its rapid growth over the past decade and the increasing degree to which games are embedded in daily lives of any demographic globally. Current estimates suggest two billion people worldwide play digital games. The global game industry has grown 8-11 percent per year during the past decade, and by 2013 generated around $93 billion US dollars in revenue worldwide, reaching $100 billion in 2014 (Entertainment Software Association, 2014; Gartner Group, 2013; Newzoo, 2013).

Games have evolved into a mature medium where they are not just about abstractions or about fighting, but include emotional experiences and tough ethical choices. In addition, games have increasingly moved from a medium used just for entertainment to one that is used for advocacy, education, citizen engagement, and other non-entertainment purposes (Harteveld, 2011). Digital educational games were developed as soon as the first digital games were released, most noticeably typing and math games but also classics such as Oregon Trail (first released in 1971), which teaches children about the realities of nineteenth century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail such as dealing with dysentery, typhoid, and cholera. Analog games have been used for serious purposes as soon as civilization started, and arguably before that, where playing games was part of rituals and religious practices.

Abt (1970) referred to such Serious Games as combining the analytic and questioning concentration of the scientific viewpoint with the intuitive freedom and rewards of imaginative, artistic acts. Serious games have an explicit and carefully thought-out purpose. They are not intended to be played primarily for amusement – although this does not mean that serious games are not, or should not be, captivating and fun. Apart from the available technologies that are much more advanced, which are capable of connecting millions of players in a single virtual world (e.g. World of Warcraft), using games for serious purposes the major difference to prior times is the pervasiveness of the medium as well as the wide range of topics and purposes they are now used for – including for supply chain management directly relevant to humanitarian logistics (Sterman, 1989).

In fact, a wide variety of humanitarian games have already been developed. A well-known example concerns Darfur is Dying (released in 2006), a game about the crisis in western Sudan. In this game, the player chooses a family member of a Darfuri family that has been displaced by the conflict and has to run from the camp to a well and back while dodging militia patrols. Another example is Food Force, which was developed by the United Nations World Food Programme in 2005, where players go on missions to distribute food in a famine-affected country while learning about hunger and the work to prevent it. Not all of the existing examples are about advocacy. The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction invested in a range of digital and non-digital games to help promote awareness of how to reduce disaster risk, including Stop Disasters, a disaster simulation game from 2007 where players have to save as many lives as possible in a variety of disaster scenarios such as earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, wildfires, and hurricanes. Freerice is an ad-supported, free-to-play website where players donate ten grains of rice via the World Food Programme for each correctly answered question. To date over 97 billion grains have been donated. Gordon et al. (2014) describe the game UpRiver, which engages subsistence farmers and the Zambian Red Cross in crowdsourcing data on river levels enabling a better and more trusted flood warning system along the Zambezi river floodplain.

A significant number of humanitarian games have further been developed to address changing climate risks, by the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre (Mendler de Suarez et al., 2012):

This shows that with regarding humanitarian work games already being deployed and in significant numbers; and are used for a variety of purposes such as advocacy, civic engagement, and education. For example, games have been fully embedded in the teaching of humanitarian logistics at masters and doctoral level at MIT, University of Lugano, and the Hanken School of Economics, and have been used to propose innovative disaster preparedness measures from the Ugandan Parliament to the White House. Games as a medium for communicating complexity can have a significant impact on humanitarian work, and given current trends the demand for humanitarian games will most likely continue to grow.

However, with growth comes a responsibility of providing evidence of the impact and this necessitates scientific research and the sharing of best practices so practitioners and researchers can learn from each other. This is of critical importance in a field that is driven by non-profit organizations: investments need to be accounted for. In this Special Issue we are exploring the use of games for humanitarian work with the aim to help build such a body of knowledge. Other Special Issues or review articles have already been dedicated to the use of games for related domains, such as climate change (Eisenack and Reckien, 2013) or natural resource management (Barreteau et al., 2007). To our knowledge, no significant academic attention has been given to humanitarian work with regards to games. We conceive of this attempt as the beginning of what should become a longer and more comprehensive journey.

In this Guest Editorial we first provide the necessary context by explaining what games are and how playful activities are used. This will help to appreciate each of the three papers in the Special Issue. Then we explain each of the contributions against this background and discuss what we can learn from them. We end the Guest Editorial with a vision of how humanitarian scholars and practitioners can bring learning and dialogue to the next level with the support of game-enabled approaches.

Games are made of a set of parts that interrelate to form a complex whole. As a communication platform, games can successfully convey the existence and relevance of system complexity relevant to humanitarian work. Trade-offs, feedbacks, non-linearities, delays, probabilities, and unanticipated “side effects” are inherent in humanitarian decisions (Gonçalves, 2008). A remarkable diversity exists amongst games, ranging from board games to massively multiplayer online games. It is therefore hard to capture a single definition or perspective on what games are. Although scholars disagree on the exact definition of games (Juul, 2005; Salen and Zimmerman, 2004), there are a number of key characteristics that emerge and that are particularly relevant for humanitarian work:

• Participatory activity: a game involves one or more active participants referred to as players. This key characteristic of involving players is what sets games apart from the use of computer models and simulations, where people and organizations are represented as autonomous agents based on mathematical and stochastic models.

• Agency: a game needs to allow for meaningful actions and provide perceivable feedback. Mere involvement is not sufficient; players have to actively exert influence on what happens in a game by making decisions and, in return, the game system needs to respond to these decisions through feedback. This characteristic is referred to as having agency and distinguishes games from other media where consumers do not have the ability to act (such as publications and videos). It is also an important factor in what makes games engaging.

• Alternate reality: players make decisions in what we consider an alternate reality. The adjective “alternate” denotes that the activity is imagined and different from what we know as the physical world. It is what allows us to safely experiment with the future and past. The noun “reality” denotes that the activity is based on and in reality. It is based on reality because every game includes a “model of reality,” a representation of how the (game) world works. A game such as SimCity represents a model of urban planning, whereas a game such as Super Mario has a model of how gravity works. It is further based in reality because players bring in assumptions and skills into the game that will influence how the game unfolds and playing the game may influence behavior outside of the game. The latter is of course what is intended with games that are specifically designed for such impact.

• Structured activity: a game is organized by means of explicit rules and clear goals. Rules provide constraints and affordances on what players can do; goals give players an intent. Naturally following the presence of goals in a game, player effort is required to reach those goals. To accomplish this need for putting players to work, a game provides conflicts, challenges, and/or obstacles that need to be overcome. This structure is what sets games apart from free-form activities such as improvisation (see Tint et al., this special issue).

In sum, a game is a structured, participatory activity with one or more participants called players who have agency in an alternate reality. This definition is by no means as complete and exhaustive as described elsewhere (Juul, 2005; Salen and Zimmerman, 2004), but it gives a working concept to contrast games from other methods that are employed for humanitarian work such as decision-support systems and analytical tools. We argue that games have the capability to be a powerful tool for humanitarian learning and dialogue. The idea that games can be educational has been discussed at length by various scholars (Gee, 2003; Squire, 2011) and although more rigorous evidence is warranted, a number of studies have provided significant results that highlight their educational potential (Harteveld, 2012). The potential of games is primarily grounded into the experiential nature of play, but also in the ability to situate people in specific situations. Furthermore, a game provides a vehicle to engage stakeholders in a dialogue about important topics such as what impact climate change may have (Duke, 1974). A dialogue through a game is arguably more meaningful due to the key characteristics of alternate reality and structure. Without games as platforms linking decisions and consequences, merely bringing a group of stakeholders together to talk about issues may often result in what is considered “negotiated non-sense” (Mayer, 2009). There is no “reality check” of whether any of the ideas work, whereas in a well-designed game decisions can be made and evaluated. Gameplay enables exploration, experimentation, and discovery within defined systems.

Learning and dialogue are of critical importance for humanitarian work (DFID, 2011). From decades of humanitarian endeavors we have learned that change must come from within: it cannot be merely imposed and enforced. We need to engage local stakeholders by helping them explore how information can nurture decisions that influence results depending on how the larger system works. At the same time, humanitarian workers need to learn from the local stakeholders by understanding the needs and motivations that drive their actions. There are many methods for learning and dialogue in the humanitarian sector other than games; however, games have arguably affordances that foster learning and dialogue and are therefore worthwhile to be investigated further.

