Call of Prev

The nationwide project “Call of Prev” focused on engaging with young people in their everyday lives about democracy and human rights and opening up new perspectives for them. As a door opener for this exchange, cultures interactive developed an interactive mobile game with an editor (a game design program). This game can be used - in an educational context - with a tablet and PC.

The mobile game encourages young people aged 14 and over to

• become creative themselves and help design the game,
• exchange their own life experiences,
• discuss options for action and personal attitudes,
• to recognize and deal with forms of group-hatred, anti-democratic attitudes and an affinity for violence.

This allows young people to expand their media skills and experience digital self-efficacy. They change and shape the story and logic of the game themselves and also acquire skills in digital game design.  The main aim of the project was to strengthen the human rights and democratic attitudes of the young participants and to sensitize them to political or religious ideologies of inequality. After all, gaming is often used as bait by relevant actors to recruit young people. This makes educational approaches that combine game culture with the strengthening of democratic and human rights attitudes all the more important.

Nationwide and cross-phenomenon model project

The project followed a cross-phenomenon pedagogical approach. It offered young people from different social and cultural backgrounds an opportunity to exchange experiences and actions of exclusion and bullying as well as experiences of inequality. Experiences of incitement and recruitment into manipulative and abusive organizations could also be discussed. Furthermore, the commonalities and interactions between right-wing extremist, racist and religiously based ideologies of group-hatred were made tangible - and reflected on in a way that is close to real life.

To this end, “Call of Prev” used “game-based learning” methods, i.e. digitally based gaming activities were combined with the teaching of social and object-oriented learning content. A particular focus was placed on gender-reflective learning. The game was used to address role expectations of girls and boys and different gender identities. 

Further training for multipliers

Current developments in game culture were presented in further training courses and at a final conference and it was discussed how gaming can be used in prevention work and political education to counteract attitudes that are contemptuous of people and hostile to democracy. In addition, experiences and findings from game development and the workshops could be passed on to educational professionals.

Gaming workshops at schools and youth facilities

As part of Call of Prev, cultures interactive also offered youth workshops lasting several days at secondary and high schools, grammar schools, comprehensive schools, vocational schools and youth institutions throughout Germany. The workshops were geared towards the interests of the participants with regard to the core topics of identity, discrimination, experiences and attitudes of hatred and violence, social networks and ways of shaping one's own life beyond group-hatred and hostility towards democracy.

The aim of the workshops was to create a joint product with the participants within the existing mobile game. For example, a new game character or a narrative micro-adventure could be designed in the editor. In the course of this, social experiences of exclusion or hostility or of cooperation, assistance and solidarity were recalled - and the game was expanded to include the respective personal perspectives. In this way, the participants learned digital design skills while at the same time strengthening their human rights oriented attitudes.

Open source software for political education work with young people

The mobile game was created entirely as open source software and the final version of the game and the editor are available to all interested parties on the version management platform Github as an Open Educational Resource (OER) under an MIT license. Both can be downloaded for educational work and by interested programmers for further development. Instructions on how to use the editor are published on GitHub so that anyone interested can use it to run their own workshops.

A pedagogical booklet also offers contributions on game-based prevention work, various methods for pedagogical work and insights into the workshops with young people in “Call of Prev”. In addition, all artistic elements, from graphics to sounds, can be downloaded to a Google Drive. Due to the high data volume of the mobile game, Google Chrome, 8 GB RAM and a powerful graphics card are recommended for use. However, due to the project-based financing, Cultures Interactive does not provide support for other users and does not guarantee error-free use.