Unlocking the potential of gaming for anticipatory governance
Vervoort, Joost; Mangnus, Astrid; McGreevy, Steven; Ota, Kazuhiko; Thompson, Kyle; Rupprecht, Christoph; Tamura, Norie; Moossdorff, Carien; Spiegelberg, Max; Kobayashi, Mai
(2022) Earth System Governance, volume 11, pp. 1 - 12
(Article)
Abstract
Games offer unique possibilities for imagining and experimenting with new systems of governance for more sustainable futures – new rules and institutions, new roles, and new dynamic worlds. However, research on sustainability games has mostly investigated games as a type of futures method, largely divorced from its societal contexts. In
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this paper, we argue that to unlock the potential of gaming for anticipatory governance in the service of a more sustainable future, it is important take a whole-society perspective, and examine the possibilities and challenges offered by contextual factors. Using the Netherlands and Japan as examples, we investigate the following questions: 1) How do governance cultures allow or restrict opportunities for the participatory exploration of futures using games? 2) How does, and can, the game sector in a given context support anticipatory gaming? 3) How do dominant societal relationships with games limit, and offer opportunities for, gaming for anticipatory governance?
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Keywords: Anticipatory governance, Foresight, Futures, Games, Simulation, Geography, Planning and Development, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Global and Planetary Change, Political Science and International Relations, Social Sciences (miscellaneous)
ISSN: 2589-8116
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Note: Funding Information: This article is supported by the Dutch Research Organization (NOW) who funded the NWO Vidi project ANTICIPLAY (project number VI.Vidi.195.007 ). This work was implemented as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), which is carried out with support from CGIAR Fund Donors and through bilateral agreements. For details please visit https://ccafs.cgiar.org/donors . Moreover, we would like to thank the BNP Paribas Foundation for its support of the RE-IMAGINE project. We would like to thank the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature - FEAST project (grant no: 14200116 ) for supporting this research. The article was also support by the CreaTures project. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870759 . The content presented in this document represents the views of the authors, and the European Commission has no liability in respect of the content. Funding Information: In contrast to the Netherlands, the general observation is that simulation games are not, for the most part, explicitly incorporated into the sustainability governance toolbox in Japan so far. But as a country with a long history of gaming, a world leader in commercial gaming and game development, simulations and games do appear to be influential in many societal contexts where questions of governance are either directly or indirectly at play. Games have been prominent in one governance context ? that of the military. Notable is the Total War Research Institute in 1940 (Ichikawa, 2014) and its multidimensional governance game effort called ENREN. The Giseikai research institute for economic-business gaming was founded in 1943 to pursue holistic gaming simulations for the Japanese national economy, modelled explicitly on ENREN (Ichikawa, 2014). In the 1960s and 1970s, war-gaming and techniques for total war mobilization were adapted into sociological, economic, and business simulation methods for peacetime use. However, Japan does not currently appear to have any major dedicated governmental funding sources to engage with serious gaming for governance. One of the few examples is the ?CIGS Policy Simulation? game, hosted by the Canon Institute for Global Studies (CIGS) (Canon Institute for Global Studies, F.A.a.N.S.G., 2017). However, in a larger sense, CIGS's activities are quite rare for Japan and even the existence of these games seems to depend on the support from the US Department of Defense and Defense University (ibid.). At the local level, there is a highly notable case: Nakagawa et al. (2017) conducted local-level experiments in live governance contexts, based on previous lab experimentation, where they used role playing games with local government officers to introduce the interests of future generations into local governance processes. This use of role playing the interests of future generations was very well received by the involved local government actors ? and even resulted in a degree of institutionalization of the approach into a ?department of the future?. There is also interest in scaling out this approach to other local governments. Academics working at the intersection of political science and simulation & gaming have also explored politics and governance through games. In the ?Forming a Coalition Government? game, developed at Tokai University, players play powerful real-world political leaders and interact in a virtual political world, while two facilitators (a time-keeping ?speaker? and the ?mass media? who aids discussions) help players unite or dissolve political alliances (Kuboya and Kimura, 2005).This article is supported by the Dutch Research Organization (NOW) who funded the NWO Vidi project ANTICIPLAY (project number VI.Vidi.195.007). This work was implemented as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), which is carried out with support from CGIAR Fund Donors and through bilateral agreements. For details please visit https://ccafs.cgiar.org/donors. Moreover, we would like to thank the BNP Paribas Foundation for its support of the RE-IMAGINE project. We would like to thank the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature - FEAST project (grant no: 14200116) for supporting this research. The article was also support by the CreaTures project. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870759. The content presented in this document represents the views of the authors, and the European Commission has no liability in respect of the content. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Authors
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