My Dream Theatre: Putting Conflict on Center Stage

Joana CamposINESC-ID and InstitutoSuperior Técnico - UTL

Lisboa, Portugaljoana.campos@ist.utl.pt

Carlos MartinhoINESC-ID and InstitutoSuperior Técnico - UTL

Lisboa, Portugalcarlos.martinho@ist.utl.pt

Gordon IngramSchool of Science, Society

and ManagementBath Spa University, Englandg.ingram@bathspa.ac.uk

Asimina VasalouHCI Centre, School of

Computer Science, Universityof Birmingham, England

a.vasalou@bham.ac.uk

Ana PaivaINESC-ID and InstitutoSuperior Técnico - UTL

Lisboa, Portugalana.paiva@inesc-id.pt

ABSTRACTLearning environments must weave content and practicefrom different areas of expertise to achieve success in theend. In this paper, we describe the approach taken in thedesign of a serious game aimed at teaching children aboutconflict resolution. We address the issue of including users,both teachers and children, in the design process and theindispensable multidisciplinary effort to put together a toolthat suits learners needs. The paper highlights the decisionsthroughout the design due to the different perspectives wewanted to incorporate in the game. These include researchon conflict theory, user participatory research and game de-sign. By reckoning that all the perspectives are equally im-portant, we insure that in the end we will have a solid gamewhich fine-tuned mechanics will support its serious purpose.

Categories and Subject DescriptorsK.3.0 [Computer Uses in Education]: General; I.2.1[Applications and Expert System]: Games]

General TermsTheory, Design.

KeywordsSerious Games Design, Education, Conflict.

1. INTRODUCTIONA new generation of learners is growing up at a time when

technology is part of their daily lives and is critical to theway they acquire new skills. Fostered by the pervasive in-fluence of these computer interfaces, game learning envi-ronments are considered to have an untapped potential for

education [8, 15]. This is the case for the so-called seriousgames, which use the advantages of a virtual environmenteither to encourage behavioural and social change or to pro-mote a safe setting in order to explore a complex issue, tomention a few examples [17].

The focus of our project is on creating a new kind of ed-ucational tool aimed at encouraging behaviour change inchildren’s conflict resolution. Conflict is a normal part ofeveryday life and it should be considered as a constructiveprocess that enables society to move forward. According tothis view, being able to manage conflict in an effective andindependent way [16] is a social skill that should be inter-nalized early in life [19]. Using a game as a vehicle to conveyawareness about the deep structure of conflict can promptchildren with an engaging tool to explore others’ points ofview, experience the consequences of their actions, and learnnew ways to interact.

The engaging nature of game-based environments, how-ever, is not enough to meet the educational goals. For aserious game to be successful, it is essential to ensure li-aison between content and gameplay as a pathway to es-tablish specific learning outcomes [10, 12]. This is a corechallenge when developing such tools and it can be accom-plished by having a well articulated multidisciplinary team(i.e. domain experts, game designers and developers), whodraw upon knowledge from different areas of expertise [10,18]. In addition to this, users’ socio-cultural activities arealso essential to feed into the game design cycle as childrenneed to learn in context [7]. Thus, it is important to havea good scaffold based on sound educational principles andtheory balanced with respect to gamers’ voices and their lit-eracy in the subject, rather than relying on adults’ precon-ceived ideas. Furthermore, researchers should also includeteachers in the design loop to meet their expectations, forexample toward ensuring that the game addresses curricu-lum requirements [11, 9]. Weaving it all together is hardlystraightforward and the literature does not offer a recipe tofollow.

In this paper, we intentionally employed a set of meth-ods – namely interviews, cultural probes and visualizations,participatory sessions and gameplay testing – that helpedus to address the aforementioned challenges during the con-ception and development of our serious game – “My DreamTheatre”. We discuss how the methods we used helped us

address the different perspectives in the design of our learn-ing environment and how the findings, from these appliedmethods, yielded insights that were translated into designdecisions in our game. By adopting a multi-disciplinary ef-fort in the design process, our aim is to guarantee to havea solid product that will foster children’s ability to thinkdifferently about conflict.

