Reimagining Government s3 e5: Games and Government

SFX Deborah Mensah-Bonsu:Who says you can’t have fun solving the world’s problems? Games can do so much more than entertain. Games can be used for good. 

[00:00:12] Adrian Brown: Hello and welcome to Reimagining Government. My name is Adrian Brown and I’m the Executive Director at the Centre for Public Impact. Now games are fun. We enjoy them with family and friends or whiling away the hours, figuring out a computer game for ourselves.

But usually we think about them as a break from reality. What if they could be part of how we tackle the very real challenges we face in government? Now to learn about this topic, I am joined by Program Director for CPI Asia, Keshav Sahani.  Welcome to the show, Keshav. 

[00:00:43] Keshav Sahani: Hello Adrian. Glad to be here.

[00:00:48] Adrian Brown: Now this topic is very close to your heart, I know. What is it about the use of games within public service that you’re so passionate about? 

[00:00:55] Keshav Sahani: What truly captivates me about games and public services is the [00:01:00] potential to drive community-wide behaviour change. Having spent many years working closely with frontline health workers and community members in rural India, I firsthand witnessed how gamification revolutionised health education and interventions for them.

What’s interesting is that games break down barriers of literacy, language and they make learning fun and accessible, and that’s what gets me excited. 

[00:01:23] SFX Gianluca Sgueo: Have you ever thought of governing as a game? We tend to think of governing as a cooperative enterprise where citizens join together to manage their community. But as communities struggle to engage citizens in such an overwhelming and distracting modern world, a little dose of the competitive spirit of games can bring out the best of everyone. 

[00:01:49] Adrian Brown: Okay, so who’s our first guest today? 

[00:01:51] Keshav Sahani: Our first guest today is Tais Costa. 

[00:01:55] Tais Costa: Hi, my name is Tais Costa. Now I’m currently working in, uh, [00:02:00]  Fortaleza city hall development of the new cycling policy as a consultant.

But in the last two years, I have had the opportunity to help create the innovation lab of of the city 

[00:02:13] Keshav Sahani: As coordinator of the Fortaleza innovation lab, Tais played a key role in planning, prototypes and experimentation within the city’s public services. It became clear that whatever they tried it needed to include catadores.

[00:02:28] SFX News Reporter: This is how most of the recycling happens. Workers sort through it all, separating plastic, glass, cardboard to be sold to recycling plants. Here in Brazil, they’re called catadores, people who work for cooperatives and pick through trash for valuables to recycle. 

[00:02:46] Tais Costa: Catadores are like the waste pickers in the city. They are responsible for like 90% of the recyclable materials in Brazil.

They are a figure, really important in the uh, waste management cycle, [00:03:00] but we didn’t have a lot of relation with them. 

[00:03:03] Keshav Sahani: The catadores were doing a valuable service for the city. But the city needed to work on its relationship with them. Through a workshop, a form of gamification was proposed where the catadores would play a key role.

[00:03:15] Tais Costa: The idea of a gamification came up in our workshop and we start thinking about an idea like, um, a game in the disposal being that we have in the city in the public space. But we were in a rainy period, so we thought about starting this, uh, internally, like, uh, let’s put the disposal bin that we create with this game inside so we can see better how it work, so we can go after to an open space. 

We realised that people interacted a lot with the disposal bin with the gamification because we actually use their passion. Uh, we use soccer players here as soccer teams. I am from Fortaleza, Brazil. We have a huge municipality and teams like Fortaleza and Ceara, so we use this, these two, uh, soccer teams.

SFX: football game

Tais Costa: If you put in the side of Fortaleza, the team of Fortaleza will win the recyclable material. If you put it in the Ceara, the Ceara will win. They have 24 hours because the waste pickers came each day to collect the material here. So they were like, what, what time do waste pickers will come today because we had to win.

They go back and, and put more material there. It generates a lot of discussions and uh, people were really engaged. People were, uh, learning from the process. Also, the cups that they were putting were not recyclable. People start to ask, but why the [00:05:00] municipality buy this if it’s not recyclable? So they started to ask themselves why the municipality buy things that it’s not possible to be recycled.  

[00:05:10] Keshav Sahani: Through the trash bin game, which brought together city hall, catadores and the community, many other green initiatives that involve the catadores spawned. Here’s Tais again to introduce us to a citywide project called Re-Cyclo. 

