Flavored by Authenticity: How Personal Experiences Amplify Narrative

Matthew Farber, Juliana Loh, Kimberly Unger, and I headlined the Georgia Game Developers Association CIMFest last year with this powerful panel exploring how personal experiences empower narrative writing. Especially enlightening was the conversation on how personal experiences do not necessarily equate trauma but can instead be more uplifting and positive.  

Keynote Panel: Flavored by Authenticity: How Personal Experiences Amplify Narrative 

Digital storytelling is a currently evolving medium and the push-and-pull nature of player interaction in video games provides an opportunity for the inclusion of personal touchstones in order to more deeply connect with and engage a broad audience. Over the past decade, there has been an increase in the examination of personal narrative elements as methods of engagement in teaching and community building, most notably by contributing a level of accessible authenticity. 

This keynote examines how personal narratives inform narrative and character design as a whole in a game or virtual setting, Join us for a look at moments in popular games informed by personal narrative, from the indie to the AAA level, and reflect on steps that might be taken in order to retain authenticity while avoiding the pitfalls that naturally come with the wholesale creation of fantastic and fictional spaces. 

 

Sande Chen

Profiled as one of the Game Industry's Top 100 Most Influential Women and a 2020 Women in Games Global Hall of Fame winner, Sande Chen is a writer and game designer with over 15 years of experience in the industry. Her writing credits include 1999 Independent Games Festival winner Terminus and the PC RPG of the Year, The Witcher, for which she was nominated for a 2007 Writers Guild Award in Videogame Writing. She is the co-author of Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform and was a contributor to Secrets of the Game Business, Writing For Video Game Genres, and Professional Techniques for Videogame Writing. She has been a speaker at numerous game-related conferences, including the Game Developers Conference, NY Comic Con, PAX East, and SXSW. She has been invited to the White House and represented the USA at the World Conference on Science Literacy. She also has a Grammy nomination.

Matthew Farber

Matthew Farber, Ed.D. is an assistant professor at the University of Northern Colorado, where he founded the Gaming SEL Lab. He has been invited to the White House, authored several books and papers, and is a frequent collaborator with UNESCO and Games for Change. His latest book is Gaming SEL: Games as Transformational to Social and Emotional Learning (bit.ly/GamingSEL). For more, please visit MatthewFarber.com.

Juliana Loh

Juliana Loh is an independent Producer/Artist whose background includes branded entertainment, UX and art direction. In addition to developing educational/gaming experiences, she has honed her artistic skills as a concept and gallery-showing artist while pioneering, empowering and supporting grassroots tech meetups and communities. Currently working as an instructor and immersive artist, she is keenly aware of how emerging technology is changing the way we relate to each other. She is currently designing story-based Pro-Kindness Workshops using VR360 based on user-centered design thinking.

Kimberly Unger 

Kimberly made her first videogame back when the 80-column card was the new hot thing and after 20+ years as a pro in that industry, the magic still hasn’t faded. Now she sources leading-edge content for Oculus, lectures on the intersection of art and code for UCSC in Games and Playable Media, wrangles a monthly column on science-fiction in videogames over at Amazing Stories and writes science fiction about how all these app-driven superpowers are going to change the human race. Her debut sci-fi novel, NUCLEATION is available now on Amazon and her next novel The Extractionist will be available in November of 2021. You can find her on Twitter at @Ing3nu or on her blog at www.ungerink.com.

 

Upcoming CIMFest Keynote: Flavored by Authenticity

Hi!  If you missed our SXSW panel, you can catch it here on the SXSW 2021 YouTube channel.  It's completely different from the LudoNarraCon one even though the topic is the same.  There was just so much more to talk about emotional touchstones in emergent narrative!

If you want to know more about touchstones (Touchstones! Touchstones! Touchstones!), this Saturday June 12, 2021, we are headlining the Georgia Game Developers Association CIMFest and I also will be moderating IGDA GDSIG's skipped (due to the cancellation of GDC last year) roundtable, Creating Non-Toxic Gamer Communities.

Watch it for free on www.youtube.com/GeorgiaGameDevs 

Here's the deets!

Roundtable: Creating Non-Toxic Gamer Communities (1 PM Eastern)

What game design principles can be used to promote friendlier and harassment-free communities? Join us for a discussion on what strategies game designers can use to create safe virtual spaces that are enjoyable for all players. In particular, we focus on game mechanics that encourage community-oriented behaviors, the pros and cons of automated reporting, and how to minimize griefing.

 

Keynote Panel: Flavored by Authenticity: How Personal Experiences Amplify Narrative (3 PM Eastern)

Digital storytelling is a currently evolving medium and the push-and-pull nature of player interaction in video games provides an opportunity for the inclusion of personal touchstones in order to more deeply connect with and engage a broad audience. Over the past decade, there has been an increase in the examination of personal narrative elements as methods of engagement in teaching and community building, most notably by contributing a level of accessible authenticity. 

This keynote examines how personal narratives inform narrative and character design as a whole in a game or virtual setting, Join us for a look at moments in popular games informed by personal narrative, from the indie to the AAA level, and reflect on steps that might be taken in order to retain authenticity while avoiding the pitfalls that naturally come with the wholesale creation of fantastic and fictional spaces. 

Sande Chen

Profiled as one of the Game Industry's Top 100 Most Influential Women and a 2020 Women in Games Global Hall of Fame winner, Sande Chen is a writer and game designer with over 15 years of experience in the industry. Her writing credits include 1999 Independent Games Festival winner Terminus and the PC RPG of the Year, The Witcher, for which she was nominated for a 2007 Writers Guild Award in Videogame Writing. She is the co-author of Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform and was a contributor to Secrets of the Game Business, Writing For Video Game Genres, and Professional Techniques for Videogame Writing. She has been a speaker at numerous game-related conferences, including the Game Developers Conference, NY Comic Con, PAX East, and SXSW. She has been invited to the White House and represented the USA at the World Conference on Science Literacy. She also has a Grammy nomination.