2. BACKGROUND AND RELATED WORKThroughout the literature there are several competing def-

initions of conflict. In this project, we focus on interpersonalconflict, and understand conflict as a dyadic event, part of aninteraction between two opposing sides with a recognizabletemporal duration [14]. Adding to that, we adopt Thomas’[20] view of conflict, where in very broad terms he describesit as “the process which begins when one party perceivesthat the other has frustrated, or is about to frustrate someconcerns of his”.

Unquestionably, conflict resolution is not about eliminat-ing conflict (because sometimes this is not possible) but touse its constructive potential (i.e. to avoid the destructiveaspects of conflict) [16]. Children must learn to be more ef-fective and independent in handling conflict in order to findways for non-violent conflict resolution and be more sociallycompetent. With the view to teach such skills to childrenand to engage them in the subject, educational interven-tions in some schools have taken the form of peer mediationprograms [13] or drama workshops [5]. In fact, these kindof programs have proven to have a positive impact on stu-dents’ behaviour. Nevertheless, one possible shortcoming isthat classroom settings are static and most of the time theintervention is not adapted to the individual learner’s needs.

The use of games to teach conflict resolution is thus veryappealing and that vehicle had already been explored. Ga-mes such as FearNot! and Choices and Voices are examplesof computer-based interventions intended to discuss partic-ular variations of the conflict phenomenon. FearNot! [2]allows children to explore what happens in bullying situa-tions. Children take the role of an ‘invisible friend’ to thevictim and throughout the game the user gives advice to thevictimized character taking responsibility for what happensto him/her. The Choices and Voices [1] role-playing gamedeals with peer pressure management, ability to questionpoor advice or development of resilience to adverse influ-ences. Interactive scenarios are integrated into a narrative,wherein the child makes decisions which have consequencesin the story. Both games tackle conflict differently. The for-mer addresses a severe (and specific) form of conflict while inthe latter children are guided through right or wrong actionsthat create internal dilemmas. Although these two gamesare related to our aims, we intend to focus on teaching con-flict and conflict resolution from a broader perspective.

To address this issue, we used Crawford and Bondine’s[4] work as a scaffold. As regards content, the researchersunderline two critical components that conflict resolutionprograms must entail: principles of conflict resolution anda problem solving process. To engage in effective problemsolving, children need to be trained on the following abili-ties: Orientation (understand concepts such as justice, tol-erance, self-respect, etc.), Perception (understand that par-ties may differ on how they perceive the situation), Emotion(understand how to communicate and express emotions ef-fectively), Communication (acquire behaviours to effectively

exchange facts and feelings), Creative thinking (find solu-tions that could be mutually beneficial) and Critical think-ing abilities (recognize and establish objective criteria basedon which future behaviours may be planned).

3. LEARNING SCENARIOThe proposed work strives to create a safe environment

where children can test and experiment with various re-sponses to conflict that they can later apply when they en-counter conflicts in the real world.

3.1 Concept“My Dream Theatre” (MDT) is a single player game de-

signed to prepare and teach 10 to 12-year old children con-flict resolution skills. In MDT, the player takes the role ofthe director of a school theatre club, and has to mediate sev-eral conflicts during a full season. Each season is composedby several rehearsals and live performances. The success ofthe player in MDT relies on her ability to help the actorsovercome each conflict situation in the drama club in orderto orchestrate regular successful plays during the season.

In MDT, the player manages the actors, their needs andthe conflicts between them. One of the main ideas of theconcept, therefore, ıs the existence of Non-Player Charac-ters (NPCs) representing the actors in the school’s theatreclub who need to work together to set up the best possibleperformance. Each actor has certain personal stats, suchas gender, performing skill, role preference and conflict res-olution style, which will influence his/her behaviour. Notall actors can be assigned to their preferred role, and con-flict will emerge between actors as a result. When conflictsemerge, the player is tasked with mediating the conflictsas seen suitable by employing a set of actions available. Ifthe player continuously allows the conflicts between NPCsto escalate, they will reach a rupture point and the NPCswill deal with the conflict as they see fit, which will causeunexpected events that go beyond the control of the player.

3.2 Serious MessagesWe believe that children should be prepared at the readi-

ness level, as suggested by Kreidler [16]. Some conflict reso-lution skills are difficult for young children to grasp. There-fore, when teaching these concepts, one should focus onpreparing and giving them tools they can use when theyare ready. Hence, much of the effort should be placed onbroadening children’s vocabulary and on making themconscious of the semiotic elements of conflict. In addition,the game should convey the positive side of conflict –conflict can be constructive depending on the actions wetake.

