情報リテラシー授業におけるフェイクニュースをテーマにした学習ゲームのデザイン
前川 マルコス貞夫 1), ナヴァロ フンジンスキ
セナ

チャンドラヘラ

レアンドロ 1) ,テジャ 1) , 田島将太 2)

1) 慶應義塾大学大学院メディアデザイン研究科
2) スマートニュース メディア研究所

Design of a Serious Game about Fake News for a Media Literacy Course
Marcos Sadao Maekawa 1), Leandro Navarro Hundzinski 1), Sena Chandrahera 1), Shota Tajima 2)
1) Keio University Graduate School of Media Design
2) SmartNews Media Institute
Abstract
This work-in-progress paper introduces the design process of an online serious game about
information sharing in social media as an innovative online interactive practice in media literacy
education for young adult students. This game was designed as part of a digital media literacy
course for freshmen and sophomores in a Japanese university. It provides a playful learning
experience in a context that mimics real-world social media services. Players evaluate online
information, decide to share or not the information, and as a result, gain or lose followers. To
support their decision making, students can access other players’ statistics and analyze referencessuch as other academic papers or expert's blog posts. Through this experience, students aresupposed to apply the knowledge and techniques acquired during the course and become smart
consumers and responsible creators of online information. The results from the iterations will
provide clues for the measurement of the learning effects and the engagement for this sort of online
practice. Results from this research and lessons learned from the design process are expected tocontribute to digital media literacy education as well as to serious game design.

1

Introduction

This paper presents the design process of an online
educational game, as one of the components of a
research on media literacy education. This game has
been designed to be used in a media literacy course forhigher education in Japan. The course focuses on thedigital sphere, delivering media literacy knowledge
and addressing topics related to online news, social
media and digital citizenship.
In the initial phase, the design process comprises ofconcept creation, development, and utilization ofgames as engaging, playful and informative tools.
Understanding that the ability to consume online
information shapes one’s digital citizenship, the gameis expected to contribute to the learning outcomes andstimulate students to engage in online participation.
The ultimate goal of this research component is tomeasure the outcomes of a digital media course
designed for university students in Japan.

2

Background

2.1 Media Literacy and Media Literacy Education
The spread of information and communication
technologies (ICT) made information accessible toeveryone with access to the Internet. This setting
deeply impacted the way we work, learn, socialize, andmade it easier for anyone to create media and online
content. Nowadays, we are all exposed to an
overwhelming amount of information online, making it
difficult to understand messages or discern anappropriate answer to their questions.
Recent global events reinforced the need toreconsider how we understand and interact withinformation and media in general. The media or
information literacy shapes the way one makes
decisions and behaves toward social-political facts orevents such as a pandemic.
In light of the high connectedness context in thecurrent global society, media literacy has become acore competence in educational frameworks around theglobe. Media literacy is “the ability to identify

different types of media and understand the messages
they’re sending [1].” It is directly related to topics suchas 21st-century skills and digital citizenship.
Education frameworks presented worldwide show
characteristics of strengthening the digital context ofmedia literacy and stimulating students to creativity
and expression. However, Japan still struggles toincorporate digital media related topics into thecurriculum, despite the increasingly high internet
penetration among elementary (around 85.6%) andjunior high school (95.1%) students, including accessfrom smartphones, tablets, and personal computers [2].
The goal of the course developed with this researchis to bring the fundamental messages of media literacy
education in a different approach to media literacy
education practice at Japanese university classrooms.
The course as well as the components were designed
based on the fundamental pillars of learningcompetencies (knowledge, skills and attitude) as
described below.
ØØØKnowledge: Understand the dangers of
simplifying and labeling information
Skill: Understand the key points to assess
the reliability of the information
Attitude: Nurture responsible behavior as adigital citizen

