Serious games in communitiesPeter Edwards, Lisa Sharma-Wallace, Lania Holt, Sandra J Velarde & Simon WegnerSeptember 2018

Serious Games Use of serious games

• Research & analysis

• Provide strategic advice

• Mediate

• Learning

• Design and recommend

• Democratise

• Clarify values and arguments

General principles

• Reality

• Meaning

• Play

Games – not just for land-use challenges! Already used in climate adaptation

Extension and technology transfer happen in a very ‘messy’, non-linear, non-straightforward way

Introduction of new technologies

Engaging with community to gain their assessment, attitudes and perceptions

Self-assessment of participants

Across many areas, to make learning enjoyable

Serious games – adaptive and anticipatory Agile approach to wicked problems

• Need collaborative methods

Support and empowerment of communities

Players exposed to different views and approaches

Opens up space for inclusion of diverse views and values

Developing mutual understanding and shared language for continuing collaboration

Enables experimentation, innovation and contemplation of new management methods

Uncertainty and long-term resource/ information constraints

Not just a single tool; needs to be used in conjunction with other tools

Serious games – our objectives Building up ‘brokers’

Not about problem solving

Realistic, but not reifying

Complexity and the big picture

Understanding others’ positions, interests, lived realities

Trial new ideas in a safe environment

Understand our own values and beliefs

Change our own behaviours and attitudes

Why design a new game? Our game deals with the big and complex socio-economic, and

environmental, across scale, power and time!

Deals with forestry – planting for erosion, but forestry isn’t just about forestry

Underlying theories

• Role-playing games

• Organisational change theory

• Complex systems

Empathy, values and people recognising the need to change to new ways of thinking and doing

Catchment 2030 Fictionalised catchment, set 12 years in the future

Variable number of characters placed within 1 of 6-8 ‘groupings’

Each group negotiates goals, strategies and key organisations to help achieve their goals

Different characters bring different resources to the simulation –funding, human resources, ideas …

Characters/ groups go around meeting with others to negotiate resources they need to achieve their goals

“Success” happens when groups have negotiated and secured the resources they need to achieve their goals

Detailed feedback and debriefing session at the end

Session is video taped with facilitators taking notes during the event

Serious games – potential for… 1 Billion trees

Biosecurity

Climate change

Waste Management

Social licence

Regional development

Serious games: onwards! Internally exploring ways to potentially carry on this work

• Avenues to explore – adaptation for schools, knowledge, scale, governance

• Funding avenues – Curious minds, Enviro schools, National Science Challenges

Work with Te Tumu Paeroa to develop games they can use with landowners – mix of our concepts and Matrix Games

Early scoping work with AgResearch and Te Tumu Paeroa to include games in land-use choices/ decision-making project

Slowly working with several teachers to test out the feasibility of adapting it for schools

“App-ifying” possibilities

Pia Pohatu and Tui Warmenhoven

Community in Ruatoria

Gisborne District Council

School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington

University of Canterbury (Ann Brower)

Auckland University of Technology (Dave Moore)

Rest of the Weaving the Korowai team

Acknowledgements

www.scionresearch.com

Scion is the trading name of the New Zealand Forest Research Institute Limited

Prosperity from trees Mai i te ngahere oranga