Matthew Farber

Matthew Farber, Ed.D. is an assistant professor at the University of Northern Colorado, where he founded the Gaming SEL Lab. He has been invited to the White House, authored several books and papers, and is a frequent collaborator with UNESCO and Games for Change. His latest book is Gaming SEL: Games as Transformational to Social and Emotional Learning (bit.ly/GamingSEL). For more, please visit MatthewFarber.com.

Juliana Loh

Juliana Loh is an independent Producer/Artist whose background includes branded entertainment, UX and art direction. In addition to developing educational/gaming experiences, she has honed her artistic skills as a concept and gallery-showing artist while pioneering, empowering and supporting grassroots tech meetups and communities. Currently working as an instructor and immersive artist, she is keenly aware of how emerging technology is changing the way we relate to each other. She is currently designing story-based Pro-Kindness Workshops using VR360 based on user-centered design thinking.

Kimberly Unger 

Kimberly made her first videogame back when the 80-column card was the new hot thing and after 20+ years as a pro in that industry, the magic still hasn’t faded. Now she sources leading-edge content for Oculus, lectures on the intersection of art and code for UCSC in Games and Playable Media, wrangles a monthly column on science-fiction in videogames over at Amazing Stories and writes science fiction about how all these app-driven superpowers are going to change the human race. Her debut sci-fi novel, NUCLEATION is available now on Amazon and her next novel The Extractionist will be available in November of 2021. You can find her on Twitter at @Ing3nu or on her blog at www.ungerink.com.

Live Action Online Games (LAOG) During Lockdown

In this article, Sande Chen reports on the use of educational live-action online games (LAOG), a variant of educational LARPs. 

During the pandemic lockdown, it was impossible to play Live Action Role-Playing games (LARPs) that require face-to-face contact. LARP designers like Isabella Negri were forced to consider how LARPs could be played in an online-only setting.  Live Action Online Games (LAOGs), as they were called, were not a new idea, but their popularity in Italy did not rise until 2020 due to the lockdown. 

Speaking at Games For Impact, an online festival celebrating games with social impact, in her session, "Justice Talk: Digital Educational LARPs Under Lockdown," Negri discussed the challenges in converting an existing LARP to LAOG format and gave tips on how best to approach the design of LAOGs. 

Negri first set upon trying to convert her existing eduLARP, Victorian Murder Party into a LAOG. She discovered there were several difficulties in this endeavor due to the nature of online spaces. Players could speak over each other, leading to chaos, or players could opt not to speak at all, which made for a very boring scenario. Most importantly, because body movement, touch, and voice were limited, the normal ways of energizing players could not be done. She further discovered that more than 6 players in a virtual room was not a good idea because it usually turned negative.

Negri found it far easier to design a LAOG from scratch and incorporate the online setting and facilitator into the narrative. Her design could take advantage of whatever digital tool the LAOG would use.  

Justice Talk, an eduLAOG based on the TV show The Orville, featured three convicted felons and a moderator (played by the facilitator) in a live broadcast. The viewing audience got to decide the fate of each felon. The educational goals were to explore biases, social psychology, modernity, politics, and heuristics.

LARPs typically have five phases: the icebreaker, workshop, game, debrief, and follow-up. Because of the online setting, Justice Talk needed a re-imagining of these phases. The workshop consisted of world creation with the audience and the game phase was split into 3 parts. First, the facilitator would get the three main participants to elaborate on their relationship and back story. Then, the televised Q&A would start, with some questions from the audience. Finally, the audience would vote on the verdicts. At the end, the featured players would step out of their roles and there would be a semi-structured debrief based on the issues.

In the Q&A section of the presentation, Negri revealed that icebreakers and energizers were difficult to conduct online. There were the logistics of muting and unmuting or accidentally leaving the microphone on for hot mic moments. Pacing was especially important as was ensuring there was ample opportunity for all players to participate and be involved in the story.

Sande Chen is a NYC-based writer and game designer whose work has spanned over 15 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Fight the coronavirus by playing this game!

In this article, game designer Sande Chen reports on the game industry's efforts to combat the coronavirus and solve the logistical fallout from the pandemic. 

As industry trade shows like E3, GDC, and SXSW are canceled due to concerns over COVID 19 and game production delays are occurring over supply disruptions, the researchers at University of Washington responsible for the game FoldIt have released a new puzzle aimed at halting the spread of the coronavirus.

Such games are known as citizen science games because members of the public, as citizen scientists, can help scientific efforts. There are many instances, as in the game FoldIt, where humans are much better at finding solutions than computers.

As schools and colleges go online and employees work remotely, I hope that we will be able to see more virtual conferences such as not.GDC, happening at the same week as the canceled event.  Indie developers affected by the cancellations and the inability to pitch games can find assistance at the GDC Relief Fund.

The IGDA Game Design SIG had been slated to have a roundtable at the Game Developers Conference this year entitled "Designing Non-Toxic Communities (Presented by the IGDA)" and a social meeting. We hope that we can discuss this issue on the IGDA Twitch channel in the coming months.

There is also an effort to provide a back-up plan for the US election should quarantine be needed in November. If you'd like to participate, sign up at Save the Election.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Your Opinions Wanted on New York Regents Exams

In this article, game designer Sande Chen wonders if game-based learning and assessment can replace or supplement standardized tests.

The standard in assessment for high school students in New York, the Regents exams, are up for review this month. Educators, parents, students, and the general public can give their feedback on whether New York should change its graduation requirements at meetings in March across the state. Those who can't make the meetings can offer their opinion on the online survey here. Of concern is whether or not the New York Regents exams should be replaced or modified.