The course comprises three modules: 1) About
Digital Media Literacy, 2) Information and News
Literacy, and 3) Behind the ‘Like it’ button. Each
module was designed to provide a blended-learning
experience with video, online interactive activities andgroup discussions.
The impact of the coronavirus in all levels of
education made 97% of Japanese universities offer all
courses online during the first half of the academic
year [3]. Because of that, the course structure, as well
as all its components, were designed also for online,
offline, or hybrid learning environments.
2.2 Serious Games in the Context of Fake News
Digital games are a part of daily life in Japan. In
2018, the number of game players in Japan was
estimated to be 67.6 million [4], a number that
represents more than half of the entire country’s
population. The popularity of digital games is often
associated with engaging and meaningful experiences.
In education, their potential for interactive learning
environments and collaborative learning experiences
have been seen in the shape of serious games [5]. The
term serious games can be defined as “any piece ofsoftware that merges a non-entertaining purpose(serious) with a video game structure” [6]. Serious
games are also often seen used in conjunction withother terms such as edutainment, digital game-basedlearning, and immersive learning simulator [7].
Schifter [8] highlights the connection between
serious games and 21st-century classrooms with games
as external motivators, for drills, practices, and othertypes of learning. Additionally, the games’ virtualenvironments can represent a safe environment inwhich students can experience and experiment with
their skills and knowledge [5]. As such, games
represent a safe zone to try new approaches and ideas,
without real-world repercussions if they turn out to not
be good. Failure itself can be seen as a step conducive
to learning, which can help to initiate collaboration anddialogue between peers and provide learners with new
insights [9].
Serious games have been one of the ways utilized towork with the problems caused by fake news. Several
games have been done utilizing different approaches tobring awareness to the topic, such as: “Bad News”,
where you play the role of a fake news producer andlearn their techniques [10]; “Fake News Detective”, inwhich you become a fact-checker in a hoax bustingorganization [11]; and “LAMBOOZLED!”, acompetitive deck-building card game to enhance news
literacy skills [12]. Each with their own approach,those games were utilized as ways to work withmisinformation and news literacy.
Another game called “Factitious” utilizes datacollection mechanisms to allow assessment of factors
such as patterns in understanding news literacy andplay experience [13]. This case shows that collecting
data from play sessions is essential for further analysisof the impact of serious game experiences on fakenews and on news literacy. For such, defining which
type of data is meaningful and must be collectedduring play sessions needs to be considered duringinitial design steps.
In the next subchapter, we will introduce the game
Brain Company, designed in the Graduate School ofMedia Design, Keio University as a master’s project.
2.3 Serious Games in the Context of Fake News
Brain Company [14] is a card game that aims tobring awareness about the dangers of fake news. It was
designed around the concept that sharing fake news or
not sharing reliable news can have real-life impacts.
Players score points by sharing reliable news andblocking fake news. If they share fake news or block
trustworthy news sources, they lose points instead.

Each news piece is associated with reference cards,
which aim to give other perspectives on theinformation and aid the player in making a decision.
The reference cards are designed to simulate a variety
of sources, from reliable news sources to social media.
It is up for the players to decide which of thosereferences are to be considered trustworthy and help
them to identify if the news is fake or not. The
objective of associating each news with other sources
is to show the importance of researching and filtering
information before sharing online, as well as
considering the sources where each piece of news or
associated information comes from.
Players have a time limit to make their decisions on
sharing or blocking for 10 different news cards. The
playing part is a single-player, but the idea of Brain
Company is to run multiple single-player sessions inparallel at once. This way, after the individual sessions
are over, players can compare their scores and resultswith each other.
One unique aspect of Brain Company to othergames about fake news is that it exemplifies to players
how social, economic and environmental problems canbe linked to their choices on contributing or not tomisinformation. The impact can be seen immediately
after the play session, giving players the possibility of
establishing a causal relationship with their decisions
on sharing or blocking pieces of news. Some of thosescenarios are based on real fake news cases and others
are fictional. When comparing their results, players canengage in conversations on how each of their scenarios
might differ, raising many points for discussion.
The assumption for creating those scenarios is thatwhen the player chooses to block or share a piece ofnews, many other people took the same decision. Thisway, thousands of shares or blocks would have a huge
impact on the opinion of people. The result is shown asa piece of bulletin news, telling a future scenario in
which everyone shared or blocked certain news.
The following image shows an example of fakenews included in the game, as well as the impact
caused in society by the massive sharing or blocking of
this news piece:

Figure 1 – Results from sharing or blocking news
in Brain Company
In the case above, the information stating that thetuna died because of flash photography in theaquarium was fake news. So, if players share thisinformation, the consequence is that a junior highschool student who visited the aquarium and took
photos with flash gets bullied by his classmates (and in
this case, players lose points for sharing fake news).
On the other hand, by blocking the fake news, players
score points and the aquarium is not affected by
misleading information, keeping its popularity as avisiting spot.
Brain Company's goal was to show those scenarios
to players and allow them to reflect on theconsequence of their actions online. Comparing before
and after they play the game, test participants shifted
their view towards the impact they have when theyshare news to be more cautious on the information
they share, as well as on researching several sources toassess the reliability of news.
The current version, which will be described in thenext chapter, utilizes both reference cards and after
play scenarios for discussion as part of its design.

