Bruised knees, bleeding cuts on elbows, ruffled hair, flushed cheeks and crushed clothes — this is how most of us, who grew up in the 1980s (or before that), returned home every evening after muddying our slippers and dirtying our hands playing hopscotch, kanche (marbles), gilli-danda, or cricket with friends in a playground. When the ground was overcrowded, an empty stretch of a road came to our rescue.
Every inch of the streets has now been taken over by cars while our playgrounds are deserted (or encroached), as children and adults alike are in an unholy and unhealthy alliance with their smartphones.
Since ‘content’ rules the roost, there are endless podcasts, OTT series, comedy reels and reality shows to keep viewers glued to their gadgets. Whether you are traveling in an overcrowded local train in Mumbai, or flying 35,000 feet above ground, there is always some content to keep you away from striking a face-to-face conversation with a fellow passenger.
If you miss playing childhood games with your friends, there is a content hack for that too! Squid Game: The Challenge, a Netflix blockbuster series with ‘deadly high stakes’, has contestants duke it out against one another in ‘cutthroat and disorienting’ games (based on some games of our childhood) for a chance to win $4.56 million.
“The Challenge” features real people, many of whom are in dire financial straits and are desperate for the money. Each “life” is worth money and with each elimination, $10,000 drops in the piggy bank. For drama sake, there’s the enactment of actual death once a contestant is eliminated with fake blood bags exploding under their shirts, imitating a sniper shot to the torso, and the eliminated contestants are required to play dead.
While several millions of viewers globally are hooked to virtually watching hundreds of contestants compete in challenges that promise fortune (but “even the winner leaves with blood on their hands”), a Thailand-based play activist Ruttikorn Vuttikorn is reviving childhood street games to build empathy through a community feeling, and also educating people about climate change and environmental protection by engaging them in outdoor games that she has meticulously designed.
“As kids, we always played outdoors, in the playground or on the streets. Our traditional games were inclusive and educational, and at the same time fun too,” said Vuttikorn, when this reporter met her in Kathmandu, Nepal, last month in December 2024, as part of an event organised by ICIMOD.
“In our childhood, we had a ‘flood game’ where we pretended an alligator had come visiting during a flood event and we had to protect ourselves and our friends. Similarly, we used stones as eggs of a bird and the denner had to protect those eggs,” the 49-year-old play activist narrated.
“Now the roads are only for cars. We need to reclaim our streets and common spaces for our children and adults. We need to come together as a community to respond to challenges posed due to climate-induced disasters. And games can be a fun learning tool,” she added.
Ruttikorn Vuttikorn, is an industrial design graduate and has been into toy design ever since. She has been involved in designing community games that educate children to understand and solve different problems, i.e. environmental, social, and political problems.
According to Vuttikorn, she wants to empower children by using the right tools called "quality play". She believes that toys and games are more than mere playthings. The play activist views them as powerful development and educational tools that can improve individuals and society.
By incorporating the fun and competitive elements of games into tackling serious issues facing modern society, she creates engaging learning environments. This ensures that the underlying message is conveyed in a way that is both effective and memorable, said the play activist.
In 2003, she founded Club Creative to offer social problem solutions through creative play. She also designs board games and one of her best-known board games, SIM Democracy, asks players to run their own democratic nation, with the board representing the country.
Along with Myriel Milicevic, who is an artist, interaction designer, and professor in the Department of Design at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, Vuttikorn has also developed Climate Community Street Play, which “brings global warming to the streets”.
These games present different scenarios, from fighting for street trees in droughts, turning heat islands into cool spaces, rescuing animals in floods, or finding the path to biodiverse spots as pollinators. While playing these games on the street, students, faculty, practitioners, and common people engage with local risks while creating awareness for surprising alliances within their communities.
“My focus is to devise and develop games that help to educate players to understand the root causes of problems and to guide them towards solutions that they can implement,” said Vuttikorn. She has designed outdoor games that educate children about disaster management and how to respond and save lives when an extreme event takes place.
For instance, she created a Disaster Life Cycle Game for disaster prevention education. In this game, which has been used in schools in Nepal, an earthquake-prone Himalayan country, teachers and children learn how to prepare and take action before, during, and after an earthquake.
Research studies show how games based learning (GBL) offers a promising avenue for the preparedness of school students, enhancing their readiness skills and disaster awareness. A November 2024 study, Designing and Evaluating Games for Landslides, Earthquakes, and Fires: Lesson Learned from Schools in Nepal, notes: “GBL can enhance learning experiences, motivation, and disaster preparedness skills, improve awareness and response capabilities, and foster civic responsibility… Additionally, it may enhance students’ crisis management skills and problem-solving abilities and foster critical thinking and collaborative behavior.”
The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) also stresses on the need for engaging with children and youth (under 30) who currently make up more than half the world’s population.
According to UNDRR, if we teach them from an early age about the risks posed by natural hazards, children will have a better chance to save their lives during disasters. If they know what to do to reduce the impact of disasters, they will create a safer world.
Game on!
Have you liked the news article?