Playing to Grow: Augmenting Agriculture with Social Impact Games

拟议的研究探讨了使用电脑游戏作为讲故事和学习的方法，使城市用户参与农村发展，农业实践和印度农民面临的问题的复杂性。该项目的合作伙伴Digital绿色的主要业务是为农民制作和传播与农民共同创作的关于可持续农业实践的视频。这些视频提供了一个了解印度小农和边缘农民世界的窗口。在UnBox Fellowship中，最初的研究员与DG合作，重新构思和改进他们现有的在线Facebook游戏Wonder Village，旨在吸引和吸引更广泛的受众参与他们的工作，以促进对小农民生活的了解。该团队与DG一起，并与农民协商，提出了一个游戏平台的概念，其中DG视频占据中心舞台。拟议的项目将进一步利用这一概念开发一个游戏平台的数字原型，该平台将DG的视频直接整合到游戏中，并设计和测试了最有效地影响社会变革的游戏机制。虽然小农是印度农村的象征，但他们的生计和生存受到种植者、金融家和粮食经销商讨价还价能力不平等的威胁。印度以市场为导向的经济改革有可能加剧这些与印度农村社会普遍存在的种姓、性别、宗教和政治等权力等级直接相关的不平等。在印度媒体中，农业的表现形式多种多样（例如，粮食价格上涨，转基因与有机辩论），但人们仍然认为城乡差距大，农民贫穷，自杀率高（Padney和Kaur，2009年）。印度农民生活的现实情况仍然相对不为大多数联网的城市用户所知和误解。在这个项目的第一阶段，作为UnBox奖学金的一部分，对农民的采访强调了游戏需要宣传城市用户自己的生存与小农民的生存相互关联的信息。印度拥有世界上第三大最活跃的网络连接公民，第五大Facebook用户和1800万Twitter账户。最近公布的统计数据表明，印度75%的网络用户年龄在35岁以下，其中45%主要来自城市地区，并在社交媒体上讨论政治（Shrinivasan和Anwer 2012）。最近的研究表明，年轻一代越来越多地使用新的社交媒体工具进行娱乐和自我满足，但在危机时刻，他们也利用这些工具动员大量的人力和基础设施资源进行即时干预（Shah 2011）。虽然这些用户可能仍然对特定的政治原因持矛盾态度，但该项目旨在通过社会影响力游戏来利用这些知识。通过提高他们对印度小农面临的危机的认识和理解，游戏的目的是激励城市用户采取行动，促进农民、城市居民和印度的社会经济可持续性。

The proposed research explores the use of computer games as a method of storytelling and learning to engage urban users in the complexities of rural development, agricultural practices and issues facing farmers in India. The primary business of the project's partner, Digital Green, is to generate and disseminate videos co-created with farmers for farmers about sustainable farming practices. These videos provide a window into the world of small and marginal farmers in India. Within the UnBox Fellowship, the original Fellows worked with DG to re-conceptualise and improve upon their existing online Facebook game Wonder Village aimed at attracting and engaging a wider audience to their work to promote an understanding of small farmer's lives. Together with DG and in consultation with farmers the team came up with the concept for a game platform where the DG videos take centre stage. The proposed project will take this concept further to develop a digital prototype of a game platform that integrates DG's videos directly into game play with game mechanisms designed and tested to be most effective at influencing social change. While the small farmer is the symbol of the Indian countryside, their livelihood and existence is threatened by inequalities in the bargaining power of growers, financiers and distributors of food. Market-led economic reform in India threatens to intensify these inequalities directly linked to hierarchies of power that prevail across rural Indian society, related to caste, gender, religion and politics. Representation of farming takes a variety of forms in Indian media (e.g., rising food prices, GM versus organic debates), but perceptions persist of an urban-rural divide and of farmers as poor and plagued by suicide (Padney and Kaur 2009). The realities of farmers' lives in India remain relatively unknown and misunderstood by most web-connected urban users. Interviews with farmers during the first phase of this project, as part of the UnBox Fellowship, emphasised the need for the game to promote the message that urban users' own survival is interconnected with that of the small farmer. India has the third most socially active web-connected citizens in the world with fifth most Facebook users and 18 million twitter accounts. Recently published statistics indicate that 75% of web users in India are under 35 and 45% of these are mostly from urban areas and connect on social media to discuss politics (Shrinivasan and Anwer 2012). Recent research has shown that younger generations are increasingly using new social media tools for entertainment and self-gratification, but in moments of crisis, they are also using them to mobilise significant human and infrastructural resources to make immediate interventions (Shah 2011). While these users may remain ambivalent about identifying with particular political causes, this project aims to leverage that knowledge through a social impact game. By increasing their awareness and understanding of their implication in the crisis that is facing small Indian farmers, the game will be designed to motivate urban users to take action that can promote farmers', urban inhabitants' and India's socio-economic sustainability.