Sustaining Stories: Story in games for social impact

This paper was presented at <i>Storystorm Workshop</i> at the <i>ACM Design of Interaction Systems Conference 2014</i>, Vancouver, 21-25 June. <br><br>Storying in games can effectively promote pro-social<br>purposes by bringing complex systems, social issues,<br>cultural knowledge and practices to life. This paper<br>considers a case study of the game ‘Bumper Crop’<br>developed in a specific socio-cultural context with small<br>farmers in India aimed at communicating the real life<br>issues and challenges they face, along with those of<br>rural development and maintenance of sustainable<br>agricultural practices. In particular, it discusses the<br>way that stories operate within the game and in social<br>impact games in general and how they are an effective<br>mediated environment for knowledge integration and<br>identification.<br>