[00:05:24] Tais Costa: This project started because the city doesn’t have a door-to-door  collection of recycled materials. We just have like general material. So it was a prototype of a door to door collections with the waste pickers that we have in the street that they, well, they were in associations, so engage with them.

We gave them electric tricycles and they now do these door-to-door collections. You can select a date and time and they go regularly in the day time and do this collection. 

[00:05:58] SFX catadores: The 80 tons of [00:06:00] recyclables we resort through each month is a great help to the environment. The recyclable material, we separate, doesn’t go to the landfill or the sewer system, so it’s a great benefit.

[00:06:09] Keshav Sahani: Re-Cyclo has collected over 600 tons of waste since it started in September, 2022. And the catadores are now paid for their efforts, but has this made them feel more valued in Fortaleza? 

[00:06:21] Tais Costa: Because they have a lot of challenge in their lives, they are not used to a regular work, and now they do this as a regular thing.

They say they were invisible before and now they have uniforms, people know them and want them to enter their their houses and to collect things. They say that before people were afraid of them. So it’s a really huge change in how people see the catadores in the city. 

[00:06:50] Adrian Brown: So this is a, a really interesting example because of, of the, the point that that was just being made there, that the, the benefit of, of using these approaches is not [00:07:00] just the direct benefit on recycling, but also the benefit to this particular community of catadores and how they feel a sense of belonging or a sense of, uh, acceptance, I suppose, in the city.

What’s, what’s your take on that Keshav?  

[00:07:18] Keshav Sahani: Yeah, Adrian, totally. The catadores have found a new sense of belonging, uh, in the city. And what’s interesting is that it all started with a game, uh, which like you said, not only highlighted recycling’s importance, but brought all of them together and made the community realise the vital role catadores play.

And what was also interesting was the use of soccer, which is a shared passion in the city, as Tais was mentioning, and a topic that people connected with a lot. And, uh, that helped in making the whole exercise interesting for everyone. And this also shows the transformative power of games, they make us experience things and learn from them all while we are being engaged and having fun.[00:08:00] 

So what does Tais think of the work she has done within Fortaleza? What was the secret behind the game’s effectiveness? 

[00:08:06] Tais Costa: I think, uh, what happened, uh, people have like the sense of participating, belonging, emotional connection, and a lot of reciprocity. Like my teams there, I have to help. And other people that were participating were like, ah, you are Fortaleza you have to participate too.

I think, uh, it’s really hard to engage without this feeling of,  I’m winning something. Either my team or I’m winning really something concrete. So I think what they win is that, it’s that the other loses is the, this feeling of belonging, the being part of something bigger.

[00:08:48] Adrian Brown: So there’s, there’s a lot in there as to why this sort of competitive game-based mechanism is so effective. But what do you think of Tai’s reasoning behind, behind why this worked Keshav?. [00:09:00] 

[00:09:00] Keshav Sahani: You know, at their core, games incorporate a reward mechanism, right? And that Adrian brings individual work towards a common shared goal.

And when they’re doing that, you know, their diverse lived experiences come together, their different skill sets come together, all in the pursuit of a common objective. And I think that is something which works, that is something which gets that sense of alignment for a larger cause and helps build cohesion within communities, which otherwise is a very difficult task to achieve.

[00:09:29] Adrian Brown: Well, that was a great first example to demonstrate the effectiveness of games within government. After the break, we’ll be speaking to Trina Talukdar from Fields of View to hear how games can help us understand the complex issues we face within society. We’ll be right back.

(ad break)

[00:09:53] Trina Talukdar: Hi, I’m Trina Talukdar and I’m the Chief Visioning Officer at Fields of View. Fields of View [00:10:00] is a nonprofit based out of Bangalore in India, and at Fields of View, we build serious games, simulations, and experiential tools on public policy issues. 

[00:10:10] Keshav Sahani: Here is Trina’s definition of a serious game and an example demonstrating how they use them at Fields of View.

[00:10:17] Trina Talukdar: A serious game is a game built on real world data. We have a game that is called Hanigalu, which in the language they speak in Bangalore, which is Kannada, it means a water droplet, and it is a game on managing water as a resource in the city. So it’s set in this fictional city called Pani Puda, meaning the land of water, but it’s actually built on real water data of Bangalore, but we gave it a fictional city name, o this game can be relevant to people beyond Bangalore as well. 

