Digital Games For Conflict Mediation: a Study on The Developers’ Responsibility Practices and The Way Forward

Abstract

Conflicts represent unwanted tensions between individuals, groups, and societies, being a pervasively defining dimension of global world politics. Existing approaches to mediate and resolve conflicts require all-encompassing, innovative practices appropriate to today’s world state and the ambition of becoming more sustainable. Traditional conflict mediation approaches (e.g., simulations) can gain potential from digital games, as information technologies are ubiquitous and games inherently afford conflict, strategy, collaboration, shared sense-making, and goal-setting. However, digital games can lead to misinformation, biases, data management, and online safety risks, calling for transparent responsibility practices, which are often unclear. To identify and understand responsibility principles and practices inherent to digital games for conflict mediation, we developed a systematic evidence synthesis in this initial study, collecting and analyzing the development processes of 26 conflict-mediation digital games. Our results comprise five practical recommendations, and a future research agenda to assist digital game developers in making sustainable HCI happen.