Solemnly Resolve - a civic action party game!

While we all agree that we need collective civic action, especially from our youth, to address the current critical polycrisis, information about these critical issues are mostly always available in complex, academic, jargon laden language. The process of engaging in civic action can seem daunting to young people, and let's admit it, boring!

Yet at the same time, UNICEF’s report on ‘Digital Civic Engagement By Young People’ outlines how young citizens prefer personalised engagement with Governments through digital networking, protests and volunteerism. With 1.2 billion young people between the ages of 15 and 24 years old - 16% of the global population are looking for new ways to engage as citizens.

Those young citizens who do identify as changemakers and are keen on engaging in civic action, feel like they are in conflict with other stakeholders around them, like their local governance systems, businesses, politicians. For example, young climate activists advocating to have fire cracker factories shut down to reduce air pollution, are demotivated by the lack of support from policy makers and businesses.

When it comes to participating in traditional forms of political participation, however, the ‘World Youth Report on Youth Civic Engagement’, suggests that young people aren’t engaging in conventional forms of civic engagement like voting and contesting elections.

Through Solemnly Resolve, we’re looking to build excitement around the process of civic action, which some studies suggest is a skill that builds positive and durable effects into adulthood.

In India alone, 600 million people are between the ages of 18 and 35 - through the game we are keen to help create accessible, fun modes for civic engagement for young people in India - which may influence the trajectory of their roles as citizens later in life.

About the technology: Solemnly Resolve is a web application prototyped using Adobe XD and then built using a HTML + JavaScript + CSS framework. The persistence of game play storage is at the client level only, maintaining the privacy of the users. The web application uses input data in the form of JSON files to generate the scenarios, situations and other aspects of the game. This ability to constantly add/update scenarios has made the game very scalable: across domains, geographies, etc.

About the game: Solemnly Resolve is a game to critically engage with the values of liberty, equality, secularism, and so on, in the preamble of the Indian Constitution. The name “Solemnly Resolve” comes from the first line of the preamble, “WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a…”. The game asks the players what civic action they would take to uphold the values of our constitution. 

Game play: In Solemnly Resolve, participants take on the role of different civic actors in a democracy, such as a political leader, a bureaucrat, a philanthropist, and a small business owner. They have goals related to the state of the nation, including the level of transparency, economic growth, stability, and other such parameters. Every turn, participants are faced with a social, political, environmental problems, modelled on real world data on crises from the recent past. The participants need to decide on what civic action they intend to take, in consensus. If there is no consensus, participants have the option of enforcing their will by bidding with influence. At the end of the game, a preamble reflecting the values implicit in the choices made is presented to the participants. 

 Outcome: The game presents complex social, political and environmental problems, with all the perspectives about it, in a simplified, gamified way, so that it is accessible and engaging for young people. In the guise of a game, we demystify civic action for the participants. The goal of the game is not to preach to the participants to engage in civic action, rather to engage them with civic problems and actions they can take to solve them in a fun way, and build a new youth culture of learning about, speaking about and acting on the most pressing problems of our times.

We seek to serve young citizens in India - between the ages of 18 to 34. These young citizens could come from urban or peri-urban communities across the country.

In the past, online games have demonstrated the impact of Covid-19 imposed lockdowns to young people, building empathy and mobilising communities to go into the streets and risk personal safety to support migrant labourers with rations and other supplies.

Recent research has shown that voters in India care deeply about ideologies while they cast their ballots. These ideologies are mostly based on divisive ideas like gender, caste, religion and language. What’s missing in India’s civic action - be it voting, philanthropy, or demands for services, is the alignment with the values of the constitution - which is exactly what this game aims to bring about.

Through Solemnly Resolve, we aim to delve deeper into the values of the constitution in a relatable and fun way - while the gameplay and interfaces will be engaging, the end goal is to showcase the complexities of policy making, and India’s values through the game.

In the next answer, we’ve addressed how our organisations are uniquely positioned to reach the demographics we’re trying to work with. But beyond the Indian context, we’re looking to create open-source technology that will be available under an open-source MIT license. 

This can be used by other teams and enthusiasts to create games for their local contexts.

