Inculcating Empathy Through Play
The brief: design a persuasive game around the theme of equality, diversity and inclusion. Deliverables: a game pitch video (below) and a short demo of a simple game themed around empathy.
This project was undertaken as part of the MSc. It involves the usage of paper and digital prototyping techniques, as well as the use of persuasive game design techniques to enhance motivation and change mindsets.
Borgnon's Going Home is a persuasive game aimed at children aged 6-12. Through absurdist puzzles, engaging characters and a simple storyline, the game urges players to think more deeply about the lives of those different to them.
Game Pitch video. A brief overview of the game’s design and future steps.
Secondary Research
Beginning with secondary research in the academic literature on psychology and social planning, together with informal interviews with classmates, it became clear that empathy is a key value underlying equality, diversity and inclusion. In particular, the research suggests that the use of role-playing in activity helps to inculcate empathy in children [Staub, 1971; Hoffman, 1973], which goes on to have positive effects on intergroup relations [Stephan & Finlay, 1999].
The opportunity, then, is for a game is to bring the value of empathy into children's play - allowing for practice in a virtual world, to be manifested in real-world behaviour. The game has to force players to take on different characters viewpoints and importantly, work on solving common problems.
References:
Hoffman, M. L. (1973). Empathy, Role-Taking, Guilt, and Development of Altruistic Motives.
Staub, E. (1971). The use of role playing and induction in children's learning of helping and sharing behavior. Child Development, 805-816.
Stephan, W. G., & Finlay, K. (1999). The role of empathy in improving intergroup relations. Journal of Social issues, 55(4), 729-743.
Concept Creation
This led to the design of a children's game where empathy itself is baked into the design. Borgnon, an alien on safari, helps a diverse range of NPCs as he moves up levels in a magical castle. Central to the game is Borgnon's main power of shape shifting. This gives players both the illusion of a roster of characters working together, as well as the agency of literally acting out empathy within the game's puzzles.
To spur player engagement, the game's puzzles are designed to be absurdist and fun.
Gameplay difficulty is controlled through the possible choices for shape-shifting as well as the need for multiple shape-shifts within a level - both increasing with game progress.
Finally, each level has custom dialogue to introduce each new character and their problems, further underlining the theme of empathy weaved into the game.
Overall, the idea is to give players a powerful metaphor to navigate equality, diversity, and inclusion through empathy, put into practice in-game, and continued in real life.
Screenshot of dialogue from Mass Effect. One of the main inspirations for the design of empathy-via-interaction within a game.
Level sketches. For planning out the game's story and puzzles; developing the game mechanics and themes.
Paper Prototyping
Before starting on coding the game, I needed to know that this concept would work.
Using the sketches from the design, I conducted tests for each level using a keychain to represent Borgnon and my own commentary to provide dialogue and story - Dungeon-master style.
Conceptually, the participants thought the concept was effective - which gave me the impetus to start on coding a digital prototype.
The prototype, however, uncovered playability issues - players were unsure of how to start the game, and found some dialogue too minimalistic. The digital prototype would have to include 1) some easier levels with instructions and 2) more extensive dialogue to flesh out each character.
Paper prototyping. Testing the viability and playability of the core game design (conducted with one coursemate and one friend).
Coding a Digital Prototype
This was the greatest challenge posed by the project as I had little experience in coding.
Ultimately, I decided to use Stencyl to create the digital prototype as it allows for block coding and has a vibrant community to help answer questions. Through this, I learnt some of the basics of coding, such different kinds of operators, triggers and custom variables.
For game assets, I relied heavily on kenney.nl and opengameart.org, and soundimage.org to create the right feel for the prototype.
After some testing of the digital prototype amongst classmates and friends, I published the game as a demo to accompany the game pitch video shown at the top of this page. Unfortunately, due to ethical reasons, I could not obtain a 6-12 year old to help with playtesting.
Stencyl coding environment. Coding the game's rules was the biggest challenge; so having the 'training wheels' of block coding in Stencyl helped greatly.
Next Steps; Evaluation
The next steps are to complete the game by creating the remaining levels.
As the game is meant to spur behaviour and change mindsets, I would also like to include potential topics for caregivers to discuss with players outside of the game.
Evaluation should focus on the efficacy in changing mindsets towards empathy - and its subsequent influence on equality, diversity, and inclusion.
Ideally, this would be done with three rounds of surveys - looking specifically at player attitudes and behaviour. The first will be conducted before playing the game, the second immediately after finishing the game, and the third conducted two weeks after finishing the game.
Gameplay observation should also be conducted to evaluate playability.
Gameplay. Screenshot from level 2.
Learnings
Undertaking this project was an attempt to immerse myself in new and unfamiliar skills - namely game design, coding and video editing.
The result is in the creation of artefacts designed not-so-much as a complete game, but as narrative design documents for members of a game design studio to use to easily understand a game concept (project leads), to market it (marketers), and to design and code it (level designers, artists, coders).
The video pitch in conjunction with game pitch documents taught me the need for succinct and catchy descriptions to excite and inspire.
The game specification document taught me the need for creating detailed, but simple to understand, plans to ensure an entire team can rally around one design and narrative for the player.
The writing of code gave me first hand experience of the coders’ needs - specific goals broken down into quests, objectives, text, objects, variables and properties - that will help in future communication.