MDT focuses on a subset of the conflict abilities describesin section 2. It aims to support the training of critical-thinking in conflict situations by giving children tools toanalyse, hypothesise and evaluate possibilities. In that sense,activities should help them see the cause and effect of spe-cific actions and heighten their awareness around the choicesthey make. Furthermore, the game also aims to developperceptual and emotional abilities.

This includes being able to perceive and reason aboutothers’ perspectives and understanding that people mayhave different ways of handling conflict. To achieve this,children will be required to mediate conflicts (problem solv-ing process addressed) between the game characters. They

will have to learn to gather perspectives, identify intereststhat are contributing to the conflict and find better waysto cope with the situation (principles of conflict resolutionhighlighted by [4]). Moreover, a core component of any con-flict is emotion, and it is the intense emotions associatedwith conflict that make children feel so overwhelmed andlacking control[16]. Experiencing these emotions, however,is normal and natural. As such, being sensitive to theseemotional changes in others is essential to master conflictresolution. Since children will often not realize they are ina conflict until it has escalated to an extreme [16], helpingthem understand how conflict appears and escalates is animportant part of the learning process.

4. TOWARDS “MY DREAM THEATRE”Design challenges in learning games include balancing ed-

ucational principles, users’ practices and literacy, fun andengagement. These features must be congruent with gamecontent and mechanics. With the view to address thesechallenges, researchers such as Good and Robertson [9] orGunter et al.[10] have highlighted a set of strategies whichthey argue promote the creation of an effective learning en-vironment, which we have found relevant in our research:1) Basing design efforts on a sound theoretical scaffold. Thisis summarized in section 2;

2) Intertwining game mechanics with the content to betaught – (This is described in section 5 which takes into con-sideration both literature and findings from user research);

3) Including teachers and children in the design process inorder meet their expectations, practices and literacy. Thiswas done through interviews, cultural probes, participatorysessions and playtesting;

4) Balancing team members’ needs for a more successfuloutcome, as novel ideas may arise from the interaction be-tween team members – probes visualizations aim to tacklethis issue.

In this section, we report and discuss how we tried to meetthe requirements.

Research with children was carried out in one school incountry A over a period of 2 years. In total, 49 children(per year) aged 10 to 12 years-old participated in the stud-ies. Opt-out consent forms were provided to all parents orguardians of those children.

4.1 Interviews with Children and Teachers

4.1.1 Aims and MethodsTo enrich our understanding about children’s practices

in conflict situations, we conducted semi-structured inter-views. The interviews were divided into two parts: a warm-up phase where kids were asked to discuss their favouritecomputer games with us and a core phase where they de-scribed conflict episodes experienced as an observer, perpe-trator (describe a situation wherein someone got angry withyou) and victim (describe a situation wherein you got angrywith someone). The methodology employed in the inter-views is a replication of a study previously conducted in theUK, reported by Vasalou, Ingram and Khaled [21]. The corepart of the interviews was designed to extract rich narrativesof conflict episodes. We asked children to provide detailsabout conflict triggers, resolutions and outcomes. Addition-ally, we were interested in their feelings during and at theend of such conflict episodes (refer to [21] for more details).

Two teachers at the same school were also interviewed.Our aim was to understand their experience in dealing withconflict on a daily basis, how our game could help them andhow it might be effectively incorporated in the classroom.

4.1.2 Key FindingsOur interviews with children were a good starting point

to understand their practices and to get to know their mainconcerns. However, given that this was their first contactwith the researcher, we observed that children were not al-ways at ease in sharing sensitive information. Generally,we found that children consider conflict difficult to defineand their vocabulary is rather limited when describing suchepisodes. Often they do not realize they are in a conflictuntil it has escalated into a fight. When the potential con-flict becomes salient, they have difficulty in identifying itsantecedents and consequences.

