In Development at Champlain College: a Video Game to Help Prevent Domestic Violence

By Jill Laster

A team at Champlain College wants to educate boys about the effects of violence against women. So they are creating a product using two things that appeal to their target audience: soccer and video games.

The university’s Emergent Media Center is working on a project with a grant from United Nations Population Fund to design a game for boys between 9 and 13. The project, created with support from the Population Media Center, features soccer matches broken up by narrative sections, with players facing social decisions on and off the field. The game should appear online sometime in March, and the production team will formally debut the game during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa this summer.

Ann DeMarle, the Emergent Media Center’s director, said that the group chose soccer because it is a sport popular around the globe — perfect for a game that the U.N. and Champlain hope will have international appeal. It also provides a competitive environment where sportsmanship lessons can be taught, Ms. DeMarle said, and it interests boys who are at age when they look to peers for how to behave.
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Below is a link to an interview with Ann DeMarle from Emergent Media Center. PMC is working with Emergent Media Center and UNFPA to create an electronic game for adolescent boys aimed at preventing violence against women.

What do you want people to know about the project?

Ann: My answer to that is two-fold. One, violence against women is a huge global problem; that’s the most important thing for people to know. Secondly, we’re using a medium,games, that has been labeled as promoting violence, and we’re taking it and applying it in the opposite direction, to create behavior changes to end violence. It’s not as easy to accomplish as I wish it would be.

For full article, visit:
http://www.canow.org/canoworg/2009/10/

Emergent Media Center at Vermont-based Champlain College is currently developing an educational video game designed for young boys in developing nations and targeted at preventing violence against women.

The title will be a global initiative, with an initial focus in South Africa.

The Center was recently awarded a $600,000 grant from the United Nations Population Fund — an international development agency promoting the right of every woman, man, and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity — to develop the title.

For full article, visit:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21226

Creating a fun game may seem an unlikely way to tackle the serious problem of domestic violence. But that’s the task facing a team of college students in quaint Vermont. An added challenge: The digital game has to be appealing and accessible to young people half a world away, in the townships of Cape Town, South Africa.

As part of a broader campaign against gender violence, the United Nations wants to reach children, particularly boys, before stereotypes sink in. Seeing the global popularity of gaming, the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) decided to partner with two media centers in Vermont. They hope to make a game available by the end of next year that can be adapted for various cultures.

For full article, visit:
http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=767950