How to gamify sustainably? Guest lecture by two Finnish sustainability and gamification researchers at FAU
Today we had the great pleasure of welcoming Georgina Guillén-Hanson and Daniel Fernández Galeote from Gamification Group in Finland 🇫🇮 as guest lecturers in our course Designing Gamified Systems. In an interactive workshop, these two experts in gamification and sustainability research gave our students an eye-opening introduction to the topic of sustainable health and sustainable game design. 🎮🌍 💪
While in the beginning, most students were skeptical about how the topic of sustainability could fit into our group project, which is about designing gamification apps and games for health, a few hours later, all teams had worked out a comprehensive sustainability strategy for their software development projects.
In a hands-on session, we discussed:
1) the content’s sustainability of games for health (e.g., Does our gamified systems adapt effortlessly to different contexts? How does the user’s agency factor in their experience? What idea of health are we promoting, and could it be seen as healthwashing? Does it purpose future visions of health?)
2) the sustainability aspects of game development (e.g., Is your game part of environmentally damaging systems? How is it a part of health and well-being damaging systems? Can you do anything to mitigate these issues as developers? Who could?), and
3) how our game-design concepts can support social sustainability (e.g., How does our games address ethical, cultural and social aspects? Does they support education for sustainable development?)
I want to express my gratitude to Ginnie and Daniel for sharing their knowledge and expertise with us and delivering this inspiring workshop. Thanks for empowering our students at FAU to create more sustainable and more engaging digital health products! 🌟💚🌱