3

DesignThe game designed in this research is part of ahigher education course of media literacy and inspiredby a party card game called Brain Company, created toraise awareness of fake news among adults.
The media literacy course includes time in thelecture for students to learn how to handle theinformation that exists around them through interactive
activities such as discussions and mini-games. For abetter understanding of the context, we describe thecourse core concept and how it impacts the gamedesign process.
3.1 Media Literacy Course Core Concept
The core structure of the course (knowledge, skills,
attitude) is also adopted in the game design as
described below.
Knowledge: Understand the dangers of simplifying
and labeling information.
There is a lot of information that cannot beclassified as completely correct or completely wrong.
In fact, there are gray areas in determining accuracy infact-checking.
The value of information varies with context, andeven experts may disagree about its reliability.
Skill: Understand the key points to assess thereliability of the information
Meta information like author and publish date isoften useful for evaluation. Figure out what can beused as meta-information and what to pay attention to.
In some cases, it is useful to estimate the intent of
the publisher. Various reasons exist for publishing fakenews, including revenue, propaganda, desire forapproval, and misunderstanding.

information. In a real-life context, readers are
influenced by opinion leaders and key persons related
to a determined subject. It is also said that what othersin their social circle do can influence one’s opinion. To
add this scenario in the game environment, players canview other players actions on sharing or block,forming statistics in which they can base their decision
on. Additionally, players are also shown which choices
experts had on each news presented in the game.
3.2 Game Experience
The original card game is a single-player game.
However, it is meant to be played with more players
simultaneously, as the final results can be comparedthrough a ranking system. In the setting of a workshop,
comparing results between players can create anenvironment conducive for discussions and deeper
analysis to take place.
As such, the game experience can be seen in two
parts:

Attitude: Nurture responsible behavior as a digitalcitizen
Proactive sharing of valuable information can leadto a wealth of information space, community
development, and solutions to social problems.
On the other hand, even non-malicious sharing canfoster misunderstanding and discrimination.
The term "information" is not limited to articles in
the commercial media, but also includes UGC, as
represented by social networks as well as corporate
and government announcements and data.

・ The first part is the individual play session, in
which each player reads different news andreferences, deciding to share or to block theinformation. Each player's decision process isbased on their interpretation of news and sources,
related to their assessment of the reliability ofeach piece of information.
・ The second part is the discussion session, in which
players can compare their results and discuss theimpacts of the news they shared and blocked, as
well as discuss the importance of responsible
behavior as a digital citizen. In this part, players
can see the overall session results, how players
answered, and what type of scenario their choices
created. The statistics of other players' choices, aswell as the answers of specialists in the topic of
the news are shown, adding extra elements fordiscussion.

Game Concept
Based on knowledge, skill and attitude, the gameaims to engage players through action. The first action
players take is to evaluate information in a context thatmimics real-world services. The user interface takes a
SNS-like look by displaying card-type information anda timeline styled layout. The game also presents realarticles and posts, so players can use original sources
as reference to base their decision making.
The second action players take is to analyze
experts’ opinions as part of how to read and understandTwo main points of the design of Brain Company
are kept in this new design inspired by the original
card game: reference sources and future scenarios. The
experience as a whole works closely with theknowledge part of the course, which is understanding
the information in different contexts and assessing its
reliability.
Skill is closely related to the reference cards, as
they present information from other sources, allowing
for players to assess the same information frommultiple perspectives. The references containinformation such as publication date, source, author,and others, connecting to meta-information that can berelevant to assess reliability of information.
Lastly, the scenarios created by sharing andblocking news allows for players to understand thepossible consequences of their actions, relating closely
to attitude. Reflection on those scenarios can help tofoster responsible behavior in digital environments,
showing the impact that wrong information sharing
can cause when done on a large scale.
3.3 Initial Digitization
To approach the digitization of the concept
originated from the card game Brain Company, thefirst step was to digitize the original game. Initially, we
converted the original game experience as is, without
adjustments. The original version was not designedwith specific course modules in mind, thus missing
features and opportunities for changing the design
were detected.
The goal in this first step was building the same
experience designed in the original game but in adigital medium. Some advantages from having thegame in a digital version includes having pictures foreach news to mimic a real article, providing a timer,
adding soundtrack, saving session results and linking
different sessions with several participants in the samegroup through a code system.
The following picture shows how each news ispresented to the players, with blocking/sharing features,reference cards on the right side and meta-information
relating to the news and references.

