Gaming for a Good Cause

By SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 12/21/2007 11:11:00 AM

Gaming is taking on a social conscience. New York City’s Parsons School of Design is developing video games called "serious games" and will study whether playing them can be a force for social good.

The games, which aim to educate, appeal mostly to a niche market and are used to train public officials, students and professionals in various fields, says the Associated Press.

The U.S. military, for example, trains with games that model terrorist attacks, school hostage crises and natural disasters. Other serious games teach nonviolent ways of fighting dictators and military occupiers.

Director Colleen Macklin hopes research at Parsons The New School of Design's PETLab will make serious games more mainstream.

"Our goal is really to create intersections between game design, social issues and learning," she to AP.

PETLab, in the first such effort in the country, will create models of new types of games or interactive designs that address social issues and will do interactive research on whether playing the games helps effect positive social change.

It is funded by a $450,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation as part of the foundation's study of how digital technologies are changing the way people learn and socialize.

Lab researchers hope to create more games like the popular "Ayiti: The Cost of Life," developed by the nonprofit Global Kids and tech company GameLab, in which players manage life for a virtual family of five in rural Haiti. The object of the game is to make spending decisions -- saving money vs. throwing a party vs. buying food -- that keep the family healthy.