Turning to our interviews with teachers we found thatthey have to deal with minor conflicts and their strategy es-sentially focuses on preventing the situation from escalatingand disrupting the class. One of the teachers noted: “I al-ways try to talk to them first, so that they understand whatreally happened and why they had a certain reaction, how-ever this will only work with certain children. Sometimes Itry not to make a big deal out of it to prevent the situationto become worse.”. When a quick-fix is not effective, teach-ers will activate the “power chain” within the school. Theparents are seldom informed of such episodes and are onlynotified in severe occasions. Our second teacher claimedto discuss class problems with children during a dedicatedtime slot, suggesting that conflict episodes tend to affect thewhole class dynamics.

Both teachers believed that a game should depict situa-tions with which the children can identify themselves. Oneteacher argued that “children already know what the solutionis, but they do not know how to act and the game should helpthem on that”.

Teachers generally lack support, time and educational re-sources to carry out conflict resolution programs (this echoeswhat was found in the UK [21]). Particular to Portugal,schools rarely have resources to devote time to social learn-ing. When they are willing to allocate time to such initia-tives, as is the case in the school we worked with, teachersunfortunately lack the know-how to teach emotional and so-cial learning. Thus for a game to be accepted by the schooland to be effective, researchers will have to provide adequatetraining to teachers and ensure that the tool is easy to in-teract with and can adapt to their needs.

4.2 Conflict Probes and Visualizations

4.2.1 Aims and MethodsAn adaptation of the Cultural Probes created by Gaver et

al. [6] – Conflict Probes – was employed with the aim to col-lect sensitive information about children’s individual feelingsand behaviours in situations they identify as important.

The adaptation of the method was markedly influenced byconflict theory and a previous study carried out by Berkovich[3], in which she applied the Perspective Probes. Similarlyto what Berkovich did in her study (about Google finance),we broke down the conflict topic into small units to addresselements of the phenomenon without asking about conflictdirectly.

The probe pack (figure 1) encapsulated the semiotic ele-ments of conflict and was composed of seven self-containedtasks around the five dimensions of the phenome- non: par-ticipants, causes, strategies, resolutions and outcomes. Thetasks were designed to create an evolving interaction withthe user by increasing the level of ambiguity as the partici-pant explored the package:

Task 1 - Social Network. The first task asked aboutparticipants’ emotional links to other children at school, andcaptured their familiarity with different emotions.

Task 2 - Feel. Complementing the first task, the secondtask intended to capture triggers of emotions other thananger, which is the emotion most frequently reported duringconflict. Children were asked to enumerate situations duringwhich they had felt sad, happy or scared.

Task 3 - You’re the writer. Children wrote the endingto a story about a resource dispute. This task exploredperspectives on conflict resolution that may be influencedby personality differences.

Task 4 - Bubbles. Children were given a set of wordswhich they needed to use in order to temporally describe aconflict. This activity allowed us to explore how childrenview events that lead to a conflict situation, as well as whathappens in the aftermath.

Task 5 - Thermometer. What makes children get angryis likely to vary greatly. This task was designed to measuredifferences in anger intensity, by asking children to rate sit-uations and their triggers using an “anger thermometer”.

Task 6 - No Rules. Children were asked to think aboutconflict and what it means. Using the provided materials,they were asked to depict a situation during which a conflicthappened or might happen.

Figure 1: Probe pack

As discussed earlier, the interdisciplinary challenge ofweaving content and practice can lead to new opportuni-ties that should be considered in the early stages of designas this can increase the likelihood of developing a success-ful game [12]. With a view to address this issue, we ex-tended the “cultural probes’ experience” to the remainingmultidisciplinary members of the team, by creating a set ofvisualizations, which aim to capture the main characteris-tics of the probes’ tasks and transform the physical artifactsinto digital form. The aim of this approach is to promotedisciplinary convergence by encouraging discussion, criticalthinking, and creating detachment from previously acquiredknowledge and/or patterns. Its main principles are:

a) visual artifacts share a tight connection with the orig-inal structures (figure 2);

b) interaction is a process that allows the user (in thiscase, other team members) to explore data in parts and

thus, transform the conceptual space (figure 3 provides anexample);

c) the graphical shapes do not consider the gathered infor-mation explicitly and thus do not impose an interpretationon the data presented. Exploration provide access to quali-tative values and never quantitative ones.

In our view, visualisations respect the ambiguous and un-certain nature of the probe returns. They also provide de-signers with a brainstorming tool featuring different typesof interactions that encourage further reflection and support‘in time’ decisions.