Do the Regents exams even reflect the 21st-Century skills students need? Some attendees at a recent meeting wondered if portfolios or projects can be submitted in lieu of standardized tests, but how can these be fairly assessed? Others wanted students to be more aware of the global community and civic participation, pointing out that compared to students of other countries, American students are sorely lacking. Most agreed that a change is needed.

The American education system is heavily invested in standardized tests. Faced with preparation for the onslaught of standardized tests, high school teachers tend to avoid game-based learning.

However, game-based learning can provide the answers on how to assess project-based curriculum. Though many educational games compromise and include quizzes or assignments, a well-designed learning game should be able to assess understanding through completion. What that means is that a student needs to learn the required material in order to complete the game.

Moreover, if the project is done through a simulation or a game, it can be more objectively compared to an ideal since the program will judge each project by the same guidelines. Imagine, if you will, a game like Kerbal Space Program, in which students will build rockets. Some students will have rockets that succeed and some students won't. Those that don't succeed will be inclined to build and build rockets until they have better rockets.

If the educator wants to highlight civics or the global community, a game that encourages social responsibility or citizen science can be chosen.

Through game-based learning, students learn about systems thinking. They learn to adapt to changing circumstances. They aren't memorizing facts to do well on tests. The skills they learn through game-based learning will help them in the workplace.

Sande Chen is the co-author of Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform. As a serious games consultant, she helps companies harness the power of video games for non-entertainment purposes. Her career as a writer, producer, and game designer has spanned over 15 years in the game industry. Her game credits include 1999 Independent Games Festival winner Terminus, MMO Hall of Fame inductee Wizard101, and the 2007 PC RPG of the Year, The Witcher, for which she was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award in Videogame Writing. She has been invited to the White House and has spoken at conferences around the globe, including the Game Developers Conference, Game Education Summit, SXSW Interactive, Serious Play Conference, and Games For Change Festival.

Top Ten Most Read Articles of GDAM

Happy Holidays! I've just noticed that this blog was started 10 years ago! I don't think I've ever done a retrospective, so without further ado, here is the Top Ten list of the most popular articles on Game Design Aspect (according to Google stats):

1.  Great Narrative Stories are the Answer 

This article was the culmination of a series of blog posts about how to measure social impact and effectively change a person's belief system. I summarized Christopher Graves' keynote at the 2017 Games For Change Festival. This article was also cited in the report, "The Limits and Strengths of Using Digital Games as Empathy Machines," by Matthew Farber and Karen Schrier.

2. GDC 2018: Professional Ethics For Game Designers

This article summarized IGDA GDSIG's roundtable at GDC 2018, which covered a range of topics, including government regulation, microtransactions, and gaming disorder. I was surprised by the 10000+ views, considering how lukewarm the topic seemed at the conference. Since then, Gamasutra has featured articles on ethical game design. 

3. Ethics and Game Design: Are They Like Oil and Water? Part 1

This article by Gustavo Guida is about his reactions to the above mentioned roundtable. Gustavo Guida attended the IGDA GDSIG roundtable and the IGDA GDSIG Social Meeting at GDC 2018.  In his article, he divides the various positions held by attendees as Skeptics, Pragmatists, and the Concerned.

4. The Game Designer at the Game Jam

In this article, I reflected on my first experience at the Global Game Jam (GGJ). Even though we had less than 2 days to complete a demo, my team made a crowd favorite that was featured in Microsoft NY's recap of GGJ that year.

5. Upcoming Workshop: Game Writing Portfolio Workout

This was a promotion for my most popular class at PlayCrafting and it also included a link to an interview I did with SciFi Pulse. Since I'm no longer teaching at PlayCrafting, I'm looking to put some courses online.

6. When Story Isn't Everything

In this article, I discussed ludonarrative dissonance, a topic that was touched upon by Omar Shakir in his session at the Creative Arts & Technology Conference in 2016. Omar Shakir is Game Director at Avalanche Studios.

7. How to Teach Game Writing and Other Dilemmas

Here's another one that surprised me with the amount of views. Perhaps people were searching for a review of John Yorke's master class on video game writing. Rather, this article is a reaction to a review of John Yorke's class, in which he stated that video game companies should look to hiring capable screenwriters.

8. What's Wrong with Pre-K Game Apps

This is one of my favorite articles on the blog. Several people have said to me that I was spot-on about my observations regarding this segment of educational games.

9. Building Emotional Connections with Game Design

I became very interested in the topic of creating empathy and player emotion and one of the lectures I attended was from Professor Katherine Isbister, who wrote the book, How Games Move Us: Emotion By Design.  What was interesting about this lecture is that she didn't delve upon stories but rather game design.

10. Monetization and its Effect on Design

Professor Ibrahim Yucel reported on IGDA GDSIG's roundtable at GDC 2019. I'm glad to see IGDA GDSIG hit topics of concern for both the years we were allowed to discuss game design issues at GDC. At previous GDCs, the SIG's roundtables have only been about SIG business.  Hopefully, we will have another successful roundtable next year.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Forced Failure as Story Moments

In this article, game writer Sande Chen opines about forced failure as story moments and how players are more likely to forgive forced failure when engaged in story-driven games.

In "The Strengths and Limits of Using Digital Games as 'Empathy Machines,'" a UNESCO working paper released last year, authors Professors Matthew Farber and Karen Schrier discuss the flawed design of the poverty simulator SPENT and offer as a counterpoint, the autobiographical game That Dragon Cancer, as an example of where forced failure may be acceptable to players. As in most cases, the forced failure baked into SPENT and That Dragon Cancer are intended to generate and reinforce feelings of hopelessness and frustration.

These story moments of despair are not uncommon, especially if a storyteller blindly follows the stages of the Hero's Journey in games. At the midpoint, the hero reaches the Ordeal, the deepest, darkest, lowest point of the journey, the trials of which drives the hero to ultimately succeed in glorious fashion. Sometimes, this low point is conducted off-screen or in a cut scene, but other times, the player is given illusory agency in a mission destined to fail.

