Design for Social Good: Immersive Media Toward Civic Engagement

Catalog description

The videogame industry is worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually; the medium's prevalence and interactivity position it beyond entertainment. Born in research labs in the 1950s-60s, videogames have long served serious purposes, such as flight simulators used to train pilots. Moreover, their rule-based immersion can model complex systems, reveal trade-offs, and foster empathy through narrative, audio-visual design, and world-building. This War of Mine enters Poland's national curriculum to teach war from a civilian perspective, SPENT simulates daily choices under poverty, and Darfur is Dying highlights risks in refugee camps. So how can such games inform public understanding and help reimagine more equitable futures? This course turns game design into a laboratory for modeling, and even challenging, real-world inequalities. Students will design and prototype small, playable games that respond to community-based challenges, such as migration, war, housing, and health, translating design theories into practice through creative coding and storytelling. Projects are co-designed with community partners to support social change and civic engagement with practical, usable outcomes. By the end of the course, students will have completed the full game-design cycle: frame a real-world issue; map stakeholders and cause-effect loops between their actions; turn insights into rules and audiovisual narratives; playtest and iterate prototypes; and present publicly. Technically, students will learn Twine and/or Unity and publish a portfolio-ready build on itch.io. Along the way, they will strengthen entrepreneurial collaboration, problem-solving, and technical communication skills that translate to the Bay Area's civic-tech ecosystem. The course demonstrates how game design can produce concrete, usable tools that make a tangible difference.