We used games to help young offenders reflect on their lives and talk positively about the future.
Young offenders often feel judged, unheard or totally misunderstood. They can also lack the tools to open up about their lived experiences and hopes for the future. To offer support, we worked with Dr Helen Hodges (Cardiff University) and the Neath Port Talbot youth justice team to explore how games and play can assist in rehabilitation and personal development.
Co-creating a serious game
The project's initial goal was to co-design a serious game with young offenders, offering them a stake in the game’s goals, style, and mechanics. The game intended to engage real-life issues faced by individuals - whether they be around family, social ties, finance, training, or otherwise - help them talk about them, and identify personal strategies for moving forward.
This proved more challenging than we had anticipated. Many of the participants lacked the motivation to focus on designing a game with others, or otherwise struggled to articulate their thoughts and ideas. We needed a different approach.
Games as conversation starters
Instead of co-creating a new game, we tried using existing games as conversation starters. We selected a range of tabletop titles with relatively simple rule sets, including Codenames, Dixit, Labyrinth and The Mind. This approach proved to be effective. By engaging in game play rather than game design, participants were more at ease and began opening up to us as facilitators.
Initially this manifested as light-hearted conversation around the game table, with the occasional reference to personal experience. It was mostly about building rapport. However, something rather more transformative occurred when playing Dixit - an imaginative card game in which players create stories using ‘dreamlike’ images. The abstract, interpretative quality of the images seemed to encourage participants to craft narratives that spoke of themselves. We were getting somewhere.
Modifying games
Building on the successes of our play session, we floated the idea of running a mini game. The objective of the session was to modify some of the tabletop games already played in such a way that they could more directly engage themes that were important to young offenders. The idea went down well and so we facilitated a three-hour jam with around ten of the young people.
This worked in two ways. First, we found that game modification - a less intimidating act than designing something from scratch - motivated participants to flex their creativity, work together, and share experiences. They were relaxed, engaged and talking. Secondly, we observed that participants were adept at attaching personal narratives to games, especially Dixit and Labyrinth. When playing their game mods and explaining how they tackled the challenge, the young people offered perspectives on where they once were, where they are now, and where they want to be.
Final thoughts
Our work with Dr Hodges and the Neath Port Talbot youth justice team concluded with a very different set of outcomes than we expected. Although the project didn’t lead to the development of a new serious game, it rather more valuably pointed towards a broader set of game initiatives that can help young offenders reflect on their journeys and think positively about the future. Low-stakes game play and game creation has been applied effectively to address issues and advance opportunities in many sectors. We’re confident that youth justice can equally benefit from the potential of games, and we look forward to exploring this work further in the future.