These forced failure story moments have left players with sheer frustration and anger, especially when the player wants to win and not fail. In one anecdote, a player tried repeatedly for hundreds of times to save his NPC buddy from predestined death, only to end up shooting the NPC immediately in realization that the NPC could not be saved.

Unlike in SPENT, it's clear that the story is paramount in That Dragon Cancer and that the goal is not to win through points.  When the player can't calm the child down no matter what is done, this is a story moment that is very emotional.  In this game, the player tacitly agrees to go along with the emotional journey.

Sometimes, when a story is engaging enough, a player will forgive a lot (e.g. bad controls, bad art, bad gameplay).  The player wants to know what will happen next in the story. I cynically remarked about the game Missing that without forced failure, the player would not know the story of what happens to sex trafficked girls.

For me, I find Missing to be a better example of how players can blithely ignore forced failure in deference to the story.  In Missing, there are clear dialog choices and actions that lead the player to an escape opportunity.  Maybe it's possible that the protagonist can escape and end the game out of harm's way.  If so, please send me a screenshot!  In my gut, I feel like this is most likely a situation where no matter how many times I evade the thugs, steal keys, or hide, that last guard at the last door will always grab me (if another guard hasn't already).

Sure, I will feel like I have agency and that escaping the bad guys is within my grasp, but do I really?

Was this dramatic moment manufactured? I mean, I was this close to freedom.

The fact that I fail highlights the hopelessness of protagonist Ruby's plight. I can't help her escape. I recognize that this is an important plot point in her story. Perhaps I would play the escape level over and over or perhaps I would accept that this is how the story goes. If I understand that the game is about depicting the tragedy of sex trafficking, then I'll have to see it through to find out what happens next.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Impactful VR for Good

In this article, game writer Sande Chen looks at a virtual reality experience made for social impact.

At last week's 2018 XR For Change, Resham Sidhu, Creative Director of design agency AKQA, took the opportunity to discuss efforts that would be considered VR for Good in her session, "Storyworlds in Virtual Reality." Sidhu stressed that effective VR would consider the entire experience. "In VR, you are not storytelling.  You are storyLIVING," as she put it. "You are living the story."

Photography: Milton Martínez / Secretaría de Cultura CDMX

She describes Mexican film director Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Academy Award-winning Carne y Arena as a VR experience where she felt her brain was tricked into believing she was actually experiencing virtual reality.  Carne y Arena, which had its debut at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, allows visitors to step into the lives of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.  Coupled with the cold, the weight of a backpack, and actual sand under toes, Carne y Arena is more than VR. It's part-immersive theatre, a mixture of documentary and spectacle.  Iñárritu, best known for his work on Birdman and The Revenant, based his script on the interviews of Mexican and Central American refugees, some of whose actual stories are featured (in their own words) in the D.C. installation. Visitors are profoundly affected by these tales, especially after walked through the desert with these same people in the VR segment.

The video below shows a bit of the making of Carne y Arena.

Because Carne y Arena does require a physical location, it is limited in the amount of people it can reach and affect, but tickets have sold out wherever it is installed.  And of course, since Carne y Arena, while definitely an experience, is meant to be a VR film, not a game, it's impossible to avoid the U.S. Border Patrol and the impending drama.

Could VR games achieve the same high quality and social impact?  I think so, though it would be trickier, and we'd have to think long and hard about what interactivity adds to the equation.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Empathy and VR Refugees

In this article, game writer Sande Chen discusses how the VR experience impacts empathetic responses.

There's been a lot in the news lately about empathy and/or lack of empathy.  Can VR storytelling promote empathy for social impact or is it ultimately a misguided experience, even a form of "disaster porn"?

Dan Archer, a 2016 Tow Fellow researching VR journalism, writes in his article, "Dismantling the Metrics of Empathy (in 360 Video)," that storytellers need to walk a fine line in depicting hardship and suffering.  There's a danger in "too much empathy" since the extreme discomfort felt by viewers translates into revulsion and the opposite of the desired effect. Moreover, oversaturation can lead to "psychic numbing" as viewers dismiss and try to block sympathy towards mass suffering. That's why, as noted in "Statistics vs. Stories," people can empathize with an individual's story, but don't really emotionally connect to statistics.

In fact, in Archer's research, the team found that too much familiarity in a subject led to less emotional impact.  Oversaturation of refugee news stories resulted in less immersion in the VR setting.  Those who weren't familiar with the stories and said they were not really that interested in the topic had the most empathetic responses.

However, compared to traditional text or photo spreads, VR was generally better at motivating users to learn more about the subject and take social action. In particular, VR experiences with clear protagonists and narrative especially heightened empathetic connection since the viewers' sense of closeness to the characters helped to increase the level of immersion.  The more the participants trusted the narrator, the more engaged and connected they were.

One disadvantage to VR, though, was the complaints users had about uncomfortable headsets.  This may preclude longer-form pieces until a solution is found. At present, most cinematic VR is around 5 minutes long, which may not allow for in-depth treatment of a topic.

VR storytelling definitely has the potential to affect minds and hearts through its use in journalism, film, and social impact games, but storytellers will have to carefully consider how the presentation of their stories will impact users.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Statistics vs. Stories

In this article, game designer Sande Chen looks at why social impact game designers should consider emotion-based appeals rather than statistics-filled logic.

You've likely seen the appeals before.  They usually come at the end of year.  Help us cure cancer, give to your alumni fund, donate to needy students, etc.  What motivates us to care, and care enough to do something?

