Demokratie ist in Ordnung. Aber was ist mit Politik? Für viele Leute ist Politik vor allem eins: nervig. In diesem Workshop gehen wir darauf ein, wie interaktive, spielerische Kommunikation dieses eher schwerfällig Thema leichter verdaulich machen kann. Können Spielmechaniken reflektierte politische Beteiligung und sachliche Selbstbildung fördern – oder führen sie zu einer gefährlichen Verzerrung der Realität?

For two hours, students were completely free to come up with their own solutions for a topic of their choice. In their presentation, the student teams had to answer the following questions:

Which topic/issue are you addressing?
How is your idea improving the topic/issue?
What is your view on the future and your role as a designer?
How could your concept have a negative impact on society and how can you prevent negative outcomes?

Games for political education? Yay! If it is done responsibly, free of ideology and with the sole intention to evoke intrinsic motivation to self-reflect on personal choices. Concerning the comparison of the prototypes for political communication, the more usability focussed prototype was more popular amongst the students than the one focussed on playfulness.

«If we need games to engage people into democracy we need to question democracy itself. Why do so many people not want to use their democratic power?» This statement, which was written by one of the students, serves as a transition to the sentiment of the afternoon presentations. The future is not a topic everyone wants to reflect about. Avoiding an uncomfortable outlook remains more comfortable than facing it. Nevertheless, the students came up with their own solutions for some of the challenges which they personally deem significant. They reflected on their own area of influence when it comes to shaping the future.