Figure 2 – Initial digitization of Brain Company
3.4 Refinement Based on the Initial Digitization
The version created during the digitization step
served as a benchmark for the mechanics from Brain
Company. From this point, we decided to create a new
game from scratch, based on design aspects of Brain
Company. One change is on how the objective of thegame is presented to players. In Brain Company,

players aimed to score higher to compete with otherplayers and perform well in the game. In this new
design, players take the role of influencers, and their
final score is based on the number of followers they
can obtain. To increase their number of followers, theymust share reliable news and block fake news. If they
do the opposite, the number of followers will decrease.
Initially, the development platform changed fromGame Maker Studio 2 (utilized on the digitization step)to a JavaScript implementation. This change was basedon intended features and scalability. The following list
details features added on the design of the new game,many of them aiming at engaging players by making
the game more realistic or containing interactions thatmimic social media usage:・ Existing news: all news shown to players areexamples of real news or fake news. In Brain
Company, some of the information was based onreal cases, but necessarily the same as the original
source. From now, all news shown is based on real(or 'real gale's) sources.
・ Statistics: players can see in real-time the answers
from other players. This can influence how
information is perceived based on the pressure ofother players. In the discussion step, comparing
players' answers and utilizing captured data to
generate relevant statistics on answering patterns
and information perception can be a resource fordiscussion and learning.
・ Specialists perspective: players can see specialists'
opinions on the credibility of each of the news
they blocked or shared. This can be used as amaterial for the discussion session in the second
part of the game, showing different perspectives
on how to assess information reliability.
・ Algorithm-based scoring system: the scoring
system for the new game is based on relevancealgorithms utilized in social media services. If a
specific news is shared by the overwhelming
majority of players, then the quantity of followers
players can get or lose is also higher, increasing
the impact for that choice. This aims to mimic
how trends tend to be highlighted on content
websites, with everyone talking about the same
subject. Many times, when a new trend happens,
many content producers / influencers also create
content on the same topic, as trendy can mean
increased revenue or exposure. Because of how
information tends to be replicated thousands oftimes during trends, the impact can also be greater.

Some of the features are still a work-in-progress interms of implementation, but already defined as part of
the new design. The changes in design presented in thenext chapter aim to increase the engagement of theplayers and make the game more connected to real-life
internet usage.
3.5 Incentive Design and User Engagement
The new design aims to be more realistic and add
more layers when assessing the reliability of
information. To achieve a more relatable andbelievable setting, a new visual style was developed to
mimic a social media interface. This change also
relates to the change that players now play the role ofan influencer with the objective of having more
followers. The following picture is an example of the
new user interface added to the game (the following
image is an early work-in-progress version, and may
not be reflected in its totality in the final version of thegame):

the discussion session after the play sessions. From theperspective of the player, it aims to evoke further
consideration before making a final decision during thegame. In some cases, information cannot be defined as
totally fake or true. There might be some truth in apiece of fake news, when looked at from different
perspectives or different contexts. This creates adilemma in which people can get confused whenassessing information reliability. Evaluating how
certain a player is in their choice of sharing or blocking
a certain news can generate meaningful data that canbe studied further.

4

Future Works

The current version is a work-in-progress. The first
iteration of this game is expected to be released late
October 2020, with its first run scheduled to start in the
new academic year starting in April 2021. Until the runscheduled for the course to be conducted in 2021, theteam will conduct several PDCA cycles to finalize thegame and refine its design to match the academic
needs of the media literacy course.
The authors are willing to share updated resultsfrom this research and from development during theconference’s official presentation.

References

Figure 3 – New game implementation and interface
The setting of being an influencer in online media ischosen to create a more relatable setting for players.
Students participating in the game sessions during themedia literacy course are university freshmen and, ingeneral, close to the reality of social media usage.
Being an influencer also means that they would beheld more accountable towards what they share onsocial media. Additionally, it creates a game objective
to be the biggest influencer, adding competitiveness to
the game experience.
Another element added in this new design is forplayers to rate how credible they believe each news to
be and an open space for commenting on the reasons
they decide to share or block the news. This
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