How Governments can communicate better by playing with Angry Birds

The Government should take a look at the popular Angry Birds online game to learn how to communicate better with the general public, the Digital Shoreditch conference was told.

 The simple game, in which animated birds are used to kill pigs, has been a massive success and can be played on computers and phones.

 The Government needs to learn how to make communication with people enjoyable in the same way, Chris Quigley, chief executive of digital company Delib told the festival.

”’By making things enjoyable, you can get them to engage more. Its not about just telling them things, its about giving them things to do,’’ he said afterwards. He added: ‘’Its about challenges, not just telling people ‘have your say’. It’s about engaging with people.’’

Successful games like Angry Birds usually had five common factors: repetition, reward, collaboration, feedback and interaction, all of which engaged users, he said.

 Delib, which is based inBristoland describes itself as a ‘digital democracy company’ has devised online projects for Governments all over the world.

 In Britain, it has worked with the Department of Energy on a climate change campaign and developed budget simulations for local authorities and crowd sourcing exercises for central Government spending programmes.

 Quigley said: ‘’These all deal with complex and important issues in which it is important to engage people. But you can learn from casual games like Angry Birds to improve that level of engagement.’’