Arabia Felix: Perspective change in Yemen through serious games

Summary

For the people of Yemen, living in a country rife with civil war is the new normal. Since the war began in March 2015 more than half of all school-aged children in the country are out of school. Women and girls are especially affected and face higher barriers in accessing basic education and in pursuing the careers they want. At the same time, over half of the population is below the age of 25; there remains a high mobile subscription penetration rate; and more 2 million Yemenis use Facebook. How might we leverage this high level of connectivity, especially among young people in Yemen, for good? And how might we measure changes in behaviour and perspective? Working closely with creative and tech teams in Yemen, we used a co-creation approach to develop the Arabia Felix mobile games series: a creative outlet for young people in Yemen to engage in the peacebuilding process of their country. Through integrated tools into the games, we are also gathering important data on perspective change and positive decision-making that can lead to more peaceful coexistence in the long-run. One game at a time, our international Arabia Felix team is doing its part to listen to the needs of Yemeni people, to explore how they communicate and what truly engages them in the peacebuilding process of their country and to co-create fun and effective solutions together.

Background/Objectives

The objective of the games is, through entertaining and contextualized characters and storylines, to engage young people in Yemen in positive perspective change and peaceful coexistence. By employing a co-creative approach, our goal is to ensure that each game is contextualized and developed together with the users in Yemen. Our goal moving forward is to continue to build our methodology, and to adjust and develop our Arabia Felix series to engage a future generation of peace builders and female leaders in Yemen.

Results/Lessons Learned

Our Arabia Felix Facebook page has 45,000 followers - a considerable amount of people living in Yemen who engage with content shared about the games and provide helpful feedback. All of our games are rated between 4.5 and 4.9 (our of 5) in the Google Play Store, indicating positive uptake of the games in Yemen. We have collected several impact stories from our local partners and users Yemen, young people who have actively engaged in our co-creative process from the beginning: Marwan (http://bit.ly/2DyIZIO), Lujain (http://bit.ly/2DylGPg) and Youssef (http://bit.ly/2DEHusH) And last year, our games won second place at the Partos Spindle Innovation Awards and at Gamification Europe, indicating the reach and impact of their message outside of Yemen as well. We also have lessons learned, for example on remote collaboration and co-creation, on how to measure SBCC in games and how to work effectively with teams from Yemen and Europe.

Abstract submitted by:

Eve Aronson - Butterly Works
C?©dric Ceulemans - Butterfly Works
Marwan Al-Ragehi - Arkadia Studio
Lujain Al-Eryano