And so in this game, there are multiple crisis situations that the players go through, for example, a drought or a pandemic. So in the pandemic for example, it says that, uh, people are at home [00:11:00] more and they have to wash their hands more and be more hygienic.

So domestic water usage has gone up by 10%. How are you going to handle it? And the participants, for example, they discuss and they decide, you know, let’s increase taxation on water for middle and high income populations and see if that helps. And once they put that option into the gaming simulation, it shows them the impact of that decision in five years.

So for example, it’ll show that actually groundwater level fell because usually people don’t want to pay extra tax. So people dig underground for water instead. And then, you know, the players can be like, oh, well I guess maybe that wasn’t the great strategy. They can go back and try out other strategies as well.

But that’s an example of a serious game that’s actually built on real water data of Bangalore. What are the actual water sources? How much groundwater has depleted in the last few decades, et cetera, et cetera. There is no winning or losing because remember, these games are about public policy and in a [00:12:00] domain as complex as public policy, um, we are solving, uh, large scale social economic problems, right?

That’s how complex it is. And so what the games are really about then is having people understand the trade-offs that are required in solving these issues at scale. 

[00:12:21] Keshav Sahani: While the trash bin game in Fortaleza centred on building a sense of belonging among community members through rewarding behaviour change, in Hanigalu, players learn about the long-term impact of their action through a series of simulated situations.

And like Trina mentioned, there’s no right answer. There are just trade-offs. 

[00:12:40] Trina Talukdar: Gamification means creating a game-like environment in actual life, right? And a game-like environment means you get points for doing things or you get points deducted, you power up these kind of things, right? And so what an example of gamification is like, you know, your workout apps perhaps [00:13:00] that, you know, I did my 10,000 steps.

You get points, there’s a leaderboard. That’s like creating this game, like environment in nature. But we are not doing that through our tools. So Fields of View actually doesn’t do gamification, right? So for example, with the water game as an example of we have another game on waste management called Rubbish.

In those, we are not giving points to people in real life to segregate waste or save water or any of that, right? What we are doing is using a game to teach people about complexity, right? That’s why that’s called a games-based  methodology because we are not, you know, giving, like giving out points and incentivising behaviour change through points.

That would be gamification. 

[00:13:47] Keshav Sahani: Fields of view offers a range of games on different subjects and in different formats. Here’s Trina explaining one of her favourites: Made to Order. 

[00:13:56] Trina Talukdar: This game is called Made to Order, and it is, [00:14:00] uh, modelled on the life of garment factory workers in Bangalore. Much of South Asia has garment factories and workers in the factories are usually not working under great conditions, and Bangalore is a hub for these garment factories.

And so we built this game where each player gets a profile for garment factory workers, and these are actual profiles of workers that we found through our research. And through the game, the players have to make different choices. For example, you’ve missed your bus to the factory. Are you going to spend more money taking private transport or are you going to not go today and drop the day’s wages?

 So again, coming back to tradeoffs, understanding the tradeoffs that they have to make as people play this, they realise that game is really built for the specific purpose of building empathy for this group of people specifically, but also I think people who [00:15:00] face intersectional marginalisation as a whole, right?

And I think one clear understanding that comes out of this is like the social protection net that these women need. If they kept taking informal credit at high rates, they need insurance, they need scholarships for their children. That’s what’s going to make them resilient. You know, one of my favorite ones is with the same situation I was talking about earlier where they miss the bus to work and then either gonna be late, miss the day’s work, whatever.

And uh, we were playing with a group of lawyers and they were like, I will negotiate with the factory manager and explain that I missed the bus. We’re like, that’s not in the rules of the game. And they’re like, no, why not? And I’m like, because that doesn’t ever actually happen that this woman facing multiple layers of marginalisation would actually negotiate with the owner and he would listen.

Like this is not the thing. And I think that’s the great thing about games, right? Is that we can explain complexity, but without losing nuance. So I think that’s one of my favourite games because it is, it, it does take people through the lives and stories [00:16:00] of a community that we don’t understand very often, but we should be in order to design solutions for them.

[00:16:10] Adrian Brown: So that was a, a great quote that Trina just, uh, offered there that we can explain complexity without losing nuance through games. Uh, and it seems that that’s a really powerful insight into, into games and, and, and how they can on one level seem. I suppose simple about sort of making some choices and choosing, um, different options or choosing paths for different characters.

