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Six ways games can be used in government or public service

In season three episode five of our Reimagining Government podcast, co-hosts Adrian Brown and Keshav Sahani discuss the use of games in government or public service. They highlight:

  • How games can tackle the challenges we face in government
  • The concept of governing as a game
  • How games can improve relationships between governments and communities
  • How games can benefit marginalised communities
  • And more

The episode features Tais Costa (​​Coordinator of the Innovation Lab of Fortaleza) and Trina Talukdar (Chief Visioning Officer at Fields of View) to talk about their experiences with government gamification. 

In this article, we’ll summarise six ways games can be used in public service or government, as highlighted in the episode. Listen to the full episode below or click here.

Here’s six ways games can be used in government or public service, as highlighted in season three episode five of Reimagining Government.

To drive community-wide behaviour change

One of the first points the episode covers is how games can drive behaviour change in communities. Keshav said:

“What truly captivates me about games and public services is the potential to drive community-wide behaviour change. Having spent many years working closely with frontline health workers and community members in rural India, I’ve firsthand witnessed how gamification revolutionised health education and interventions for them. Games break down barriers of literacy and language, and they make learning fun and accessible.”

To build relationships between cities and workers 

Tais spoke about how gamification can be used to improve relationships between cities and workers. She recounted her experience in Brazil, saying: 

“The waste workers in the city are responsible for 90% of the recyclable materials. In Brazil, they’re really important in the waste management cycle, but the city didn’t have a lot of relation with them. The idea of gamification came up in a workshop, so we started thinking about creating a disposal game around the city. We soon realised that people interacted a lot with the game because it incorporated their shared passion (soccer).”

Keshav added:

“The workers found a new sense of belonging in the city. And what’s interesting is that it all started with a game which not only highlighted recycling’s importance, but also brought people together and made the community realise the vital role the disposal workers play.”

To aid understanding of complex community issues

Games that use real world data can help us understand the complex issues communities face. This is otherwise known as “serious gaming”. Trina spoke about her own experience with this concept:

“We have a game called “Ulu”, which means a water droplet. It’s a game on managing water as a resource in the fictional city of Puda (meaning the land of water), but it’s actually built on Bangalore’s water data. In the game, there are multiple crisis situations for the players to go through, like a drought or a pandemic. In the pandemic, for example, it says that people are at home more and have to wash their hands more. So domestic water usage goes up by 10%. How are you going to handle it? The participants then discuss and decide things, like increasing water tax for middle and high income populations, to see if it helps. And once they input that option into the gaming simulation, it shows them the impact of the decision in five years.”

She continued:

“They might then see the groundwater level fall by 400%, so they decide to dig underground for water instead. And then the players can be like, ‘Oh, well I guess that wasn’t the best strategy’, before going back to try different ones.”

To show people the potential long-term consequences of their actions 

Game players can also learn about the long-term impact of their actions through simulated situations. Trina said:

“Gamification means creating a game-like environment in real life, right? And a game-like environment means you get points for doing things, or you get points deducted. An example of gamification is workout apps. You get points. There’s a leaderboard. And that’s creating this game-like environment in nature. But we’re not doing that through our tools. So with the water and waste-management games, for example, we’re not giving points to people in real life to segregate waste or save water. What we’re doing is using a game to teach people about complexity and consequences.”

To build empathy with marginalised groups

We also spoke to Trina about how games can be used to build empathy with marginalised groups. She told us about one of her games modelled on the life of garment factory workers in Bangalore. She said:

“Much of South Asia has garment factories. And workers in the factories are usually not working in great conditions. Bangalore is a hub for these garment factories, and so we built this game where each player gets a profile of a garment factory worker. These are actual profiles of workers we found through our research. 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? It’s about understanding the tradeoffs people have to make as people.”

She continued:

“The game is really built for the purpose of building empathy for this group of people specifically, but also for people who face intersectional marginalisation as a whole. We were playing with a group of lawyers and they were like, ‘Well, I’ll 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. This person facing multiple layers of marginalisation would never negotiate with the manager, and the manager would never listen.

That’s the great thing about games, right? Is that we can explain complexity, but without losing nuance. I think that’s one of my favourite games because it takes people through the lives and stories of a community we might not understand, but we should do in order to design solutions for them.”

To teach people how public policy works in complexity 

One of the final points in the episode is how games can be used to understand the complexity of public policy. Trina said:

“I think the reason why games, simulations, and experiential tools can be such a great way to learn about certain issues is because they’re a safe environment to experiment, fail, and learn. In real life, we can’t say ‘Let’s increase taxation and see what happens in five years’, can we? But in a game, I can take that chance and say, ‘Oh, let’s see what happens’. So I think that’s one great reason to use games. I also think that when we realise something ourselves, rather than being told it, the learning retention is much more.”

She continued:

“There’s no winning or losing because these games are about public policy. And in a domain as complex as public policy, we’re solving large scale social economic problems. That’s how complex it is. And so what the games are really about is having people understand the trade-offs required in solving issues at scale.”

The full conversation about the use of games in government is available now on all major podcast listening platforms. To listen, use the player below or click here. 

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