4.2.2 Key FindingsConflict Probes played a reinvigorating role in our pre-

inventive design phase. The theory that grounded the tasks’structure gave us the opportunity to learn about conflict.It also helped us understand how conflict can be explainedto children, which had a direct effect on the design of thegame. The probes’ returns verified our earlier findings inshowing the unsophisticated knowledge children have aboutconflict and the difficulty they face in recognizing its variousdimensions as part of a coherent whole. Furthermore, thevisualizations allowed us to convey children’s experiences toother team members while ensuring that the ambiguous anduncertain nature of the probes returns remains intact. Wefound that the tool transformed the data space, supporting ashift in our perceptions whilst opening the space for criticaland creative thinking. We believe that this approach canbe easily extrapolated to other design projects that demanddisciplinary convergence by creating common ground.

Figure 2: Task 1 - Social Network. From physical todigital artifacts

Figure 3: Task 3 - You’re the writer. Words are themain element of this task. It is possible to exploreeach story individually by interacting with the visualforms as shown in the right-hand side of the figure.

4.3 Participatory Sessions

4.3.1 Aims and MethodsMDT uses the Thomas-Killmann [20] conflict model to

draw children’s attention to ways of coping with conflictother than fighting. Although conflict learning programs fos-ter win-win solutions, other types of conflict handling modesare also appropriate depending on the situation. Focusingmore on the characteristics of specific conflict behaviours,Thomas and Kilmann [20] presented a model that general-izes the approaches for handling conflict in terms of: as-sertiveness and cooperativeness. The former describes at-tempts to satisfy one’s own concerns, while the latter de-scribes a focus on satisfying the other’s concerns. These di-mensions create a two-dimensional space described by fourconflict handling modes: appeasement, neglectful, domina-tion, collaboration and compromise. Given the clarity andsimplicity of this taxonomy, we mapped Thomas’ model [20]to some of our game mechanics.

Participatory sessions were conducted with the purpose toidentify visual symbols that could effectively communicateeach one of these strategies to children. This became a vehi-cle through which we learned about children’s understandingof these terms.

Figure 4: How a child would look like if her be-haviour was classified in the category dominate

4.3.2 Key FindingsThe participatory sessions revealed that children had dis-

torted views of concepts proposed by our theoretical model.The words children claimed to know were collaborate and

dominate, while the remaining coping modes were not as yetpart of their vocabulary. This reinforced our conviction tobroaden children’s vocabulary on conflict resolution. More-over, words such as friend, kind, lovely, genius, smart, cre-ative and intelligent were attributed to collaborative be-haviour.

Children, in general, did not see collaboration as the idealway to cope with conflict. In their view, collaboration meantlosing something to the other party. They reduced themodel’s bi-dimensional space (assertiveness and cooperative-ness) to a win-lose dichotomy. In addition to this, the timeframe between conflict and its outcomes was perceived tobe short. Short-term gains were more important than long-term ones. For example, a character sharing a resource withanother, was seen as being cooperative and not assertive,

given that during that specific moment she was not gettingeverything she wanted.

Finally, children associated negative symbols with beha-viours expressing dominating and neglectful strategies. Thissuggested that the game should support the additional per-spective that there is not one best strategy. Depending onthe context all strategies are valid.

Overall, participatory sessions helped us focus on the mostimportant serious messages to be conveyed through the gameby providing supporting evidence. An ancillary finding wasthat children were able to articulate reasons for their choicesduring a reflection phase that took place after the participa-tory sessions. They were also able to provide better answerswhen they thought they might be wrong. It is thus ex-tremely relevant to incorporate after-game reflection sessionsto crystallize their experiences in the game. The teacherplays a fundamental role in this.

4.4 Gameplaytesting a Low Fidelity Prototype

4.4.1 Aims and MethodsThe game was iteratively tested using a low-fidelity pro-

totype (LFP) – i.e. a card version of the game (figure 5) –in a total of 20 testing sessions lasting 45 minutes each, overa 5-week period. The aim was to ensure that the flow of thegame was smooth, to address whether the game was fun andto gain insight into the actions the players may want to takeduring gameplay (and why). Children played the card gamein pairs in order to encourage discussion and interaction.Constructing such a collaborative setting was ideal for elic-iting as much feedback as possible. A researcher supervisedthe sessions. The researcher was present during the setupof the game, offered children support throughout the gamesession and collected their reactions and comments. Eachsession consisted of one round. Due to time constraints, 38children participated in the study (18 girls and 20 boys), 8of them playing the game twice. Each testing session (figure6) began with a brief explanation of the theatre metaphorand included a recap of key concepts and keywords crucialfor understanding the purposes of the game. After these in-structions were delivered, the main game elements such asactors, personalities, conflict and mediation, were explainedin detail along with the game mechanics. A summary of therules was also provided.

