A video game for fostering positive intercultural relationships. Guest post by Vivian Hsueh Hua Chen.
On an overall level, playing the game resulted in significant attitude change towards outgroup members.
In a culturally and racially diverse world, it is important for people to be able to live together harmoniously. Being respectful of cultural differences and fostering a genuine curiosity to better understand how and why other people are different from ourselves is one way to bridge the gap between self and others. This was the underlying motivation to create the prosocial game, Icebreaker. Icebreaker is a short role-playing game where players take on the role of the protagonist, an ice gatekeeper whose family has been tasked with protecting the village from an annual disaster known as ‘The Freezing.’ The goal of the game is for players to discover the true cause for this annual occurrence and to stop the event for good. The game design is primarily driven by narrative design integrated with interactive play. Certain tasks in the game require the player to work together with a banished villager, whose race has been blamed for being the cause of the disaster.
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Center for Intercultural Dialogue 