Combining a Gamified Civic Engagement Platform with a Digital Game in a Loosely Way to Increase Retention

Abstract

In this article we discuss an innovative approach to tackle the retention problem in civic engagement systems, more in particular in the context of care taking of elderly. The proposed solution is to complement a gamified civic engagement platform with an entertainment game but in such a way that the two are only loosely coupled. The civic engagement platform is a location-based card environment that allows to connect people who might be in need of assistance (i.e. elderly) with people willing to spend their time to help (i.e. volunteers). By helping people the volunteers collect cards, which can be used in the game to play. Special is that we do not expect that the volunteers will be the one playing the game. On the contrary, the aim is to create a self-feeding network between two groups of users: on the one hand the volunteers and on the other hand gamers. We hope that the gamers will stimulate the volunteers to collect cards and that in this way we can retain the volunteers for longer periods. Currently, the approach is being implemented for the case of assisting elderly, but the principle is also applicable in other domains of civic engagement. The paper discusses the research goals and problems, the research approach, as well as the current state and future work.