Can serious games help to transform the conflict in Yemen?

If we want to reach out to a young audience, we need to adapt our use of media. A serious game is a game with a primary purpose other than pure entertainment. I was working as a project manager and consultant for the project “Peace Process Support for Yemen (PPSY)”, I will share some insights on the use of Serious Games to deliver a message of peaceful coexistence to our target audience: the youth of Yemen. 

Our games serve as an environment for intended learning, awareness raising and even behaviour change. The player’s actions in the games do not lead to direct consequences in the real world. The player finds him or herself in the so-called Magic Circle, in which they can try out different behaviours and learn from mistakes without being punished in the real world. In this protected learning environment, players interact with content on non-violent conflict transformation, are encouraged to reflect on related topics and apply certain approaches in their own lives.

The format of the digital serious game is particularly suitable for a young target group used to using a smartphone. 70% of the population in Yemen is 30  or younger. The majority of these young people have access to a smartphone and belong to the gamer generation, which is equally composed of female and male gamers and regularly plays games, especially on smartphones. Consequently, it was promising to use a game format to reach out to youth, especially in a country where it is extremely difficult to approach them physically due to the ongoing conflicts.

The games were developed in cooperation with a group of European game development studios led by the non-profit organisation Butterfly Works. Additionally, to ensure a user-centred design and create content and game environments adapted to the context and the target group, artists, gamers and developers from Yemen were contracted to accompany the process and add the “Yemeni touch”. During the development phase, the first unintended success of the project occurred: the loose network of Yemeni individuals founded their own game development studio in Sana’a called Arkadia Studio, in order to respond in a structured way to the requests of the project and to develop further games for peace support out of their own motivation. In the period 2016 – 2020, seven serious games were developed, each with a different approach and target group within the Yemeni population. 

The development process was divided into the phases of analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation. In the analysis phase, the context and the target group were closely examined in cooperation with the Yemeni artists and complementary research. The Design Thinking approach was used as a way to ensure a user-centred solution. In the design phase, the game concept was created with a cross-functional and cross-cultural team and adapted to the target group. At the same time, the learning content was integrated into the game mechanics themselves to minimise a purely sequential order of learning and fun. 

In the development phase, the code for the game was created and artistic elements such as story, illustrations, animations and sound were integrated. Using agile project management, the games were developed iteratively. They were tested by the target group at certain intervals and the feedback on the game mechanics and technical improvements were incorporated. In the implementation phase, the games were uploaded to the Playstore and supported by an online and offline promotion campaign. The evaluation of the success of the games did not start after the implementation but was conducted throughout the duration of the project.  Various impact quantitative and qualitative impact measurement methods applied both inside and outside the games evaluated the project as a success. A community was born that was actively discussing the peacebuilding messages from the games and the promotion campaign. The discussions took place online on social media or offline on a variety of events supporting the games.

Each of the seven games was downloaded over 10,000 times from the Playstore, with over 90% of the downloads from Yemen. The accompanying Facebook page had over 40,000 followers at the time, and now has over 65,000. The average rating of the games was 4.4 out of 5 possible stars in the Playstore, and one game even appeared in the top 3 of the Playstore in Yemen for a short time. Meanwhile, the PPSY project is pursuing a multimedia approach, developing online campaigns on social media, short films and a TV series in cooperation with Yemeni stakeholders to spread the messages of non-violent conflict transformation in Yemen with a target group-oriented focus.

Once developed, a serious game can be scaled up and developed further. The Yemeni context is one of many examples of applications in which serious games have been successfully used to convey complex learning content in a contextualised, user-centred and interactive way. A well-designed serious game not only provides access to and interaction with relevant learning content but also fulfills another important criterion: it is fun to play.

Working on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the European Union (EU), the Project “Peace Process Support for Yemen (PPSY)”, implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH is improving the capacities for non-violent conflict resolution in Yemen. The company Mind Games GmbH from Germany supports the project and other actors of international organizations on the development of serious games that are tailored to the target audience, context and culture.

Philipp Busch

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Dr. Philipp Busch is a game designer, author and international keynote speaker. In spring 2018 Busch finished his doctoral thesis on “Gamification and Serious Games in Development Cooperation”. He teaches game-based approaches and agile methods at the University of Mainz, Germany and is a certified Scrum Master and Design Thinking Coach. He has worked for several years in the sector of international cooperation with a specific focus on Gamification, Serious Games and interactive digital learning scenarios. In 2020, Busch started his own consultancy working in close cooperation with different actors of international cooperation. His company Mind Games GmbH supports institutions such as the ILO, ETUI, FES or GIZ on implementing innovative learning scenarios in heterogeneous contexts, for instance Yemen, China, Afghanistan and a variety of African countries.

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