Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 21
Serious Games for Teaching Conflict Resolution:
Modeling Conflict Dynamics
Yun-Gyung Cheong, Rilla Khaled, Christoffer Holmg ard,
and Georgios N. Yannakakis
21.1
Introduction
Conflict resolution skills are fundamental to navigating daily social life, but many of
us acquire them only piecemeal and indirectly, over a lifetime of social interactions
with others. In this chapter, we describe our game Village Voices (Khaled and
Yannakakis 2013 ), an adaptive serious game designed to support children in learning
about conflict resolution, in the context of conflict situations that are likely to arise
in a school setting. Relying on experiential learning as an underlying learning
philosophy, and based on Bodine and Crawford's six-phase model of resolving
conflict (Bodine and Crawford 1998 ), Village Voices puts players in the role of
interdependent villagers who need to work through the various conflicts that arise
in the game world. To gradually earn conflict guru status, players must successfully
complete various personalized quests, which require cooperation between players.
Our game does not represent the first instance of a game about conflict resolution.
Existing games, for example, have placed players in the role of conflict mediators
seeking to find a win-win solution to conflict and of mentors teaching conflict
resolution skills (FableVision 2012 ; PlayGen 2010 ). What is novel about our game
is that it creates situations for players to experience conflicts first-hand, and relies
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