As Chip Heath & Dan Heath state in their book, Made to Stick, charities have long grasped that the emotional appeal of a story does a better job of opening checkbooks than the logical stance of statistics.  That's why you "adopt" a wild horse or help a young girl in Africa named Rukia. The charity allows you to imagine how the money from giving up your morning Starbucks for 2 months would drastically change Rukia's life.  Her family would have access to running water!  Perhaps you'll even receive progress reports on Rukia telling you how much your contribution has meant to her life.  So why do some social impact game designers still rely on cold and impersonal statistical pop-ups scattered about in the game?

In fact, the Heaths relate a research study in which researchers had one group calculate a math problem and another group think about babies before being asked to donate to a cause.  Even without telling the story about Rukia, the "babies" group was primed to give more money.

So why is this so?

If I were to tell you, "In February 2018, there were 63,343 homeless people in New York City," you may or may not believe me.  Statistics can be fudged.  But also, 63,343 is a rather large amount.  Would my $3.50 a day really help?  How could it help?

In addition, people often have a hard time contextualizing numbers.  If I am told that one small bag of movie popcorn has 60 grams of saturated fat, what does that mean to me?  Is that good or bad?  Is movie popcorn alright?  If I'm shown all the artery-clogging foods I can think of and told that one small bag of movie popcorn is equivalent to 2 days of eating artery cloggers, then, yeah, I might think again.

As I wrote in "Great Narrative Stories Are the Answer,"  the way to changing attitudes and actions may lie in emotion and the great narrative stories that support that emotion.  Let's find a way to tap into that emotion.


Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

The Identity Switch

In this article, game designer Sande Chen delves into the connection between a person's identity, emotions, and behavior change.

As I've written before, convincing someone to change one's beliefs or actions can be a very hard task.  Even when a person is confronted with the cold hard facts, that person may reject logic, especially when it impacts the person's identity and sense of self.  That's why studies show that persuasion may come easier with "moral reframing," in which causes are reframed or "spun" to appeal to that person's values.  When the person isn't feeling so threatened, then the person might consider the cause.

As Chip Heath & Dan Heath write in Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, there is an emotional component to motivating people's behavior.  Change happens not with the steps, ANALYZE-THINK-CHANGE, but more easily with SEE-FEEL-CHANGE.  That's why I have delving so much into emotional connection and empathy in my explorations of Designing Games For Impact.  For some behavior changes, the logic and argument for change is apparent, but there's an emotional block.  In these cases, more information on how to change or more data won't have any effect.  Inwardly, the person knows there's a very good reason to change, but still can't change the behavior.  Very often, the person is reluctant because the person's identity is wrapped up in the behavior.  Just how strong is the impact of identity?

The authors point to the well-known study, at least in our circles, of the efficacy of HopeLab's game Re-Mission. The intent of Re-Mission was to increase post-chemotherapy treatment compliance among teens.  After each level of shooting tumor cells in the game, players would receive educational "briefings" about cancer and recovery.  By playing through all 20 levels, the developers hoped teens would understand fully why they shouldn't falter in their treatment plans.

HopeLab at the Games For Change Festival 2013

Re-Mission did have its remarkable success and what was surprising that kids that played only 2 levels changed their behavior as much as kids who finished all 20 levels.  Perhaps those educational "briefings" weren't that important after all?  To puzzle out this mystery of behavior change, we should be looking at the identity switch that occurred in these teens.  Kids who have gone through chemotherapy don't want to be that "sick kid" who has to keep on taking medication.  Even though it was counterproductive, they didn't follow the treatment plan because they just wanted to be normal.  In Re-Mission, though, they got to play a superhero who was actively eradicating cancer.  The game empowered the teens and made them feel in control.

The next time you design a social impact game, think about the behavior change and how you want the player to feel.  Is it connected to the player's identity?  Is there an identity switch required for the person to activate that behavior change?  Sometimes, we don't need more factoids or logical arguments.  What we feel may be the biggest motivator of all.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

How playing games can advance science

In this response, Claire Baert describes her fascination with citizen science games and poses some questions about the practice.

This morning, like most days, I woke up early, had a latte, turned on my computer and opened Gamasutra. Like most days, I'm looking for articles discussing how games can help advance scientific research. But this morning, for the first time, I found the article I was waiting for. A blog post by Sande Chen, featured by Gamasutra, and [re]titled: Why designers should embrace 'citizen science' . This was the trigger for me to start this blog, to write about citizen science games and share my passion with the Gamasutra community. In this first post, I will introduce many of the citizen science games everyone can play to advance science, and briefly introduce the different topics I will cover in the next posts.

My story with citizen science games began in 2013, in a small game studio in the UK. I was researching free to play, casual browser games, and was doing a quick play through the tutorials. Between Farmerama and Grepolis, I had listed a game I had never heard of: Foldit. First surprise, it's a client game. Second surprise, I'm taught how to mutate a protein to form more hydrogen bonds, not that casual. Third surprise, I'm doing real science. (Fourth surprise, first thing I did when coming back home was downloading Foldit on my laptop.)

I quickly became fascinated with the concept of citizen science games and started searching more of them. Not any kind of serious games, but specifically games that allow us, players, to contribute to authentic scientific research, without any scientific background. Games in which we provide valuable scientific data, accelerate research by analysing data, or solve complex scientific problems. Games that help diagnosis and cure diseases or that can answer important scientific questions.

After learning how to fold proteins in Foldit, I learnt how to fold RNA molecules in EteRNA and DNA molecules in Phylo. By playing these puzzle games, we are helping eradicate diseases. On my phone, I shoot at parasites in MalariaSpot to diagnose malaria in blood smear, I'm growing a microbe colony for Colony B. I'm mapping the brain in Eyewire and Mozak, advancing the field of neuroscience. I also dared join the quantum computing field, moving quantum atoms in Quantum Moves, optimising quantum algorithms in the prototype of meQuanics and solving quantum error corrections in Decodoku. All these steps are important to build quantum computers. Recently I've been showing off my navigation skills (ahem) in Sea Hero Quest, (and in VR!), to provide data to scientists researching dementia. With almost 3 million players, Sea Hero Quest is the largest dementia study in history.

