Games for Doing Good Going Wrong ... especially cross culturally

carteki

I recently came across the Rhino-Rage game launched by wwf to highlight (and raise money) for anti rhino poaching. I came here to find out if it was a local production or not and I see that @luke was involved. Essentially I was looking to find out how much it cost to make, but there is a much bigger issue ...

For those of you who don't know I spent 6 years living in Asia and have a perspective on the issue from both sides of the cultural divide.
This is an extract from WWF's profile of a rhino horn user

Power
Rhinos are thought to be strong and powerful animals – a symbol of immortality and being “unconquerable”.

I believe that the WWF scored an own-goal with this game (and possibly others that are in production) in enhancing the very properties of the rhino that makes it attractive to the users. @mkShogun96, @Crocopede possibly something for you to think about with your projects.

The other MGSA Rhino game - that the WWF should've used - Rhino Rush completely contradicts the perceived value in rhino in making it soft and fluffy and nice and may be the way we need to look at things (although not as exciting).

Bensonance

@carteki

Hey there! Enjoyed your mini-analysis of Rhino Raid! Changing something as complex as a symbol (language and impressions) using a game is a super interesting concept - and something I haven't really read much about yet - although I did just purchase Ian Bogost's How to Do Things with Video Games, which I hope yields some answers :).

I know a little bit about the two games you mentioned, so I'll share that here.

Rhino Raid was made over a period of months to a year (all assumption) by Cape Town games studio, Tasty Poison, which I believe has now shut down. In contrast, Rhino Rush was made in 48 hours by a team at the Serious Games institute

On to your thoughts: I do agree that it's a bit of a slip up to enforce the perception that makes rhino horn so desirable in the first place. It would be super interesting to design a game which challenged that perception in a meaningful way :). However, I do think trying to do this at the same time as trying to get players to identify and empathize with rhinos (and thus give money to protect them) would have been tricky.

I don't have any information on how effective Rhino Raid was for generating funding, but I do think it's a reasonable effort. Of course, they could have also made a game similar to Rhino Rush where they made the Rhino soft and fluffy, but this might have taken much more time to design mechanics around - which of course increases cost.

carteki

@Bensonance
Thank you for the information on the games and your feedback.
Games have an EXTREMELY important part to play in our day to day lives and how we see the world. On LinkedIn one of the trending posts is how leadership and teamwork skills are learnt on the playground (along with other skills - counting, balance, perception). Consider the childhood game American's and Indians or Cops and Robbers. Who were the bad guys? and the influence that that had on stereotypes.
Computer games also form part of today's media (tv, films, books) - and that is full of stereotyping. It doesn't mean that games are bad. My WWII history made way more sense after playing the relevant CIV4 scenario (yes I'm dating myself). Think about it ... a game is extremely powerful in that it garners huge amounts of your attention over time. Not just the 30-90 mins of a tv show or film. Returning to the game time and time again can re-inforce the ideas in the game as "normal".
In the corporate world they call it Gamification which is essentially about using the game elements of points, badges and leaderboards (unfortunately no story line) to motivate behavior. There are various examples where this has failed or backfired - but it is still being used as it has positive benefits too.

Regarding the rhino-rage game ... I don't think that the developers had much say in the basic story line. It's a classic example of how the WWF are failing in their job of protecting the rhino. It was an example of pointing out to the community that sometimes just the game is not all that matters and games are an extremely powerful tool for changing (or reinforcing) behaviour.

Nandrew

Thanks for the interesting discussion point. I ought to take a proper look at Rhino Raid some time, gonna grab it on Android. I've taken a look at the promo material so far so I'll mainly be going with that here.

I am not sure if WWF (or the developers) are causing active harm with their emphasis, mainly based on what I take to be the assumed audience of the game. This *looks* like it's aimed at the global West -- English copy, as well as the fact that it appears to be a fundraiser first and an educational app second. I do not know anything else about the distribution.

Genuine education/awareness games tend to get their development sponsored and are released for free, so if this was actually going to be marketed at South-East Asian horn buyers I think there would have been a lot of changes made. This looks like it's aimed at the group of people who are very distant from the issue: primarily putting money into problems and buying plastic rhino horns for their cars. ;)

Could an educational game be released for SE Asian audiences, spreading truth about rhino poaching and debunking myths? Probably, and I think that such a game would be very worthy.

But I think that would be a different game with a different project brief, and I'm sure it would not be one that demands a user purchase before playing. WWF is just trying to get money here. Not a bad thing if we assume they're spending it responsibly (though debating that is a conversation in itself).



If I were to look at something that strikes me as a different problem (and again, this is testing the limits of my knowledge until I can try the game properly), I'd raise a concern about the portrayal of the poachers. It looks like it draws on an unfortunate "gollywog" trope -- which I understand as not being well-received by people of colour. Is this a valid point to look at? I can form a more mature opinion after playing. (EDIT - Wait, I think everybody's wearing masks? I should definitely double-check)