Pretending for real

UNESCO Courier, April, 1999 by Asbel Lopez

Simulation games are gaining popularity as educational tools in fields ranging from humanitarian action to business management and accident prevention

The policeman checks Sonia's passport and then directs her to the prison door with the barrel of his gun. She doesn't move. "Get in there quick," he shouts, pointing the weapon at her face. Surprised, she enters the cell where other detainees are crammed together in the semi-darkness. Outside, shouts, sirens, and explosions can be heard. After a while, the policeman comes back: "You want your passport? Then get down on your knees and pick it up." She hesitates a few seconds before obeying. "If you come back here, you know what's waiting for you? A bullet."

Sonia is starting to understand why a foreigner might want to seek asylum. She is not a refugee herself, but an 18-year-old French student who has come to the Parc de la Villette in Paris to visit an exhibition entitled "A different kind of journey - the paths of exile". She is taking part in a simulation exercise for which she has assumed the identity of Sybel, a 21-year-old Turkish gift whose photo appears at the entrance to the exhibition, along with photos of 11 other refugees of different nationalities, among them Luis, Leila, Vesna, Kana, Pavel, and Tarik. The stories of how they came to be exiles are acted out in detail by 27 professional actors who play the roles of officials, customs and police officers in a room as big as a gymnasium where airport customs offices and police headquarters have been reconstituted. There are even a minefield and a clandestine workshop.

In the three months after it opened in November 1998, the exhibition at La Villette attracted over 10,000 visitors. Its educational interest lies not so much in the words the actors use as in their behaviour as they make visitors experience the humiliations and contempt with which refugees are often treated. "I felt a profound sense of injustice," Sonia explained. "It takes a great deal of courage to do what Sybel did. I didn't know how much a person might have to go through simply to live like everyone else."

Empathy, the imaginative power to enter into the feelings of others and to identify with them, is a mechanism that is widely used nowadays to create an awareness among young people and adults in developed countries of the situation faced by refugees who seek asylum there. But this is just one of many applications of simulation games, which are, for example, used to familiarize children with the pollution hazards in Mexico City or Australian firemen with procedures for controlling forest fires. Today, universities and companies all over the world are using these games because they have proved to be a low-cost and effective method of preparing people for the world of work.

Role-playing in simulation games provides flashes of insight which improve the quality of our perception of others and of given situations. It changes the way we look at others. "I now think of the refugee problem in terms of individuals and not of figures," said Mark Madoga on leaving La Villette. "When I see a refugee on the TV news, I see above all a human being."

When bombs rain down

A similar result is obtained by "Passages", a simulation game created in 1995 by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), working with two psychologists and a game specialist. Like the La Villette exhibition, it seeks to make a broad audience aware of the situation confronting refugees, but it consists simply of a 30-page handbook and is much less costly and simpler to put into effect because only four leaders are needed for 50 participants. In four years, over 5,000 persons in Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Tunisia, Austria and Chile have taken part in the game - mostly scouts in the 12-to-18 age group, as well as students, teachers and NGO members.

One of the most intense experiences of "Passages" is when participants listen blindfold to a simulated bombing attack. There is complete pandemonium, and in the general panic, families split up. Parents and children start to call out for one another. Claire, a 34-year-old volunteer with an NGO based in Geneva, admits that even after several years' work with asylum seekers, she still did not understand why refugees were so insistent on keeping their families together - so much so that this was liable to become their only concern. "And then I too experienced the terrible sense of families being separated during the bombardment," she said. "For me the only thing that counted from then on in the game was family unity."

Role playing in action

Many companies now use simulation games to train their staff - from manual workers and technicians to executives - in such areas as marketing, production management and human resources. In France, a consultancy, Proconseil, decided to tap the rapid expansion of this market by creating a subsidiary dedicated solely to the development of adult training games: CIPE (International Centre for Educational Pedagogics). In the last ten years, the company has designed 25 games in 10 languages and trained more than 10,000 persons. Its thousand or so customers in 18 countries include the French companies Aerospatiale and Yves Saint Laurent, as well as the universities of the Sorbonne in France and Nuova Magini in Italy, a university technological institute in Spain and Harris Semiconductors in the United States.