We have a diverse and interdisciplinary team, comprising of researchers, to coders, to artists, from different geographies and ethnic communities across South Asia. This enables our team to not only build culture appropriate technology, but also to take this technology to their communities, so we can reach wide scale. 

To take Solemnly Resolve to diverse communities of young people, we are partnering with Civis, a non-profit that has been leading public consultations on public policy issues for the last 5 years. Civis has a large community of over 10,000 citizens all across India. Our digital game building expertise and Civis’ outreach expertise make us the best positioned team to deliver this game to ignite dialogue and action on civic issues in India.

Between Fields of View's expertise in digital game design and building, and Civis' experience in working with citizens on civic awareness, we are well positioned to take our game out to young citizens. However, in spite of this partnership, between the two organisations, we need to learn more about the different business and financial models we can try for scale and sustainability. Both Fields of View and Civis are non-profits and have typically functioned through grant based models, and working directly with people on the ground (that is a B2C business model). But for scaling this game, it is critical we look to more innovative business and financial models, and what hybrid models are possible. We are applying to Solve specifically to get support on how we can build a robust business and financial model to scale our game and have wide impact on young people working in civic action.

Civic issues have traditionally always been written and talked about in complex language, heavy with academic jargon, presented through large data sets that are difficult to make meaning of. Only the urban elite who have access to higher education and understand this language have had access to learning about Civic issues. Most young people in a country as diverse as India feel disenfranchised from learning about civic issues. They feel civic action on their part requires money, resources, highly educated knowledge and skills, that they do not have. And, let’s admit it, “Civics” an academic subject across schools in India, is taught in such a theoretical and didactic manner, that young people think civic issues are boring and don’t engage with it at all. 

Our digital game on civic issues is a game changer (pun intended!) because, it simplifies current civic issues, like city planning, climate change, so that anyone, regardless of their education and literacy levels can understand and engage with these issues. The game is available in a range of languages so that it can be played across India by young people with a variety of language capabilities. And, more importantly, the gamified approach is innovative because it makes civic issues and civic action fun and engaging for young people. They are inspired by this game to participate in dialogues on civic issues and take small scale local civic action, which the game makes simple and accessible for them.

In the next year our goal is to build 10 new language capabilities in the game, for the 10 most commonly spoken languages in India, which will cater to a little more than three-quarters of India’s population. In partnership with Civis, we will pilot the game play in 5 states in India, with a 100 youth players in each state, specifically in small towns and rural areas, who only speak their ethnic language. Our goal is for the game to provide education on civic issues to the young people, as well as inspire civic action in them.

In the next five years, our goal is to keep updating the civic issues the game has participants engaging in, to keep the game relevant and current. With updated situations and a variety of language capabilities, the game will have the infrastructure to scale widely and rapidly. We already have a partnership with Civis, and over the next five years we will build partnerships with five other community based organisations that work with young people at the local level. Between these CBO partnerships, we will be able to reach out to young people in every one of the 28 states in India. The CBOs we will partner with will be working within government schools, and through them we can institutionalize this game as THE way to do civic education for young people.

The quantitative indicators we are measuring are:

Through feedback forms filled by partner Community Based Organisations (CBO) and youth participants-
a. Number of young people who play Solemnly Resolve

b. The diversity of demographics that the players come from:
i. Literacy level

ii. Language capability

iii. Urban or rural 

c. Number of towns or villages and states where young people play Solemnly Resolve

d. Number of instances of game play Through feedback forms and focus group discussion with youth participants- 

e. Number of new civic issues the young players learnt about through the game

The qualitative indicators we are measure are:

Through feedback forms and focus group discussion with youth participants- 

1. How likely are the players to discuss civic issues with their peers after the game?

2. How likely are the players to engage in civic action after the game? 

Through feedback forms and focus group discussion with partner CBOs and youth participants- 

1. Instances of players engaging in dialogue on civic issues

2. Instances of players engaging in civic action in their communities

Our theory of change is that a gamified methodology is the most efficient way to engage and educate young people on civic issues, and inspire civic action.

• Games are an inclusive medium for education (as a pedagogical tool) and enhance collaboration because anyone can participate in them, irrespective of educational background, exposure and experience.

