Students turn to game development to pursue advocacies

MANILA, Philippines — When we say games, we usually think of playing to win. However, a few student-game developers have found that games can also be used as a form of advocacy.

Tasked to develop a game for their course work, students from De La Salle University found a way to create games to address two issues that the Philippines are currently facing: pollution and traffic congestion. Their hard work has produced two advocacy games: “SEAker”, a hidden objects game set in the diverse marine ecosystem of the country, and “Street Smart”, a puzzle game that tasks players to solve the universal problem of traffic congestion.

Tasked to create an educational game, Ella Garcia, game designer of Anilu Studios, shared how they first looked into the country’s different problems that they wanted to address.

“As we had to make an educational game, we brainstormed the different problems we wanted to address. When doing early research, we found that the Philippines is one of the leading causes of marine pollution globally, going as far as contributing the most plastic marine pollution in the world in 2019. As a country that is so reliant on the ocean and its resources, this is a big problem, and one whose solution we believed we could contribute to,” Garcia told Philstar.com.

This led to the creation of “SEAker”, a 3D hidden objects game where the player gets to explore different local ecosystems and look for different marine creatures amid the increasing pollutants present in the water.

“The game aims to educate players on different marine creatures, corals and ecosystems, as well as the different kinds of pollution. We wanted to raise awareness on the importance of protecting our seas and raise a generation that was primed with the information to tackle these issues,” explained Garcia.

Though targeting a younger audience, there are different elements within “SEAker” that would appeal to an older audience, as they hope the game would resonate with everyone.

Garcia adds, “As we wanted to focus on the middle grade demographic, all our testing and our goals were primarily on that audience. We do, however, have different elements to the game that we added to make it