Computer game shows Cambodian kids how to avoid landmines

Allen Tan, a former US bomb disposal expert and now regional head of the Golden West Humanitarian Foundation, helps one of the children at a Phnom Penh orphanage with the landmine game, June 2010 (Photo: VOA - R. Carmichael)

Professor Frank Biocca, one of the game's developers, holds a One Laptop Per Child Computer during his recent trip to assess the game's effect on learning about the dangers of landmines (File, VOA-R. Carmichael)

June 25, 2010

ABC Radio Australia

A computer game designed to help young people recognise the dangers of landmines and unexploded ordinance has just undergone initial testing in Cambodia. The developers from Michigan State University in the U-S say they hope the game will cut the number of children killed and maimed each year.

Presenter: Robert Carmichael
Speakers: Professor Frank Biocca, MIND Lab, Michigan State University; Allen Tan, Country Head, Golden West Humanitarian Trust; Lai, a child testing the game

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CARMICHAEL: You might guess from the tinny music and excited chatter that you are listening to a group of children playing a computer game. Here they are looking for food for their on-screen pet dog in a Cambodian landscape that is dotted with the occasional red warning sign.

Every so often, if they aren't careful, you will hear this sound.

The boom is the sound of a landmine exploding. The whistle is from a Cambodian deminer who pops up on the screen to explain what they did wrong. In short, the player missed one of the red warning signs that dot Cambodia's real landscape, and stood on a landmine.

In the game the children get another chance - in fact they get as many as they want. In real life, things don't work out that way.

Cambodia is littered with landmines and UXO, or unexploded ordnance - the legacy of decades of conflict. Demining teams work year-round on mine clearance and education, but there are millions of mines and limited resources. Ridding Cambodia of mines will take years, possibly decades.

In the meantime the casualties continue to mount. Last year almost 250 people were killed or injured by mines and UXO. One-third of them were children.

Traditional methods of landmine education involve someone standing in front of them with a board and posters. But a computer game that combines fun with learning is a more appealing option.

Those who developed the game being tested today believe it will not only be more fun, but the children will retain more too. So says Professor Frank Biocca of Michigan State University's MIND lab. He was here testing the game and comparing what was learned against the standard education method.

Biocca says development of this unique game started 18 months ago, with some funding from the US State Department.

BIOCCA: Now we've rolled out the alpha phase, which we're testing today. The beta phase will be definitely out by late summer. We probably can have the final game done by December of 2010.

CARMICHAEL: Development came at the prompting of the Golden West Humanitarian Foundation, a US-based charity that provides technical assistance to demining organizations.

Allen Tan heads the Cambodian country office of Golden West, which provided images and assistance to Michigan University during development, and has helped to organise today's testing.

Tan, a former bomb disposal expert with the US Army, says that although the game is being trialled in Cambodia, the idea is to roll it out to dozens of other countries.

TAN: Any of these post-conflict zones are going to be targets for this kind of education, especially with young populations that might not have been around when the conflict happened, and a lot of these hazards are legacy hazards. Certainly any post-conflict zone could be a target for this type of training.

CARMICHAEL: Biocca says the need to adapt the game at costs as low as $1,000 for other countries and cultures was uppermost during development.

BIOCCA: Each new game should take no more than a month to make because now in this case the platform is designed. So that all we have to do is replace the audio with the local language, replace the images with images that are appropriate for that country, and maybe adapt the icon representation of the child so that it is culturally-appropriate.

CARMICHAEL: Equally importantly the game, which cost around $70,000 to develop, had to be simple to alter for different countries.

BIOCCA: All the audio swapped out, all the images swapped out, so you can adapt very quickly and very inexpensively to the environment and make a new game.

CARMICHAEL: They can even convert the pet dog to another animal should local custom require it.

Although the children are playing the game on the 100 dollar laptops used in the One Laptop Per Child initiative, Biocca says the game can run on almost any platform - Windows, Mac, Linux, the web, even mobile phones that are used for gaming.

The several dozen children testing the game loved it, and those I spoke to seemed to have learned its lessons. Fourteen-year-old Lai says he now knows what to do if he sees a sign warning of landmines.

LAI: If I go to the countryside and see the landmine sign, then I will walk away from that place. I won't go near it, and I will walk a different way.

CARMICHAEL: Lai says that if he sees a landmine sign in the countryside he now knows to avoid that area and take a different route. And that is a valuable lesson that tens of thousands of children across the world will be learning in the coming months and years.