Serious games (SGs) provide a space of cognitive and emotional engagement where participants experience, interact, and enact social worlds that might not otherwise be possible; therefore, allowing a psychosocial meaning-making process to unfold. Moreover, SGs move beyond embedded prosocial messages and mere entertainment value and serve as facilitators of deeper and more personalized processes through creating new multilayered environments of embodied experiences. Through engaging in a simulated, role-playing safe space participants gain a deeper understanding of complex social issue risk factors. By creating a space where participants can think ‘as someone else,’ games allow for both solution-based dialogue to emerge as well as new avenues for collaboration to be explored. This presentation seeks to articulate the process by game-based prevention tools for social change are developed.

Jessica Wendorf Muhamad, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Communication in the School of Communication at FSU. Dr. Wendorf Muhamad is also the Director of PEAKS laboratory, which is focused on developing – through participatory action research – evidence-based interventions for complex social issues. Dr. Wendorf Muhamad’s research focuses on understanding how and why enacted, entertainment-educational experiences influence individuals. Her primary line of research focuses on the development of culturally relevant, experientially-based health interventions constructed through a participatory and engaged approach; examines how prosocial, persuasive narrative embedded within experiential learning opportunities influences individuals’ attitudes and behaviors regarding health and social issues; and extends beyond active entertainment-education mechanisms to a holistic understanding of intervention adoptability through an examination of implementation climate pre- and post- development.