How to use video games for advocacy work

WASHINGTON — “Experience true combat gameplay in a massive military sandbox. Authentic, diverse, open — Arma 3 sends you to war.” So goes the battle cry of popular war-fighting video game, Arma 3, which sends its players into military combat between NATO forces and CSAT, an imaginary opposition. In September, the makers of Arma 3 introduced an add-on module dealing with a subject that has never before been the focus of such a game: international humanitarian law, or IHL. Produced in consultation with the International Committee of the Red Cross, the add-on — “Laws of War” — introduces a fictional humanitarian organization to the game to spread understanding of IHL among its 3.2 million players. To the relief of its producers, the module — which costs about $40 to download — is attracting favorable reviews and considerable gamer interest, with scant pushback from dissatisfied players. Laws of War grew out of several years of discussion between Arma 3’s Prague-based manufacturer Bohemia Interactive and the Geneva-based ICRC, which provided support and guidance throughout the year-long development process, instructing the developers on the intricacies of IHL and critiquing the storylines and dialogue to make them more realistic. For its part, Bohemia Interactive will donate half of the module’s sales revenue this year to ICRC. This is not the only NGO to be experimenting with video games in its advocacy work. In the past few years, other humanitarian and charitable organizations have discovered the advertising and educational value of having their cause incorporated into games. Devex spoke with several people involved in the trend to gather lessons from their experiences of putting social issues into the hands of video gamers. 1. Don’t preach Experts told Devex that the best way to reach gamers is not by preaching or hitting them over the head with your message. As much as possible, give the game developers wide scope to create content that is both realistic and entertaining, incorporating your message in a way that fits naturally. “We try to be entertaining, not lecture,” said Jay Crowe, Bohemia Interactive’s creative director for the Laws of War project. “We try to tell the story through a small number of characters — in this case through conversations between an investigative journalist and an explosives expert involved in clearing landmines and cluster munitions. This framing is how we try to personalize the issues of IHL.” The mine-clearing expert works for a fictional NGO, IDAP (International Development & Aid Project), which was created for the module, modeled loosely on the ICRC. The Red Cross provided Bohemia with its handbooks and training manuals, and ICRC lawyers and delegates vetted the dialogue to make sure it both accurately reflects IHL and is realistic in depicting exchanges between the fictional NGO and military forces, guerrillas, civilians, and others. In addition, according to Christian Rouffaer, head of the ICRC’s Virtual Reality Unit, “we made our specialists available … to consult on the effects of anti-personnel or anti-tank mines, unexploded ordnance, cluster munitions, and so on — basically, anything we could do to enhance the realism and ensure that the game was faithful to IHL.” Yet Bohemia Interactive was entirely responsible for the Laws of War module, said Rouffaer. “We didn’t tell them what to do.” He said there were fears that many experienced gamers would reject the new product. But since it went on sale last month, initial indications suggest it is selling well and has garnered very positive reviews. Part of the reason, Rouffaer believes, is that the module gives the player a large degree of liberty to act as they want. “It doesn’t force you to do anything,” he said. “For example, you can use cluster bombs on civilians or humanitarian workers if you want. But now players will know it's a war crime. And there will be consequences.” For example, survivors may join your enemy, increasing their forces over yours. 2. Explore various options for communicating your message In a year-long campaign that started in 2014, gamemaker Pixelberry Studios, of Mountain View, California, partnered with Cybersmile Foundation to introduce a storyline about bullying into Pixelberry’s “High School Story” video game. The campaign educated large numbers of adolescents on dealing with the issue, provided links to where they could get help, and raised about $350,000 for the Cybersmile Foundation through in-game t-shirt sales. Jude Ower, founding CEO of Playmob, a London-based company that connects charities with gamemakers, told Devex that this kind of collaboration, where a charity’s message is incorporated into the storyline of the game, is labor-intensive and costly — but in some cases, like this one, it can be very successful. A less expensive, and more common approach, she said, is for charities or NGOs to insert a short “playable ad” into a video game. After a gamer plays through the ad, “they can take a certain action at the end, such as making a pledge, signing a petition, or making a donation,” said Ower. “Only a small number of gamers give money, but they all get educated.” 3. Don’t make assumptions about gamers Although the Laws of War add-on was only released last month, its apparent success demonstrates that the community of gamers harbors a certain appetite for different and challenging experiences if they are presented in an engaging and entertaining way. “We wanted to present a different perspective on the battlefield,” said Bohemia Interactive’s Crowe. “Our players sometimes like complicated topics. For players who have been with us for four years [since the original release of Arma 3], it’s something to get excited about.” The ICRC’s Rouffaer agrees. “Gamers are a bit tired of the same thing brought to them year after year. I think the industry is watching very carefully what Bohemia Interactive is doing with this DLC [downloadable content]. They’ll see that you can bring more complex scenarios.” He added, “I expect we’ll have more dialogue with the industry in the future.” Ower told Devex that the stereotype of the typical gamer being “a teenage boy playing violent games in his bedroom … could not be further from reality.” According to ICRC’s Rouffaer, “there are now 1.8 billion gamers in the world [increasingly on mobile devices], the average gamer is 35 years old and, perhaps surprising to some, only 56 percent of gamers are men.” 4. Be bold in engaging with content ICRC’s outreach to video game producers started in 2011 after the organization tasked Rouffaer with cataloguing the rampant violations of IHL on display — typically uncritically — in leading war-themed video games. The ICRC wrote to a dozen leading video game producers, inviting them to attend a special session on the subject at a conference of the entire Red Cross and Red Crescent movement in Geneva that fall — causing some controversy in the gaming community. Bohemia Interactive was rare in that its games already displayed some sensitivity to the negative consequences of targeting civilians. The company was one of very few to accept the Red Cross invitation to enter into a dialogue on the issue. In a recent interview published by ICRC, Rouffaer explained that the organization remains neutral on the issue of depicting violence in gaming: “We are not part of the debate on violence in video games. As in real life, we don’t comment on why people are fighting. Instead, we insist on our strict neutrality and impartiality in armed conflicts and focus on reminding fighters about their obligations under international humanitarian law.” “With video games, our goal is not to spoil the fun, but rather to expose players to an extra layer of complexity present in war — to let them learn more about the roles and responsibilities of real soldiers when it comes to IHL,” he said. Read more international development news online, and subscribe to The Development Newswire to receive the latest from the world’s leading donors and decision-makers — emailed to you free every business day.