Figure 5: Snapshot of the low-fidelity card prototypeof “My Dream Theatre”

Figure 6: Two girls during one of the playtestingsessions

4.4.2 Key FindingsThis stage was extremely important in verifying whether

the mechanics were working for or against the serious mes-sages that we wanted to communicate through our game.Observations of children’s reactions along with their com-ments and suggestions led us to make several changes in theprototype. These changes concern not only the balance ofthe game, but also the addition of new elements which wefelt better conveyed our serious messages.

5. WEAVING IT TOGETHERIn this project, conflict theory, user research and princi-

ples from game design were three simultaneous forces thatshaped the development of MDT. In this section, we de-scribe how these forces shaped the different game mechanicsand how these mechanics support the serious messages thegame intends to convey.

5.1 Game Core ElementsThere are three core elements in the game – actors, media-

tion actions and external events – that together encapsulategame mechanics aimed at meeting our learning objectives.

5.1.1 ActorsThe theatre club is constituted by a set of actors. This

line-up remains the same throughout the game. The playercannot fire or substitute an actor when things start to fallapart: she has to deal with the different conflict situationsappearing throughout the game.

Actors have an individual identity. They have aname, gender and a distinct appearance. This establishesdifferent identities for the actors, fosters a connection withthe player, and makes it easier for the players to talk aboutthe game, in post-game in-class discussion sessions.

Actors’ preferences are the basic mechanic to gen-erate conflict. The actors have individual preferencesabout the roles they would like to perform (e.g. villain,hero, sound engineer). Actors who share some preference(e.g. ‘like music’), also share a social identity and are thusassumed to belong to the same group, facilitating certaintypes of interactions. There are different roles, but one isparticularly problematic: the figurant. Disliked by all, it hasto be attributed to an actor. In MDT, roles are the object

of dispute and cause conflict to emerge, as it is not possiblefor all actors to perform their ideal role.

Actors’ acting skill is the measure of success. Act-ing skill determines how good an actor is at acting the re-hearsed role. Actors can increase their acting skill in a re-hearsal, but only if they are not in conflict with others, asthe emotions aroused by conflict can cloud their mind andimpede them in developing their acting skills. Because showsare scoring events that happen regularly after a certain num-ber of rehearsals, and because the game rewards the playerbased on the acting skill of all actors, the game ensures thatconflict resolution is mandatory for the player to succeed inthe game.

Actors’ conflict resolution skill supports the no-tion that conflict can have positive outcomes.Playtesting quickly emphasized the fact that children sawthemselves as having to repeatedly solve the actors’ prob-lems. Besides the fact that this was not a fun experience forthem, conflict was understood as a clearly negative event. Tosupport the message that conflict can also have a positiveside, we provided actors with a conflict resolution skill, al-lowing them to solve (to a certain extent) conflicts on theirown. When the player helps the actors resolve their con-flicts in certain ways, their conflict skill increases, and ac-tors progressively become more proficient at resolving theirown conflicts without intervention from the player (mainlythose that happen outside of the rehearsal). This mechanicemphasizes actors’ progression in terms of their conflictresolution skills. Expert players will learn to let conflict sit-uations arise for the actors in order to build up their skillsand progress quicker in the game. Additionally, the ac-tors’ conflict resolution skill supports the dynamicsof short-term versus delayed rewards, helping childrenbetter understand the time frame between conflict and itsoutcome, and to realize that long-term benefits may be moreimportant than short-term gains (the participatory sessionsshowed that children understand conflict in a very narrowtime frame).

