Serious Games for Teaching Conflict Resolution: Modeling Conflict Dynamics - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 437

21.2.2 Framing Conflict

Our work concerns expressing conflicts through game experiences. As there is a
wide variety of literature available about conflict, and assorted perspectives on
how to manage it, we have looked to perspectives that can be relatively easily
interpreted for game design structures. In keeping with Thomas's ( 1992 )views,we
understand conflict as a process that is initiated when two or more parties involved
in an interaction perceive that one member shows or feels strong opposition to the
interaction (Thomas 1992 ). Notably, such an opposition can arise in relation to
parties having different goals. For example, Deutsch ( 2006 ) states that “a conflict
of interests occurs when the actions of one person attempting to reach his or her
goals prevent, block, or interfere with the actions of another person attempting to
reach his or her goals” (Deutsch 2006 ). Processes, characters, opposition, and goals
all form a natural fit with game design.
Other broadly accepted characteristics of conflict have also assisted us in
conceptualizing and representing conflict from a game design context. At base,
conflict is a social interaction between opposing sides with a specific temporal
duration. Laursen and Hafen ( 2010 ) explain the typical components of conflict
with language we normally associate with narrative texts: “There is a protagonist
and an antagonist (conflict participants), a theme (conflict topic), a complication
(initial opposition), rising action (conflict behaviours), climax or crisis (conflict
resolution), and denouement (conflict outcome)” (Laursen and Hafen 2010 ). Such
a conceptualization of conflict readily maps to building blocks of game design,
namely, characters, overall game objectives, obstacles that complicate achieving the
objectives, game actions that supply players with means to achieve the objectives,
and game outcomes.
The conflict literature reports how conflict can lead to both detrimental and
beneficial consequences (Deutsch 2006 ; Laursen and Hafen 2010 ; Johnson and
Johnson 1996 ). While detrimental consequences can include stress and other
health problems, as well as emotional and behavioural difficulties, some beneficial
consequences can include enhanced autonomy and individualization, and improved
social, cognitive, and negotiation abilities (Laursen and Hafen 2010 ). It is these
beneficial consequences that we set out to foster within the relatively controlled
environment of a serious game played in a classroom context, in concert with post-
play reflection.
Thomas suggests a taxonomy for conflict-handling modes specified in terms of
two underlying dimensions: cooperativeness and assertiveness (Thomas 1992 ). The
former describes attempts to satisfy the concerns of others, while the latter describes
attempts to satisfy one's own concerns. These dimensions can be combined to
describe five modes of behaviour, which in the rest of this chapter we refer to as
TKI style: competition, collaboration, compromise, avoidance and accommodation .
The competition mode is used when one party places their interests before those of
another party, and thus adhere to their own solution in solving the conflict. The
collaboration mode is used when solutions that are optimal for both parties are