Abstract
This paper presents research on a tabletop game design for enhancing focused discussion strategy creation, engagement motivation, planning and resource allocation, and service leadership through collaborative gameplay. Background: Although the field of serious games has developed over the last three decades, the potential of games to be used as civic engagement and educational tools still lay unrealized. People in rural communities in India experience a range of barriers for constructive engagement. Serious games have been used to address the issue of civic engagement effectively. In this paper, we present a case study of Aadarsh Gaon, build your ideal village, a tabletop game where participants work together to discuss strategies to solve social issues in their community, in order to win the game. The paper discusses the concepts in the game, evolution of the game during playtesting and aspects of collaborative gameplay. Results: Three phases of playtesting with diverse participants suggest that the game could trigger focused discussions on strategy creation to solve social problems, but do not indicate significant progress in attitude towards service leadership, and planning and resource allocation. We conclude that serious games with purposeful game design elements could lead to constructive civic engagement.
Keywords
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Abt, C.: Serious Games. University Press of America, Lanham (1987)
Salen, K., Zimmerman, E.: Rules of Play. MIT Press, Cambridge (2004)
Dörner, R., Göbel, S., Effelsberg, W., Wiemeyer, J. (eds.): Serious Games. Springer, Heidelberg (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40612-1
Andersen, T.L., Kristensen, S., Nielsen, B.W., Grønbæk, K.: Designing an augmented reality board game with children. In: Proceeding of the 2004 Conference on Interaction Design and Children Building a Community - IDC 2004 (2004)
Sen, A.: Human rights and capabilities. J. Hum. Dev. 6(2), 151–166 (2005)
Rayan, D. (ed.): Empowerment and Poverty Reduction. The World Bank, June 2002
Amritanadamayi, M.: Mata Amritanandamayi Speech at United Nations 2015 - English Translated (2019)
Michael, D., Chen, S.: Serious Games: Games that Educate, Train, and Inform. Course Technology, Mason (2011)
Laamarti, F., Eid, M., El Saddik, A.: An overview of serious games. Int. J. Comput. Games Technol. 2014, 1–15 (2014)
Girard, C., Ecalle, J., Magnan, A.: Serious games as new educational tools: how effective are they? A meta-analysis of recent studies. J. Comput. Assist. Learn. 29(3), 207–219 (2012)
Connolly, T.M., Boyle, E.A., MacArthur, E., Hainey, T., Boyle, J.M.: A systematic literature review of empirical evidence on computer games and serious games. Comput. Educ. 59(2), 661–686 (2012)
Backlund, P., Hendrix, M.: Educational games - are they worth the effort? A literature survey of the effectiveness of serious games. In: 2013 5th International Conference on Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications (VS-GAMES) (2013)
Wouters, P., van Nimwegen, C., van Oostendorp, H., van der Spek, E.D.: A metaanalysis of the cognitive and motivational effects of serious games. J. Educ. Psychol. 105(2), 249–265 (2013)
Giessen, H.W.: Serious games effects: an overview. Procedia - Soc. Behav. Sci. 174, 2240–2244 (2015)
Wouters, P., Van der Spek, E.D., Van Oostendorp, H.: Current practices in serious game research. In: Games-Based Learning Advancements for Multi-Sensory Human Computer Interfaces, pp. 232–250. IGI Global (2009)
Gordon, E., Baldwin-Philippi, J., Balestra, M.: Why we engage: how theories of human behavior contribute to our understanding of civic engagement in a digital era. SSRN Electron. J. (2013)
Lenhart, J.: Teens, Video Games, and Civics: Teens’ Gaming Experiences Are Diverse and Include Significant Social Interaction and Civic Engagement. Eric.ed.gov. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED525058. Accessed 20 May 2018
Wu, J.S., Lee, J.J.: Climate change games as tools for education and engagement. Nat. Clim. Change 5(5), 413–418 (2015)
Poplin, A.: Playful public participation in urban planning: a case study for online serious games. Comput. Environ. Urban Syst. 36(3), 195–206 (2012)
Devisch, O., Poplin, A., Sofronie, S.: The gamification of civic participation: two experiments in improving the skills of citizens to reflect collectively on spatial issues. J. Urban Technol. 23(2), 81–102 (2016)
Gordon, E., Schirra, S.: S.: Playing with empathy. In: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Communities and Technologies - C&T 2011 (2011)
Hassan, L.: Governments should play games. Simul. Gaming 48(2), 249–267 (2016)
Harviainen, J.T., Hassan, L.: Governmental service gamification. Int. J. Innov. Digit. Econ. 10(3), 1–12 (2019)
Parker, B., Kozel, V.: Understanding poverty and vulnerability in India’s Uttar Pradesh and Bihar: a Q-squared approach. World Dev. 35(2), 296–311 (2007)
Sheshadri, S., Coley, C., Jagadeesh, S., Kongeseri, S., Devanathan, S., Bhavani, R.R.: Community centric vocational education: a strategy for implementation of computerized TVET delivery in rural india. In: International Conference on Emerging Trends In TVET: Vision 2025 (2015)
Eyben, R., Kabeer, N., Cornwall, A.: Conceptualising empowerment and the implications for pro-poor growth: a paper for the DAC Poverty Network (2008)
Mason, A.D., King, E.M.: Engendering development through gender equality in rights, resources, and voice (English). A World Bank policy research report. World Bank, Washington DC (2001)
Mansuri, G., Rao, V.: Localizing Development. The World Bank (2012)
John, A., Gopalakrishnan, R., Javed, R.: Reflections on use of participatory methods in the capacity building program for tribal community health volunteers. Indian J. Community Health 27(2), 290–294 (2015)
Kongeseri, S., Sheshadri, S., Coley, C., Muir, A., Bhavani, R.R.: Games for community development and problem solving: a multi-site case study. Adv. Sci. Lett. 24(4), 2358–2361 (2018)
Zagal, J.P., Rick, J., Hsi, I.: Collaborative games: lessons learned from board games. Simul. Gaming 37(1), 24–40 (2006)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Kongeseri, S., Coley, C. (2019). Design of a Collaborative Tabletop Game for Civic Engagement: Serious Games in Rural India. In: Zagalo, N., Veloso, A., Costa, L., Mealha, Ó. (eds) Videogame Sciences and Arts. VJ 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1164. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37983-4_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37983-4_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-37982-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-37983-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)