But in doing so, it reveals so much. And, and, and in that example with the lawyers talking there, that about our assumptions about the, the people who are going in to play the game, their assumptions sort of get revealed through this approach. What, what do you think of this Keshav? There’s, there’s just so much richness in these [00:17:00] examples that, that Trina’s sharing.

[00:17:01] Keshav Sahani: Yeah. Adrian, uh, in fact, uh, you know, games like Made to Order was talking about, uh, allow a player to literally step into the shoes of someone who’s marginalised, someone they have never met in their lives before, and presents a whole systemic view of different factors that are at play in defining what their lived experience is. And compared that to having, you know, courses and capacity building the, of, let’s say, lawyers understanding the working environment of garment workers.

It’s, it’s, it’s not that intuitive and that’s what games do. They allow you to experience the complexities of the real world and the intersection of multiple societal challenges at the same time. where you engage with a system, you’re able to make tweaks and changes, and you know you’re able to make decisions in the system.

And then you’re able to see the system being resilient, the system changing, and that’s something which brings an experiential learning into the player. And that [00:18:00] learning stays and that learning is something which brings about systemic change. 

I was joined on the call by our global Director of Storytelling and Communications at CPI,Rosie McIntosh.

She asked Trina how she would answer the concerns of those who may struggle to see the value in games. 

[00:18:17] Rosie McIntosh: Okay, so I’m imagining just now if I go away and explain to my dad about this,  I can imagine what he would say, which is probably, well, I don’t pay my taxes so governments can sit about and play games.

[00:18:29] Trina Talukdar: Yeah. I, I might have a, I I’d have to, I have a few stories I could tell your dad, I think. And it would be greatly helpful to me to understand your dad’s life a little bit more and, um, maybe understand some challenges in his life, for example. Is, is he struggling with the NHS getting an appointment, which I’m reading is an issue?

And if that were true, I would say that, how do you think they can fix that? What if there was a way for you, Rosie’s father to [00:19:00] talk to the NHS and tell them what your needs are? Um, but you think like, that sounds, what do you know ’cause you’re not an expert? And also like who has time at the end of their long workday to go have this conversation somewhere at the NHS, give my feedback about something I may not even understand very well.

Tada! What if I told you that, that you could play a game with people at the NHS? And you would go through this game, would basically explain to you how the NHS works, where its resources are coming from, how much these resources are, uh, what hands they’re passing, and you could through this game also communicate, um, what are some of the most pressing health problems, how often you need appointments versus how often you’re getting them, how close the centre needs to be – the primary healthcare centre needs to be to you for it to be easy for you. Doesn’t that sound a lot better than where we are now, where you don’t get to communicate with them at all? 

[00:19:59] Adrian Brown: I can, I [00:20:00] can certainly understand the skepticism that some people might have about games because it does sound like it could be a bit trivial.

A bit silly or lighthearted, but, but I did appreciate, uh, Trina’s answer there that this is perhaps one of the easiest and richest ways you can engage with people if you are a government or a public service. It helps people to perhaps express their feelings, beliefs, wishes about how things should be in a way that is easier for them and more intuitive for them.

And as we were talking about earlier, doesn’t, doesn’t brush the complexity under the carpet. But Keshav, what, what do you think about this, this debate? Uh, isn’t there a risk that games just come across as a bit trivial?

[00:20:45] Keshav Sahani: You’re right there, Adrian, sometimes they do, and I think, uh, you know, ensuring that trivialisation of an issue does not happen is, is critical.

Uh, but what it also does is it lets  someone see the person behind the [00:21:00] service being offered by the government, I think, which is where barriers need to be broken, right there. There are humans on both sides, whether it be citizens, whether it be public servants, and they go through multitude of challenges while this package of service is delivered.

And I think experiencing that is something which generates empathy for each other. It generates mutual respect, and that’s what games bring in, right? They allow you to maybe for a couple of hours, maybe in a simulated environment to experience someone else’s life. And I think that’s, uh, that, that stays with you.

And then it, it accounts for your behaviour change next time when the same person goes and, uh, tries to either offer a service or receive a service, their experience has been informed by, you know, the, the simulation that they went through. And I believe with, with all the discussion about games trivialising experiences, I believe there is also a school of thought, which talks about how they [00:22:00] allow us to experience each other’s life or have a sneak peek into people who are marginalised, who have had different lived experiences. 

