HERE’S HOW GAME DESIGN CAN REDUCE STEREOTYPES AND SOCIAL BIASES
I found this article about a month ago when searching for how psychology and game design compliment each other, as this subject matter is very interesting to me. I’ve always wanted to be able to have a deeper effect on players when they play the games I create.
This article is about how you can use mechanics and context to create a persuasion in your players, instead of being explicit. It’s a subtle but intended effect.
It talks about a study where two party games (Awkward Moment and Buffalo) are played by users and both have a positive effect on the player, in this case reducing the player’s bias and their social stereotypes. They started thinking more broadly about those topics because they were softly introduced deep within the game design.
This was so interesting to read because I always thought being able to embed something like that into a game is both so fantastic, yet a little frightening. Luckily, humans tend to stick to their morals regardless of persuasion, this just helps to further that openness to progression. It won’t make a publicly open bigot into a feminist, unfortunately. That would take more explicit persuasion.
I think this is very important for a game designer to know, as it’s important to have some sort of goal that you want to achieve with your game. Whether it’s entertainment, criticism, learning, teaching, and so on. A designer needs to be able to create the game world and it’s mechanics so that this goal is reached, otherwise there’s nothing to work towards.
I’d very much recommend this article, and more so this topic of interest to anyone who is intrigued.
REFERENCES
Tiltfactor | Here’s How Game Design Can Reduce Stereotypes and Social Biases. (2016). Tiltfactor.org. Retrieved 19 June 2016, from http://www.tiltfactor.org/heres-how-game-design-can-reduce-biases/
AARDWOLFF 