Screenshot from Sea Hero Quest -VR

I loved the concept of citizen science games so much that about 2 years ago, I launched a website dedicated to them. It's called… well… Citizen Science Games. For the content, I contacted many scientists and journalists, which led to the opportunity to join one of the team. I am now bringing my experience from the game industry to Stall Catchers, in which we annotate blood vessels to help answering questions about Alzheimer's disease.

Scientists have started harnessing our love for games to conduct scientific research, sometimes on their own, sometimes with game designers and developers. As Sande Chen reported in her post, they have been using different design approaches: integration, gamification and separation. Most of the games mentioned above are examples of integration. The gameplay was designed around a scientific problem. Stall Catchers uses game elements: we get points, accuracy feedback, climb leader boards and participate in punctual competitions. To illustrate the separation approach, I will use the example of EVE Online. EVE Online is the first (and only) mainstream games that integrated real citizen science activities, Project Discovery, to the game. We are looking for exoplanets by analysing luminosity measurements of stars. By reaching more than one million contributions in one day, Project Discovery became one of the most successful online citizen science project. This is also one of the rare citizen science game having a few articles on Gamasutra, which recently covered the launch of the second round of Project Discovery and an awesome GDC talk by CCP and MMOS.

Project Discovery

There is an increasing number of citizen science games. They generate tangible results and publications and can lead to important discoveries. Scientists write about design, mechanics, difficulties, pitfalls, discoveries, results, recommendations. They try to understand what motivates people to engage with these games. There is also some controversies. Do games attract or retain participants in citizen science project? Shall citizen science be gamified? Are games compatible with serious and rigorous traditional scientific research?  All these questions find some answers in papers and will be discussed in future posts.

How could more studios embrace the concept? What scientific problems could be brought to existing games? What game genre would be best fitted for citizen science projects? What would be the best ways to integrate them? By starting this blog, I'm hoping to raise awareness about citizen science games. I'm also hoping to establish contact and start discussions with designers and developers interested in the genre.

And finally, I'm a big fan of this quote so I have to share it. It was written by Dara Mohammadi who was a scientific adviser on Sea Hero Quest:

"As a planet we spend 3 billion hours a week playing online games. If even a fraction of that time can be harnessed for science, laboratories around the world would have access to some rather impressive cognitive machinery."

 [This article originally appeared on Claire Baert's blog on Gamasutra.]

Claire Baert has 10 years experience in the video game industry and now focuses on citizen science games. She launched the website, Citizen Science Games, in 2016.

Citizen Science and Knowledge Games

In this article, game designer Sande Chen discusses the concept of citizen science, and how it can be embraced by game designers.

On Monday, August 21, 2017, residents of the contiguous United States witnessed a total solar eclipse for the first time since 1979.  Because of the rarity of the occurrence, which will not occur again in the U.S. until 2024,  hundreds bought special eclipse glasses to watch, but some members of the public, as citizen scientists, aided in scientific research by sending temperature data to NASA or by recording animal behavior in a citizen science app like iNaturalist. Amateur photographers contributed to a time-lapse photo spread of the eclipse. Through the combined efforts of researchers and the public, a large amount of data was able to be collected about the total solar eclipse.

Total solar eclipse August 2017

Citizen science, which engages the public to participate in scientific research, is not a new practice.  Communities of citizen scientists have been active in mapping the stars, counting butterflies, watching birds, and monitoring coral reefs.  Could such communities be galvanized as game players, who through the process of playing games further scientific knowledge?  Associate Professor Karen Schrier, Founding Director of the Games & Emerging Media program at Marist College, asks this very question and more in her book, Knowledge Games.


FoldIt, the protein folding puzzle game, is the most well-known example of this type of game. As documented in the article, "FoldIt Gamers Solve Riddle of HIV Enzyme Within 3 Weeks," the results from FoldIt players has led to scientific breakthroughs, research papers, and in improvements to AI algorithms. Yep, it turns out humans are better than computers at solving certain types of puzzles, especially those requiring intuition and a basis in cultural understanding.

In the past, I had an interesting challenge:  to design a game to generate data about obesity rates and general health indicators over a period of a year.  The project at first had more of a gamification focus and then morphed into the ARG Lumeria.  It provided insights on designing and writing for wearable technology, which would serve as the main way of data collection.  But Schrier argues that these games are more than just about gathering data, but about increasing knowledge, which is why she uses the term, knowledge games, instead of other terms like "crowdsourced games" or "citizen science games."  Data needs to be contextualized, analyzed, and interpreted.  Games like Happy Moths and Galaxy Zoo, which involve classification and categorization of images, do seem to be more about data sets, but as mentioned above, FoldIt and experiments like bullying sim SchoolLife have demonstrated that the intuition shown in human thought processes may be used to improve algorithms or model behavior.

At present, there appears to be three design approaches for knowledge games.

• Gamification  -  In games like Happy Moths, players receive scores based on tasks.  The common highlights of gamification are present: leaderboards, high scores, badges, game elements rather than gameplay.
• Separation - In some games, like Reverse the Odds, the gameplay is separate from the knowledge-producing task. Instead, players in Reverse the Odds classify cancerous cells in order to earn potions to continue or better gameplay. 
• Integration - In games like FoldIt, the gameplay is essential to the knowledge-producing task. FoldIt players use the same tools as scientists would, but that is not necessarily the case. In Play to Cure: Genes in Space, players pilot a spaceship and by doing so in an optimal way, DNA microarrays from breast cancer research are analyzed. However, Schrier states that not all of these games are integrated fully or well, which may make the game feel like a construct, or wrapper, for the knowledge-producing task.

