An Overview of Serious Game Mechanism for Social Changes

This article aims to provide an overall picture of the applications of serious games for social changes. Our main goals are to show that game has great potential in delivering messages for social changes and to suggest guidelines for researchers and game developers in designing related games. We synthesized the key concepts of games for change that make them promising through literature reviews and analyzing game lists for social changes. Based on the theoretical investigations, we found that both role-taking and simulation of games are powerful ways not only to influence attitudes toward the other side but also to bring out empathy as psychological mechanism to draw attitude changes and altruistic actions associated with social or political issues.

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