Call of Prev

The nationwide pilot project ‘Call of Prev’ focused on engaging with young people in their everyday lives about democracy and human rights and opening up new perspectives for them. As a door opener for this exchange, cultures interactive developed an interactive mobile game with an editor (a game design program). This game can be used – in an educational context – with a tablet and PC.

The mobile game encourages young people aged 14 and over to

• become creative themselves and help design the game,
• exchange their own life experiences,
• discuss options for action and personal attitudes,
• to recognize and deal with forms of group-hatred, anti-democratic attitudes and an affinity for violence.

This allows young people to expand their media skills and experience digital self-efficacy. They change and shape the story and logic of the game themselves and also acquire skills in digital game design. The main aim of the project was to strengthen the human rights and democratic attitudes of the young participants and to sensitize them to political or religious ideologies of inequality. After all, gaming is often used as bait by relevant actors to recruit young people. This makes educational 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 followed a cross-phenomenon pedagogical approach. It offered young people from different social and cultural backgrounds an opportunity to share experiences and actions of exclusion and bullying as well as experiences of inequality. Experiences of incitement and recruitment into manipulative and abusive organizations could also be discussed. Furthermore, the commonalities and interactions between right-wing extremist, racist and religiously based ideologies of group-hatred were made tangible – and reflected on in a way that is close to real life.

To this end, ‘Call of Prev’ drew on methods of “game-based learning”, i.e. digital-based gaming activities were combined with the teaching of social and object-oriented learning content. A particular focus was placed on gender-reflective learning. The game was used to address role expectations of girls and boys and different gender identities. 

Further training for multipliers

Current developments in game culture were presented in training courses and at a final conference, and discussions were held on how gaming can be used in prevention work and political education to counteract inhuman and anti-democratic attitudes. In addition, experiences and findings from game development and the workshops were passed on to educational professionals.

The two project phases

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

From 2022 to 2024, cultures interactive also offered youth workshops lasting several days at secondary and high schools, grammar schools, comprehensive schools, vocational schools and youth facilities throughout Germany. The workshops were geared towards the interests of the participants with regard to the core topics of identity, discrimination, experiences and attitudes of hatred and violence, social networks and ways of shaping one's own life beyond group hatred and hostility towards democracy.

The aim of the workshops was to create a joint product with the participants within the existing mobile game. For example, a new game character or a narrative micro-adventure could be designed in the editor. In the course of this, social experiences of exclusion or hostility or of cooperation, assistance and solidarity were recalled – and the game was expanded to include the respective personal perspectives. In this way, the participants learned digital design skills while at the same time strengthening their human rights-oriented attitudes.

The mobile game was developed on the basis of an open-source platform and is therefore available to the public as an Open Educational Resource (OER) under MIT license.

Project duration

January 2021 until June 2024

Funding