Designing an effective game is not a trivial task (Harteveld, 2011). Upfront one cannot determine what makes for a good game. It requires an iterative design process with extensive testing with the actual target audience to find out what works. Failure is not unlikely and this is problematic concerning the costs involved for making games. Although technology has made it easier and more affordable to make games (e.g. game engines such as Unity or GameMaker), making games is still extremely time consuming and expensive. According to an Academic Consortium on Impact Games a playable paper/concept prototype costs $25,000-75,000; a playable digital prototype $100,000-150,000; a simple browser game $150,000-200,000; a mobile or Facebook game $200,000-250,000; a PC game $500,000-1M; a cross-platform game $1M-2M; and a persistent multiplayer game $10M+. These cost estimates do not include grant overhead or associated research, assessment, and evaluation, so the startup costs for initiating this type of research forms a major obstacle to investigating the potential of games for humanitarian work. Low-tech games such as card and board games are of course less cost-inhibitive and for some humanitarian circumstances such games may be the only possibility to deploy (Mendler de Suarez et al., 2012). However, with the increased adoption of mobile technology in developing countries, designers can start envisioning digital games, and a few have already started exploring this (Kumar et al., 2012).

The design and facilitation of games can support improvements in humanitarian systems; yet the relationship between games and the humanitarian sector is, from the perspective of research, still in its infancy. It requires building a body of knowledge with evidence and best practices that will help prevent aspiring practitioners and researchers to reinvent the wheel, and that will showcase how using games for humanitarian work can be effective. In this Special Issue we make an initial step toward such a body of knowledge by examining three existing practices.

In this Special Issue we have three unique contributions that each shed light on current practices and provide insights into what is required for building a body of knowledge for gameplay to support the humanitarian sector. The first contribution, by Özpolat et al., describes the case of the Greatest Good Donation Calculator (GGDC), a “game-like” online participatory tool developed in collaboration with USAID Center for International Disaster Information to educate the American public about the real cost of shipping and handling material items overseas. The GGDC informs potential donors about the inefficiencies and problems that they can create through non-monetary contributions, which can be so disruptive that they strain humanitarian operations on the ground – earning the label of “the second disaster.”

In our view, the GGDC is a great example of a playful activity for learning and dialogue through experience – which according to leading educational scholars is a far more effective way of education. Instead of communicating the message through text, this tool allows potential donors to experience the problems caused by non-monetary contributions. A crucial reason why donors do not see the issue at hand is that the logistical disruption caused by unsolicited donations is a result of counterintuitive, emergent complexity in the humanitarian supply chain. People have the tendency to think linearly (i.e. “I donate so that will help”) and are unable to anticipate what the outcomes of their actions are in a complex system. In 1974, the gaming scholar Richard D. Duke wrote the now considered classic book Gaming, The Future’s Language, in which he argues that games are a powerful tool for communicating about complex systems. By playing with variables of various donations, players can experience the effects of their decisions and get a better understanding of delays, feedbacks, nonlinearities, and other dynamics of the system.

Özpolat et al. acknowledge that the current version of the GGDC is limited. They explain that it may not be considered a game proper as it lacks clear goals (see “structured activity”). Furthermore, player actions are restricted to providing input at the start of the process, which makes it less game-like because continued player effort is not required as part of their participation in the modeled system (see “agency”). Although the authors can revise GGDC with their collaborators to make it more game-like in the future, their work is actually a neat illustration of another growing movement that has potential for humanitarian work, that of gamification. Gamification is the use of game elements and techniques in a non-game context. Özpolat et al. arguably gamified a calculator for engaging the public and making insights more accessible. Recent research suggests that, in fact, simply framing an activity as a game already holds almost as much psychological power as the game mechanics themselves (Lieberoth, 2014). Therefore, by framing their activity as a game Özpolat et al. influence how users perceive their activity and so far user feedback is positive.