Besides the design of knowledge games, Schrier tackles many issues in her book concerning knowledge games, including the ethics of possibly profiting from such volunteerism (would they be player laborers?), or even the ethics of creating such games since they may not even be created for social good. Do knowledge games need to promote social change?  There is also concern over who exactly is contributing and playing and if this "wisdom of the crowds" is acceptable.  "What if," Schrier muses, "players work through the possible scenarios to tribal peace in The SUDAN Game, and the resulting finding is that two of the tribes need to be decimated?" These are interesting questions for interesting times.  We may need to continue our exploration into knowledge games by creating more knowledge games.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.  

Great Narrative Stories are the Answer

In this article, game writer Sande Chen explains how a narrative story's themes can have an everlasting impact on its readers or viewers.

For several months now, I've been exploring issues regarding social impact and meaningfulness in my PlayCrafting NYC classes, Designing Games For Impact (coming up soon on September 20).  I spoke about the difficulties of measuring impact recently at the Serious Play Conference.  Does impact mean increasing awareness or changing beliefs or changing behaviors or all the above?

As I've mentioned before, convincing someone to change one's beliefs is a very hard task. Because of confirmation bias, even new evidence to the contrary will cause a person to cling more fiercely to those beliefs.  As Christopher Graves, founder of the Ogilvy Center for Behavioral Science, noted in his keynote at the 2017 Games For Change Festival, arguing the facts simply makes it worse. People who believe differently will just reject those newly discovered facts.

So what's the answer?  How can we convince people who don't seem willing to look logically at the facts?

Graves points to the theory of narrative transportation whereby people become so enthralled with an immersive, narrative story that their attitudes change to reflect that of the story's, even when the story is known to be fictional.  In fact, neurophysiologists have discovered mirror neurons in the brains of the storyteller and the people listening to the story.  Mirror neurons may even be the basis for empathy.

Christopher Graves speaks at the 2017 Games For Change Festival

Storytellers, did you realize that your story's themes could be this powerful?

But not all stories trigger mirror neurons.  The listener needs to feel so enraptured by vivid and concrete imagery that the listener feels like this is a living world filled with believable characters and situations.  In essence, great narrative stories may be the way to change people's hearts and minds.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Upcoming: 2017 Serious Play Conference July 18-20

I've been collecting my thoughts on social impact games in blog posts such as "Issues About Impact" and exploring the nature of persuasion, empathy, and emotional hooks in my Designing Games For Impact classes.  Just as I had done with my research into educational games, I wanted to look at social impact games from different angles.  I learned about storytelling, as defined by marketers, and with my knowledge of cinematography, began to analyze commercials and PSAs.  Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform had briefly covered social commentary games or op-ed games and I was interested enough to revisit the subject and take a deep dive.

Next week, I will be presenting at the 2017 Serious Play Conference, a leadership conference for both those who create serious games/simulations and those who implement game-based learning programs.  Specifically, I will be talking about issues surrounding designing games for social impact and will be looking at techniques used in games and other media to further impact and persuade without preaching or browbeating.

It’s become apparent that it’s not so easy to convince others of a different viewpoint or to generate empathy for a cause. Within our social media bubbles, beliefs are constantly reinforced and entrenched. So how can social impact games break down these barriers? How can they go beyond preaching to the choir?

This year, the Serious Play Conference will be at George Mason University, on July 18-20, 2017.  Passes, including student tickets, can be purchased here.

Sande Chen is the co-author of Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform. As a serious games consultant, she helps companies harness the power of video games for non-entertainment purposes. Her career as a writer, producer, and game designer has spanned over 10 years in the game industry. Her game credits include 1999 Independent Games Festival winner Terminus, MMO Hall of Fame inductee Wizard101, and the 2007 PC RPG of the Year, The Witcher, for which she was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award in Videogame Writing. She has spoken at conferences around the globe, including the Game Developers Conference, Game Education Summit, SXSW Interactive, Serious Play Conference, and the Serious Games Summit D.C. 

Upcoming Class: Designing Games For Impact

The day after July 4th, I invite those of you near NYC to join me in a class about Designing Games For Impact at Microsoft NY. Within these classes, I have been exploring a range of topics, including emotional intensity, social impact, and persuasion.  Learn to cultivate that spark within you and pass it to others.

Whether you are an entertainment developer who wants to add another layer to gameplay and story or an activist or educator who wants to reach out through video games, together we'll discuss different methodologies to achieve your goals.

On the subject of change and empowerment, I was recently interviewed for the book, Empower Yourself Through Your Memories: Use the Lessons From Your Past to Create a Happy Present and Future by Frank Healy.  Healy, a counselor and life coach, has helped people deal with traumatic memories. 

I'd love to do a giveaway of one book at the upcoming class.

As always, Playcrafting NYC, which offers classes and events related to game development, offers Early Bird tickets, but if they sell out (and they have in the past), you'll have to pay full price. 

The details!
Designing Games For Impact
Date: Wednesday, July 5
Time: 6:30-8:30 PM

About Me 

Sande Chen is the co-author of Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform. As a serious games consultant, she helps companies harness the power of video games for non-entertainment purposes. Her career as a writer, producer, and game designer has spanned over 15 years in the game industry. Her game credits include 1999 Independent Games Festival winner Terminus, MMO Hall of Fame inductee Wizard101, and the 2007 PC RPG of the Year, The Witcher, for which she was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award in Videogame Writing. She has spoken at conferences around the globe, including the Game Developers Conference, Game Education Summit, SXSW Interactive, Serious Play Conference, and the Serious Games Summit D.C.

