Understanding And Designing For Conflict Learning Through Games

Conflict resolution skills are fundamental to navigating daily social life, yet means to learn constructive conflict resolution skills are limited. In this chapter, we describe Village Voices, a multiplayer serious game we designed that supports children in learning and experimenting with conflict resolution approaches. Drawing on experiential learning as an underlying learning philosophy, and based on Bodine and Crawford's six-phase model of resolving conflict, Village Voices puts players in the role of interdependent villagers who need to work their way through conflicts and quests that arise in the game world. In this chapter, we first present Village Voices through the design qualities of competitive collaboration, local familiar multiplayer, playing around the game, reimagining the real, and persistence. We then present a case study that examines the learning experiences of players over four weeks, focusing on the role of time, emotion, the relationship between in-game conflict and learning, and requirements for learning moments.