Conflict level and emotional threshold explicitlyrepresent conflict escalation and different tolerancelevels between individuals. Understanding conflict esca-lation is a critical aspect of conflict resolution. Actors havea conflict level that will increase as conflict situations ap-pear and decrease as they are resolved. Each actor also hasan individual emotional threshold, representing the actor’stolerance to adversity and is graphically described as a ther-mometer. This represents a limit that, when reached, willmake actors lose their temper and act according to their con-flict personality. This resultant action (e.g. an actor leavingthe rehearsal and taking all her friends with her) is unex-pected from the cast’s point of view, and usually undesirablefor the player. This is an element directly extracted fromthe probes tasks and represents the fact that if a conflictsituation is not handled properly, it can escalate to an un-bearable level and have consequences for the self and others.From the conflict probes, we learned that anger progressionis not a concept well understood by children. This mechanicaims to explicitly represent the emotional charge of eventsand emotion escalation, which the player must control toguarantee that unexpected events will not occur.

Actors have individual conflict resolution styles.Different people react differently to conflict situations. Con-flict resolution styles were directly extracted from the theory

[20] of conflict resolution (as described in the backgroundsection) that captures the different styles of handling con-flict. The theory proposes that there is no best way to dealwith a conflict, and the mode of resolution has to be adaptedto each situation. The conflict resolution style is mapped tothe actor’s personality, which is characterized by assertive-ness and cooperativeness, and action tendencies in responseto conflict situations: neglect, appease, dominate and collab-orate. Actors, depending if they are assertive or cooperative,will display a different behaviour either when conflict situ-ations occur or as a response to mediation actions. Theparticipatory sessions indicated that although words usedto express conflict resolution styles are not part of children’svocabulary, the model is adequate to communicate to themour main message.

5.1.2 Mediation ActionsConflict will emerge as a result of the actors’ preference

for specific roles. Because an actor was not attributed apreferred role, he/she will get in conflict with actors who did.As they get involved in conflict situations, actors’ conflictlevel will elevate and they will respond emotionally.

The player’s (essential) role is to mediate such conflictsbefore they escalate beyond the actors’ tolerance level andprovoke situation that will prevent the company from per-forming the shows that are being rehearsed (and as suchprevent the player from increasing her score). To do that,the player has an array of choices at her disposal. The playercan choose between: not to intervene; talking to a single ac-tor ; asking two actors to talk to each other ; or talking to agroup of actors who share the same identity.

The mediation actions will have different effects depend-ing on the actor’s conflict resolution style (and respectiveaction tendencies). It is up to the player to understandwhich mediation action is the most adequate in a certainsituation characterised by certain conflict resolution styles.To be effective during mediation, the player must under-stand the effects of being assertive and cooperative duringresolution. The player is encouraged to experiment usingdifferent actions and to identify the right context in whichan intervening strategy will have a maximum effect in termsof conflict resolution. For instance, talking to a single ac-tor works better with assertive actors.If the player is ableto maintain the actors’ conflict thermometers at low levels(emotional de-escalation), their conflict resolution skill willincrease as a result.

Overall, the mediation-related mechanics invite the playerto experience a process of problem solving. To that end,the player must apply an objective criterion and focus oninterests rather than positions, as proposed by the conflicteducation literature.

5.1.3 External EventsIn MDT, conflicts do not only occur during rehearsals. In

the week between rehearsals, external events involving theactors also occur. Inspiration for external events was ex-tracted from narratives obtained during the cultural probesand the interviews. Such events may have happened duringclass or during recess and may involve two or more actors.

The aim of this mechanic is twofold. One the one hand, itcreates a link to real conflict situations that the playermay identify herself more easily with. On the other hand,the uncertainty element associated with this mechanic cre-

ates a certain tension in the game, as one is never sure ofwhat can happen between rehearsals: the player is neverin complete control of the conflict situations. Some-times, unexpected things may worsen a situation in an un-predictable (but never critical if prevented) way.

It is important to note that this tension can be mitigatedif the player has invested in developing the actors’ conflictresolution skill by using conflict as a constructive op-portunity. If actors already have that kind of skill theywill be more capable of solving their own problems outsideof the theatre club.

6. DISCUSSIONThe decisions that took place during the design and de-

velopment of the “My Dream Theatre” game were heavilyinfluenced by a multitude of perspectives: conflict the-ory (models of conflict and education literature orientedto both children and adults), user research (interviewswith children and teachers, cultural probes, participatorydesign sessions) and game design (gameplay developmentand playtesting sessions). By bringing together these threeperspectives, our aim was to create a set of fine-tuned me-chanics that weave it all together.