In 2 Days! Designing Games For Impact

My class, Designing Games For Impact, continues on Monday, May 22.  In the previous classes, we have concentrated on emotional impact and persuasive techniques.  As I alluded to in recent articles, "VR: The Ultimate Empathy Machine?" and "Issues About Impact," we'll be discussing the quality of empathy and impact we are trying to achieve.  For us to even think about measuring impact, we need to first agree what it is we want! You'd be surprised how often goals can get mixed up and target audiences can be overlooked.

Whether you are an entertainment developer who wants to add another layer to gameplay and story or an activist or educator who wants to reach out through video games, together we'll discuss different methodologies to achieve your goals.

As always, Playcrafting NYC, which offers classes and events related to game development, offers Early Bird tickets, but if they sell out (and they have in the past), you'll have to pay full price. 

The details!
Designing Games For Impact
Date:  Monday, May 22, 2017
Time: 6:30-8:30 PM

About Me 

Sande Chen is the co-author of Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform. As a serious games consultant, she helps companies harness the power of video games for non-entertainment purposes. Her career as a writer, producer, and game designer has spanned over 15 years in the game industry. Her game credits include 1999 Independent Games Festival winner Terminus, MMO Hall of Fame inductee Wizard101, and the 2007 PC RPG of the Year, The Witcher, for which she was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award in Videogame Writing. She has spoken at conferences around the globe, including the Game Developers Conference, Game Education Summit, SXSW Interactive, Serious Play Conference, and the Serious Games Summit D.C.

VR: the Ultimate Empathy Machine?

In this article, game designer Sande Chen recognizes the issues with using virtual reality to promote empathy and social impact.

Virtual reality has been hailed the "ultimate empathy machine." Teachers and researchers certainly believe that the immersive VR experiences will make players empathize with the plight of others, such as that of refugees, the disabled, or other disadvantaged groups. However, as Yale Professor of Psychology Paul Bloom cautions in "It's Ridiculous to Use Virtual Reality to Empathize with Refugees," the type of empathy VR generates in players may be misleading.  For one, he points out, while VR may be good at simulating environments, it doesn't replicate the psychological forces of powerlessness, despair, and oppression.  A player can step out at any time and doesn't have to face a reality where the country has been torn apart by war and none of the player's relatives have made it out alive.

In fact, the player can have a level of comfort in knowing that the unpleasant situation is short-lived. Journalists who volunteered to be waterboarded reported that the experience was unpleasant, but their experience was not accompanied by imprisonment and torturers who won't stop when asked. Other times, short-term experiences give a flawed impression to players. As Dr. Arielle Michal Silverman related in "The Perils of Playing Blind: Problems with Blindness Simulation and A Better Way to Teach About Blindness," players wrongly projected their own negative feelings of suddenly becoming blind to the daily experience of living with blindness.

Of course, there have been simulations without VR or even digital applications. There have been games about blindness, such as Blindside, and games to simulate what it's like to have schizophrenia or depression. It's natural to be excited about the next big thing and the level of immersion that VR gives could lead to amazing educational experiences. VR can certainly help in depicting different countries and scenarios, but will it translate into social impact? Research is ongoing.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Issues About Impact

In this article, game designer Sande Chen ponders issues about social impact and the difficulties regarding its implementation and assessment.

A study of the poverty simulator, SPENT, which resulted in players with increased negative feelings towards poor people instead of empathetic concern, illustrates the difficulties in pursuing attitudinal change among players. Entrenched within our own social beliefs and bubbles, we may not know how to best reach the other side and begin this empathetic exchange.  How do we create conditions for empathy?  While preaching to the choir reinforces existing beliefs, it doesn't achieve the desired social impact.

I wrote up my reasons why I felt SPENT failed to convince the "unbelievers" and have spent my PlayCrafting NYC classes on Designing Games For Impact exploring the myriad issues around persuasion, emotional connection, and TBA measurement. (Stay tuned for the next Designing Games For Impact class announcement.)  The Games For Change April 2016 report, "Impact With Games: A Fragmented Field," describes the different perspectives even in defining what exactly would be considered a game's "impact".

In my article, "The World According to Edu-Larps: The Analog Learning Games," I wrote about the difficulties of assessing play activities that cross disciplines.  The desire for assessment is well-known and is often a factor in determining the value of a project.  A game designer can certainly employ analytics to track a player's actions, but the full picture won't emerge without qualitative assessment. In addition, if the desired goal is a form of meta-gaming, with its intrinsic motivation, again, this benefit can't be measured with any on-board assessment tools.

However, through the use of qualitative and quantitative assessment, a game designer may be able to assess and make changes while a pilot project is happening before a complete rollout.  Using the iterative process, the designer can refine the game's message.  In this case, the art of survey design will be very important in order to erase biases and gain useful information.


Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Upcoming Class: Designing Games For Impact

Do you want to create more meaningful games? Make an impact?  Then I invite you to come to my new class next Thursday, November 17, on Designing Games For Impact.  Whether you are an entertainment developer who wants to add another layer to gameplay and story or an activist or educator who wants to reach out through video games, together we'll discuss how we can create a dialog without preaching, bake our messaging within the game systems, and create an emotional connection.

As always, Playcrafting NYC, which offers classes and events related to game development, offers Early Bird tickets, but if they sell out (and they have in the past), you'll have to pay full price. 

The details!
Designing Games For Impact
Date:  Thursday, November 17, 2016
Time: 6:30-8:30 PM

About Me 

Sande Chen is the co-author of Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform. As a serious games consultant, she helps companies harness the power of video games for non-entertainment purposes. Her career as a writer, producer, and game designer has spanned over 15 years in the game industry. Her game credits include 1999 Independent Games Festival winner Terminus, MMO Hall of Fame inductee Wizard101, and the 2007 PC RPG of the Year, The Witcher, for which she was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award in Videogame Writing. She has spoken at conferences around the globe, including the Game Developers Conference, Game Education Summit, SXSW Interactive, Serious Play Conference, and the Serious Games Summit D.C.