• Games are an extremely effective medium of learning because participants are more willing to take risks, be creative, and experiment, as they don’t have the risks of failure.

• Games allow for collecting intangible data in the form of preferences and biases that is crucial for understand what civic action will be towards inclusive development.

• Games create an inexpensive and highly engaging medium to test various civic action solutions and their outcomes with different affected and influencing groups.

• With civic action moving online in many instances - we’re also looking to build awareness of rights that can be exercised online, through the game.

Solemnly Resolve is a web application prototyped using Adobe XD and then built using a HTML + JavaScript + CSS framework. The persistence of game play storage is at the client level only, maintaining the privacy of the users. The web application uses input data in the form of JSON files to generate the scenarios, situations and other aspects of the game. This ability to constantly add/update scenarios has made the game very scalable: across domains, and geographies.

Here is a video of the game being played with young people: 

We have piloted the game with a 1000 young people so far and we know the game works from these pilot tests.

We would also be happy to demo the game or host a game session online for the Solve team! Unfortunately, I cannot share the login to our demo of the game here since we have password protected it, so we can only license it to trained facilitators in partner organisation.

Our current full time team has 50% women and 50% men. Our team members come from both urban and rural areas, not just in India, but other South Asian countries too, like Nepal. They have had access to different levels of education, from college drop-outs to people with PhDs.

We have a Gender Amity Comittee in our organisation, that organises trainings and discussions on building a safe space for all genders and sexualities in the office, for example having gender neutral bathrooms in our office, and handles any cases of harassment reported by any team members, in compliance with the Prevention of Sexual Harassment law (POSH) in India. Our inclusive policies and processes extends beyond our team to any partners we work with, or any on ground community members we interact with as a part of our work.

Our business model is to reach young people through Community-Based Organisations that already work with young people on civic education and action. We already have a partnership with Civis, who have curated and worked with a large community of youth across India that they engage in consultation on various public policies, like environmental laws, laws for the protection of transgender people, laws on shared urban spaces - and many other domains! 

 Civis has worked on 300+ laws to date and gathered feedback from citizens in 705+ cities pan-India. Their solutions are trusted by citizens and government partners at NITI Aayog, CBSE, and Maharashtra Government among others - with feedback acceptance ranging between 37% and 70% on certain laws. Like Civis, many other organisations engage young people in civic action - we’re working with this network to disseminate the game.

We believe our game augments the existing work of such organizations, as the game will increase the engagement and interest of young people with civic matters.

Our revenue model involves charging service fees to educational institutions and the on-ground CBOs we partner with to conduct the game with their students. Since the CBOs we partner with anyway work with youth on civic education, they will have budget allocated towards this. Our game is the most effective way to do the work the CBOs anyway have raised funds to do. Similarly educational institutions have budgets for external teachers, experts, specialists to come and teach the children, which we can charge them for conducting the game with their students. 

However, there will be rural governmental institutions that will not be able to pay for our services of conducting the game. For such organizations we will implement a cross subsidy model, meaning we will use the revenue we charge organisations that do pay, to conduct sessions for organizations that cannot pay.

We use 2 different revenue models:

1. Direct service delivery: It costs us US $150 to conduct a 90 minute game session. This $150 covers the costs of facilitator fees and their local travel. (This does not cover the costs of any of the research, game development or server hosting fees. We consider those our initial capital investment, and not part of our operational budget.) The venue and other infrastructure for the game, like a projector, are always provided by the organization we are conducting the game for. 50 participants can play the game at a time. During our pilots we have experimented with charging up to US $250 for a 90 minute game session, which organizations have been willing to pay.

2. Training of Trainers: We license the use of the game to a partner organization for a period of 12 months, and we train facilitators within that organisation to conduct the game with young people. Within the 12 months the organisation can conduct the game as many times and with as many participants as they want without any restrictions. The licensing fee for 12 months is US $1000. The fees for training facilitators is $500 for a 6-hour training session, with up to 10 facilitators at a time.

We have partnered with FLAME University in Pune, Mount Carmel College in Bangalore, to conduct the game with their students, and have been paid $150.

When we have partnered with and conducted the game for team members of philanthropic organisations, like Piramal Foundation, Give India, we have been paid $250 per game session.