However, there is still much work to be done. A particular difficulty with awareness tools such as GGDC is to reach a significant number of people. Successes are known, including Darfur is Dying which has been played 1.7 million times since its release; however, there is no clear-cut formula for achieving high numbers of players. It requires a high-quality game but also a dissemination strategy. Özpolat et al. describe that in the future they would like to include social media platforms such as Facebook. The question that they and others need to confront is what incentives people have to share their experience. Another challenge is to make the experience from a one-way communication (i.e. calculator to player) into a more interactive dialogue with the public on donations. Bringing awareness on a sensitive subject in a fun and entertaining way may be sufficient but the impact may be greater if the public can actively contribute to the topic of donations. Very recently, an edited book appeared with articles from leading scholars in the area of gamification (Walz and Deterding, 2015), and this may serve as an inspiration to deal with these challenges. In addition, work on citizen science and crowdsourcing may provide a source of inspiration too.

The second contribution is by Gralla et al. on simulated emergency response exercises for humanitarian logistics. They describe in detail the Logistics Response Training, a week-long exercise provided by the United Nations World Food Programme to train humanitarian logisticians from multiple humanitarian agencies to respond to future emergencies. This training simulates precisely what logisticians would do in an actual emergency, and therefore, in terms of scale and scope this is a completely different kind of game than the GGDC by Özpolat et al., illustrating the diversity of games for humanitarian work. It is worth highlighting that such simulation exercises are often open-ended with no clear goals, making them less of a structured activity and therefore less game-like. However, many games include free-form activities and have no clear goals, such as the classic urban planning game SimCity. Also, large-scale Live Action Role-Playing (LARP) games exist where people assume roles (e.g. wizard or warrior) and enact their roles within an alternate reality that is set in the physical world. The kinds of humanitarian exercises that Gralla et al. describe share similarities with these LARPs, except that players take on realistic roles as opposed to fantastical ones. Some readers may think “The Logistics Response Training is not a game, it is a simulation.” They make a valid point. The specialized literature sees simulations are a game genre, and some simulations represent the physical world more precisely than others. We simply need to distinguish between simulations that are not a participatory activity versus those that are. In the literature this is done by calling them “simulation games” or “simulation exercises.” Both terms signal that the simulation is participatory, providing agency to those who engage.

In terms of building a body of knowledge, Gralla et al. point out that “in emergency response, simulated response exercises are a common and essential training method because of the non-routine nature of emergencies.” This is particularly interesting because it highlights that gaming has found widespread usage, also in the humanitarian work, yet there is little written and disseminated about this common practice, which hinders critical examination of experiences and sharing of best practices. Gralla et al. attempt to deal with this research gap of dissemination in two ways. First, they describe how they adapted the Logistics Response Training to another setting, that of a classroom environment. Second, they developed a framework for such adaptation that would allow for a more systematic approach to capturing knowledge and codifying good practices and thereby improve emergency training throughout the humanitarian community. Their experience of adapting the Logistics Response Training to the classroom environment provides valuable insights. Simulation exercises provide the ability for “adaptive expertise,” which contrasts to routine expertise. Simulation exercises provide the ability to adapt to new scenarios and unexpected events by allowing players to make sense of non-routine events (see also Harteveld, 2012). The experience gained can then serve as a base to make rapid decisions in emergencies.

Our third contribution by Tint et al. expands on this argument, bringing it more closely to the “fun” element of games: it argues that Applied Improvisation is an effective methodology for disaster preparedness and response training in humanitarian contexts. Tint et al. explain that particular skills are needed when facing unexpected circumstances – which constitute the norm for humanitarian workers. People need to be agile, flexible, clear, collaborative, decisive, spontaneous, and effective. Applied Improvisation uses principles and processes from improvisational theater to engage participants in fostering these skills, helping them feel comfortable and connected in the face of the unknown. In the article the authors present a framework for Applied Improvisation called P.L.A.Y.! and showcase what kinds of improvisational activities can be done to impart certain critical skills for disaster management, with insights from humanitarian practitioners across the globe.

Applied improvisation is not a game according to some strict definitions. Although improvisation does have rules (e.g. “yes and […]”), it is very conducive to free-form engagement, contrasting with the more clearly constrained activities described in the other two contributions. For that reason, the paper by Tint et al. is highly relevant for scholars and practitioners who want to expand the space of possibility in learning and dialogue processes. This is relevant especially with the increased emphasis on developing digital games: A problem with digital games is that they can become too rigid. Most often decisions and scenarios are predetermined, allowing for little flexibility and spontaneity. For example, if a player comes up with a creative idea of changing the supply chain, the game may not provide an option to accomplish this. With analog games such creativity can be dealt with to some extent by facilitators who can then determine, based on their expertise, how the game should unfold. This inability to provide for improvised input is problematic because emergency situations as both Gralla et al. and Tint et al. point out require such creative responses. Therefore, game designers and disaster managers can learn from applied improvisation and from practitioners like Tint et al. who have ten years of experience in training through serious yet playful activities.

Games are increasingly used for serious purposes. In the field of disaster management, some publications have explicitly addressed the role of games as playable system dynamic models to help understand and address climate risk challenges, including some case studies that map the gameplay dynamics to various components of risk management frameworks (Mendler de Suarez et al., 2012; Gordon et al., 2014; Suarez et al., 2014; World Bank, 2014). According to the most strict definitions of “games,” the three papers in this Special Issue are on the edges, i.e. on the active, evolving periphery: a gamified calculator, a simulation exercise, and applied improvisation, respectively. An important reason for featuring these papers is that each contribution illustrates a significantly different approach to game-enabled humanitarian work, one that is participatory and proactive in supporting learning and dialogue. This shows that the humanitarian sector is open to gameful approaches. It also signifies that we are indeed still on “Level 1” when it comes to humanitarian games. The current state is that scholars and practitioners are exploring the use of gameplay activities, often starting at the edges, and are trying to understand how it works and why. Based on the insights of this Special Issue, the next level of games for humanitarian work would entail the following.

First, from this Special Issue it becomes clear that gameful approaches have been used for decades and in the case of simulation exercises are even considered “common practice.” Despite the widespread usage, little documentation exists on how to accomplish such approaches effectively, nor does any clear evidence exist on key issues such as their effectiveness or obstacles for scaling up. The aim of this Special Issue is to contribute to a body of knowledge on the use of games that needs to grow, and the three papers have provided us with design strategies for public engagement, an adaptation framework for simulation exercises, and an applied improvisation framework, respectively. These insights will help gameful approaches to build forth on the expertise and experiences of the authors in this Special Issue.

Second, the papers highlight that the next level needs to focus on providing analytically rigorous evaluations. This need is not specific to using games for humanitarian work. In fact, it is an item on the research agenda for games for impact in general (Harteveld, 2012). However, in other domains such as health (Kato et al., 2008) and education (Mayer et al., 2014), more empirical studies have been pursued to gather evidence on the impact of game-enabled activities. Although there are specific practical barriers for empirical studies in a humanitarian context, it will be important to start making an effort to accomplishing this.

Third, due to the extensive resources needed for developing games, partnerships are crucial for success. All three sets of contributors to this issue collaborated in their efforts with partners, which may partially account for the success that they accomplished. Such partnerships will help to make sure games will contain the right content, are relevant for their target audience, and will be implemented, disseminated, and maintained. Partnering may seem obvious, but many games have found no application because there was not anyone to support it. Partnerships are easier to establish when a body of knowledge exist, yet such knowledge is best gained through partnerships. This chicken-and-egg problem can only be resolved with strong exemplars that help to illustrate the impact games have on the humanitarian sector. Advancing humanitarian games will require such strong exemplars, combining the talents of game designers with the experience and insights of humanitarian workers – two communities of practice that rarely find themselves under the same roof.

Fourth, it would be valuable to nurture a progression from game-like approaches (such as described in this Special Issue) to more fully fleshed-out games (such as they are applied and analyzed in the health and education sector). To date a number of examples exist such as those described in the first sections of this editorial. However, many more are needed to build a community on using games for humanitarian work. As stated in our introduction, we conceive of this Special Issue as the beginning of what should become a longer and more comprehensive journey. To start well, we should first distill lessons from existing practices – and this is what this Special Issue offers. We are pleased that Özpolat et al., Gralla et al., and Tint et al. took the time and effort to share their experiences. These practices will ultimately help enrich humanitarian work, drawing from the compelling power of games to take learning and dialogue to the next level.

The Guest Editors would like to thank all the reviewers for their contribution to this Special Issue and the authors for their vision, patience, and persistence in realizing it. Support for the research that led to this guest editorial was provided by the Norwegian Research Council, through the project “Courting Catastrophe? Humanitarian Policy and Practice in a Changing Climate”.