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Solving the world’s problems with games

Can playing a game save the world? Perhaps, if Dartmouth College-based Tiltfactor has anything to do with it.

Demonstrating their games for health and human rights, Tiltfactor director Mary Flanagan explained to Fellows how the "interdisciplinary innovation team" designs and studies "games for social impact" and how this approach can be a crucial driver of engagement in the path to the realization of the right to health.

From ‘POX: Save the People’, a board game and iPad app, which challenges players to stop the spread of a deadly disease in their community, to card game ‘Buffalo’ designed gender stereotypes and bias, Tiltfactor develops games in its "lab" to change social behaviors.

Well developed games can prompt changes in our own thinking and approaches to change and problems, and also help change group dynamics, Flanagan told Fellows, indicating that there is huge potential in the use of gaming in order to garner support and engage citizens with public policies, particularly within the sphere of right to health.

Tiltfactor has games designed to target not only school children, but all stakeholders in health - from policy makers to doctors and patients. Ensuring the right to health needs engaged stakeholders and partners; this engagement can be fostered and strengthened through such gaming.

Tiltfactor, Flanagan explained, not only design games, they also conduct thorough research into their game development and impact, sometimes with surprising results. In a revision of their POX game, zombies were added to the mix; Tiltfactor’s research found that players were more likely to understand systems thinking and resource allocation, as well as the importance of strategic vaccination of a population and herd immunity with the added element of zombies, rather than just considering a more realistic disease outbreak.

Tiltfactor is now working on other public health games at the request of Rwandan Health Minister and Dartmouth honorary doctorate, Agnes Binagwaho, including a game for five-year-olds to encourage hand washing and thus prevent the spread of easily communicable diseases called ‘Wash It!’ and ‘Source’, a game focusing on the spread of cholera.

After discussing the benefit of such games (and whether ethically they should carry a disclaimer/warning that they’re deliberately designed to alter behaviors and values), Fellows tried their hand at a game of role-play sport ‘Thrive!’, part of Tiltfactor’s RePlay Health project.

Through the game, Fellows realized the impact that different events and situations can have on health conditions. As a level playing field started to quickly reflect unequal conditions, Fellows were able to participate in discussions about how to effectively implement programs and how to foster an enabling context for the effective realization of the right to health.

All of Tiltfactor’s games are available to buy and in some cases download from their website: www.tiltfactor.org/games