Returning to the “serious messages” outlined in section3.2, our main goal is to prepare children at the readinesslevel by giving them tools they can use in the future. Astarting point is to make them aware of the deep elements ofconflict and foster their critical-thinking about conflict-ladensituations. This entails understanding others’ perspectives,the emotions ensuing from conflict and also being able toidentify a range of solutions available that can be employedtowards a resolution. In Table 1, we provide a summary ofthe methods we used, the type of information yielded by eachmethod, its impact on game design and how it addresses keydesign challenges of learning games.

Table 1: Perspectives offered by the employed methods

Contribution to MDT design

Theorygrounded models to inform different de-sign decisions throughout the designand establish serious messages.

Interviewsgeneric information that allows us to es-tablish vocabulary and compare our ap-proach with current practices.

Probesempathic link with children’s commonpractices, emotions, perspectives onconflict.

Visualizationpromotes empathic interpretation,multi-disciplinary convergence anddetachment from any pre-conceptions.

Participatorysessions

concrete information that capturesusers’ perspective over (detailed) con-cepts to be conveyed. Game mechan-ics were fined-tuned according to playerliteracy.

Playtestingused to assess fun, flow, balance andmessages in the game. Changes weremade to meet educational messages.

As Table 1 suggests, in MDT, a theoretical scaffold was in-dispensable for pointing out design directions and guiding us

when constructing our study protocols (in particular provid-ing guidance for the interviews, conflict probes and partici-patory sessions). Furthermore, theory inspired us to definea set of “serious messages” to convey through the game.

Users’ perspectives, literacy and practices provided us withan overview of children’s understanding about conflict andusual modes of handling conflict situations. Although chil-dren seem to be able to follow a recipe that was previouslyreinforced by parents and/or teachers to apply ‘in time’ solu-tions for ‘in time’ problems (teach children to share or apolo-gize when they do something wrong), children hardly under-stand the underlying (deep) elements of such situations andthe effects of their actions in the short and long term. Thishighlights that the game mechanics should foster thinkingabout the current and future consequences of their actions.Interviews and cultural probes allowed us to identify theseissues from two different angles. While interviews providedgeneral information about conflict episodes children expe-rienced (themes, emotions, resolutions and outcomes), con-flict probes (and visualizations) broke down the phenomenoninto smaller units allowing us to empathise with children’sviews. During the course of the project, it became essentialfor us to communicate these views to other team members,by using methods other than written reports. We believethat all team members involved in the development mustcome closer to children’s perspectives in order to create adetachment from any pre-conceptions. To address this issuevisualizations of the probe data were created. The visual-izations intend to encourage disciplinary convergence andpromote discussion around ambiguous, uncertain artifactsthat invite varied subjective interpretations depending onone’s area of expertise.

This initial research was indisputably important, but sub-sequent phases were essential as well. After some initialideas were translated into mechanics, we went on to verifywhat was working for children. In participatory sessions,we sought to get more concrete information regarding con-flict handling modes. The sessions were guided to ask chil-dren specific questions relevant to our game design concept.In fact, we established that the way in which children per-ceive the handling-modes we presented will influence howthey will play the game. Finally, playtesting sessions servedto verify if the mechanics, in general, were straightforwardand whether the right messages, as intended, were conveyed.Our main objectives were to get children’s general impres-sions about the game – if they like it, if it is easy to under-stand, easy to play, how they understand the depicted con-flict situations and also to verify the balance of the game andits mechanics toward a better game experience. We wantedanswers to questions such as which conflicts emerged, arethere dominant strategies and which ones were preferred bychildren, how high is the score they could achieve in a turnand so on. Using this information as a foundation, a digitalprototype has now been developed.

7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThe research leading to these results has received funding

from European Community’s FP7 ICT under grant agree-ment no 258453, by FCT (INESC-ID multi annual funding)through the PIDDAC Program PEst-OE/EEI/LA0021/2011and scholarship (SFRH/BD/75342/2010) granted by FCT.We gratefully acknowledge Rilla Khaled, Charlene Hondrouand Kostas Karpouzis for their insights on this work.

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