Can serious games help to transform the conflict in Yemen?
Can serious games help to transform the conflict in Yemen?
Can serious games help to transform the conflict in Yemen?
By Philipp Busch
Summary
I was working as a project manager and consultant for the project "Peace Process Support for Yemen", 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.
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.
Each of the seven games was downloaded over 10,000 times from the Playstore, with over 90% of the downloads from Yemen.
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.
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.
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.
Reference
Peace News. (n.d.). Can serious games help to transform the conflict in Yemen? Retrieved November 21, 2022, from https://peacenews.com/can-serious-games-transform-the-conflict-in-yemen/