Teaching Human Rights With Video Games?

Serious games which deal with human rights topics have been on the rise for the last 15 years. Digital games show some unique properties that make them valuable for inducing social change. Some of the game elements that can be used to integrate values are as follows: Narration, which is one of the elements that is most obvious to players and is part of most of today's digital games, is a proper way of presenting human rights topics and can also include ideological messages. However, there are also other ways of creating empathy for certain groups as the example of Ayitii - The Cost of Life shows: If players feel responsible for the game characters, games can make players think about the topic presented. Being able to take meaningful decisions which influence the player's avatar, other non-playable characters, the narration or the game-world is a property of many recent games. Thus, ethical decisions are included in games and put players into the shoes of those who are oppressed or put in other situations where there is no easy way of deciding if something is right or wrong. Finally, the article also discusses if these serious games can affect players' real lives and change their way of thinking and attitudes. The serious game This War of Mine shows that some players think about their decisions and the topic of the game even after having stopped playing. However, there are also restrictions to transferring game contents into players' lives and induce social change. Quite often it is not enough just to play the game, teaching which must take place in a non-game context, is needed to make players aware of human rights (violations).