[00:22:09] Adrian Brown: And just connecting that to the, to the first example we heard about, uh, with the recycling, ’cause that seems to be a different type of game. It’s not. Is it, is that also get, letting people have insights into other people’s lives? Or is that not just simply improving recycling rates, sort of plain and simple? 

[00:22:30] Keshav Sahani: Definitely. It’s trying to inculcate that behavior of recycling and definitely it’s trying to, uh, reward people for that behaviour, but it’s also educating them on the whole cycle or the whole value chain of recycling, right? 

People get introduced to catadores people get introduced to, uh, the city hall officials, and they also understand the, the ramifications of their decision, right? If recycling is not done, if waste segregation is not done, what implication does it [00:23:00] have on government as a whole, the city hall as a whole and society as a whole?

And I think that is something which, which, uh, the earlier game that Tais talked about, brings about in society, brings about in citizens. Because there are cases when we don’t even realise something is happening, an effect, you know, we are causing an effect in the environment we’re causing an effect in society.

And that’s what sometimes games too, if curated smartly, if, uh, curated cautiously, they allow us to, uh, provide a window into how systems operate. 

[00:23:32] Trina Talukdar: So I think the reason games, simulations, experiential tools can be such a great way of learning about these issues is, uh, firstly because games are a great, safe environment to experiment, fail, and learn, right?

In real life, we can’t say let’s increase taxation and see what happens in five years, right? But in a game, even playing that character or whatever, I can take that chance and say, oh, let’s see what [00:24:00] happens. Right. So I think that’s one great reason to use games. The second one is that I think when we realise, when we realise something ourselves, rather than being told which a game can do, then the learning retention is much more, right.

If I told you that, you know, increasing taxation will lead to groundwater depleting, it’s such a like far off connection. What impact would that… but then you actually make that decision. You see this red marker saying, round water decrease, and you have to go and fix it with something else. You’re not gonna forget that, you know?

So I think these are my top two reasons, uh, that games are a great way to learn about the complexity of public policy.

[00:24:51] Adrian Brown: We’ve heard two really fascinating guests there sharing really quite a range of experiences in relation to [00:25:00] games in government and public policy, and I’ve certainly learned a lot just in terms of not only the breadth of how games can, uh, be conceived, but also the, the, the depth that games can actually help us to explore or, or access.

So I, I think that has been a, a really sort of eye-opening conversation. What are your reflections Keshav in terms of how games can help us in, in government or public policy? 

[00:25:30] Keshav Sahani: You know, in my opinion, to truly harness the potential of games. We, you know, we need a mindset shift happening in governments instead of right now how games are viewed, which is just a good to have a tool for engagement.

Probably we need to start seeing them as powerful drivers of behaviour change. Uh, but one thing which we briefly touched upon, and I believe, which is really important as governments and uh, organisations try to leverage the power of games, is exercising some caution. And I think, uh, what’s important [00:26:00] is that these games, which are based on lived experiences or which are based on simulations, they be designed ethically.

They ensure inclusivity, privacy, fairness, and above all, avoid the trivialisation of sensitive issues. Right? And that’s something which becomes one of the key factors for developing and implementing and making sense of teams. And striking this balance between engagement and responsibility is the key for developing games and using them as tools for transformation.

You know what, uh, above all, I believe that, you know, games hold this transformative potential for governments and, you know, it can help, uh, be more adaptive, empathetic, and ultimately more effective. And isn’t that what we are all striving for? 

[00:26:47] Adrian Brown: Absolutely. And, and I know the work that you are doing at CPIs is helping many people to, to strike that balance.

So, um, if anyone’s interested in learning more about your work, um, and [00:27:00] getting in touch, they could check out your blog. Let the serious games begin over at centreforpublicimpact.org.

Thank you so much, Keshav. This has been a fascinating conversation. 

So if you’re a public servant or policymaker, we’d want to hear your thoughts on using games within government, you can call into the show using our answer machine. Head over to speakpipe.com/reimagininggovernment and leave us a message. And please be aware that we may play these out on the show. 

If you’d prefer to write to us, you can email comms@centreforpublicimpact.org to let us know what topics we should cover in future episodes.

And finally, please remember to leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform and let us know your thoughts on the series. Until next time, I’ve been Adrian Brown. [00:28:00] Goodbye.