Designing digital positive youth development games for the enhancement of on-and-offline interpersonal relationships among adolescents

To prevent conflicts in peer relationships (PRs) which are commonly found among adolescents, a set of three digital positive youth development (DPYD) games has been developed and made available free of charge for non-commercial and educational use. These games aim to enhance the core competencies of adolescents in handling PRs so as to prevent bullying and cyberbullying (BCB). This chapter describes the design and functions of these three games - ‘The Digital Age’, ‘The Integrity Crisis’, and ‘The Bullying Storm’ which share the same game structure. In these games, students follow different storylines, encounter difficult online and offline situations, and have to choose a response out of six choices in each scenario. Based on students’ responses, their patterns of the use of conflict management strategy and their relative strengths on each of the twenty positive psychological constructs will be presented in the form of a percentage at the end of the game. With proper guidance by instructors, these games can help students learn how to handle on-and-offline PRs and BCB. Finally, this chapter discusses issues related to the use of game principles in designing DPYD games and using them for prevention.