Call of Prev

Game Culture and Cross-Phenomenon Prevention

To get into exchange with young people in their life worlds about democracy and human rights and to open new perspectives for them - this is the focus of the nationwide model project "Call of Prev". As a door opener for this exchange, cultures interactive e.V. is developing an interactive mobile game with an editor (a game design program). This game is used - in an educational context - with tablet and PC.

Through the mobile game "Call of Prev" young people from the age of 14 are encouraged in workshops

  • to become creative themselves and to help design the game,
  • to exchange their own life experiences,
  • to discuss options for action and personal attitudes,
  • to recognize and work on forms of group-related hostility toward people, hostility toward democracy, and affinity for violence.

In this way, young people can expand their media skills and experience digital self-efficacy. This is because they change and help shape the story and logic of the game themselves, and they also acquire skills in digital game design.  The main goal of the project is to strengthen the human rights and democratic attitudes of the young participants and to sensitize them to political or religious ideologies of human inequality. This is because gaming is often used by relevant actors as a lure to recruit young people. This makes pedagogical 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 follows a cross-phenomenon pedagogical approach. It offers young people from different social and cultural environments an opportunity to share experiences and acts of exclusion and bullying, as well as experiences of inequality. Experiences of incitement and recruitment into manipulative and abusive organizations are also addressed. Furthermore, the commonalities and interactions between right-wing extremist, racist and religiously based ideologies of misanthropy are made tangible - and reflected upon in a way that is close to real life.

For this purpose, "Call of Prev" uses methods of game-based learning, i.e. activities of digitally based games are combined with the teaching of contents of social and object-oriented learning. Special emphasis is placed on gender-reflective learning. With the help of the game, role expectations of girls* and boys* are addressed as well as different gender identities. 

The two project phases

In the project, firstly (1) the development of an expandable, platform-independent mobile game and editor that can be used as a means of political education and prevention of radicalization, and secondly (2) the practical testing of the mobile game in seminars and workshops with young people from different social contexts. 

We offer youth workshops lasting several days at secondary and high schools, grammar schools, comprehensive schools, and vocational schools and youth institutions nationwide. The workshops are geared to the interests of the participants with regard to the core topics of identity, discrimination, experiences and attitudes of hate and violence, social networks, and possibilities for shaping one's own life beyond hostility towards people and democracy.

The goal of the workshops is to create a joint product with the participants within the already existing mobile game. For example, a new game character or a narrative micro-adventure can be designed in the editor. In the course of this, social experiences of exclusion or hostility or of cooperation, assistance and solidarity are recalled - and the game is expanded to include the respective personal perspectives. In this way, participants learn digital design skills while being strengthened in their human rights-oriented attitudes.

The mobile game will be developed on the basis of an open source platform and will also be made available to the public as an Open Educational Resource (OER) under MIT license after the end of the project.

Project duration

January 2021 until June 2024

Funding

Logo Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien