RIYADH: The gaming industry is emerging as a powerful tool in addressing political challenges faced by young refugees worldwide, said a senior UN official at the Next World Forum in Riyadh.
Khaled Khalifa, senior adviser and representative to the Gulf Cooperation Council at the UN Refugee Agency, was speaking at a panel discussion titled “Virtual Realities, Real World Consequences: The Impact of Politics in Gaming” on Thursday.
His statement underscored the transformative influence of gaming, indicating its potential to serve as an instrument to address the political obstacles experienced by young refugees worldwide.
By harnessing the immersive nature of gaming, he said the industry could potentially empower 41 percent of refugees under the age of 18 to confront the political challenges they grapple with.
“We hear a lot about the slogan of leaving no one behind but, honestly, I think we are leaving 1 percent of humanity behind especially in certain sectors including gaming,” Khalifa disclosed.
He added: “Giving them voice requires a lot of cooperation between the gaming world and those who can connect the gaming world with the world of refugees.”
During the same panel discussion, Tim Scott, director of public policy in the UK and Middle East at Roblox, talked about how the gaming industry is capable of giving everyone a voice and how it can help perpetuate certain stereotypes or political views.
“We’re in 180 different countries and more. You know there are 70 million daily active users on the platform and a lot of them are just having fun which is ultimately what the games industry is about,” Scott explained.
He added: “We tend to forget that a little bit yes but what’s exciting is that democratization of a voice is being heard on the platforms.”
Chris Busse, co-founder and chief commercial officer of Seven Falls, shed light on the effect that the gaming industry has nowadays as opposed to a few years back.
“Different cultural impacts have made us aware of what games can do now,” Busse said.
He added: “I would say 15 years ago no we never talked about it, we talked about you know well hey is this fun and is this cool and what are we going to do now.”
Michal Klosinski, a professor at the University of Silesia Game Studies, clarified what the gaming industry looks like from a research perspective.
“From the research perspective, if you think about games you think about their worlds and the messages they convey; you think about them as tools for enacting or maybe implementing specific political agency, but also as objects that are policed,” Klosinski said.
Another speaker during the panel was Kate Edwards, CEO of Geogrify, who talked about gaming as a cultural artifact.
“Games truly are a cultural artifact of any place where they’re created, whether it’s Saudi Arabia, the US, Germany, China, or elsewhere,” she described.
Edwards added: “It is a cultural artifact of the same caliber as film, television, literature (and) art, so we have to treat it as such.”
