Not just playing: The politics of designing games for impact on anticipatory climate governance
Vervoort, Joost M.; Milkoreit, Manjana; van Beek, Lisette; Mangnus, Astrid C.; Farrell, David; McGreevy, Steven R.; Ota, Kazuhiko; Rupprecht, Christoph D.D.; Reed, Jason B.; Huber, Matthew
(2022) Geoforum, volume 137, pp. 213 - 221
(Article)
Abstract
Simulation games are increasingly popular tools for opening up future imaginaries, especially in the arena of sustainability policy-making and decision support. However, there is a lack of understanding regarding the potential power of games in anticipatory governance. We argue that the utility of simulation games in support of anticipatory climate
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governance can be greatly increased when game processes are consciously designed to impact present day planning and action. At the same time, game designers with the intention to support or intervene in governance and policy-making inevitably enter political arenas and bear responsibility for understanding and managing their influence at the science-policy interface. We present two case studies: a game simulating a sustainable food policy council with food system actors in Kyoto, Japan, and a game focused on the exploration and imagination of the global impacts of climate tipping points aimed at participants of the global climate negotiation community. Each case study represents a specific logic for translating game play into real-world impacts at different governance scales with distinct political implications. Based on these two case studies, we develop principles for the design and evaluation of simulation games that seek to impact anticipatory climate governance, based on five lenses: (1) purpose and positionality; (2) conceptions of the future and imaginaries; (3) beneficiaries, key stakeholders and participants; (4) the politics of game features and design; and (5) evaluation.
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Keywords: Games, Climate change, Futures, Scenarios, Imaginaries, Anticipatory governance, Policy
ISSN: 0016-7185
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Note: Funding Information: This paper was realized thanks to the valuable support of several projects and a number of excellent people. First of all, we would like to thank Alasdair Reavy, Cara Henney, Dylan Nichol, James Campbell Milne, Jessica Louise O’Neill, Marie Camille Juliette Jeantet, Hamid Homatash and Ross Anderson for their invaluable work on the Tipping Point Negotiations Game. We would like to thank the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Purdue Policy Research Institute, the members of the Gaming Climate Futures project for supporting this game. We would like to thank the German Development Institute (DIE) for hosting some of the Tipping Point Negotiations game sessions. For the Kyoto-based Food Policy Council Simulator and its research, we are grateful for the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature and the FEAST project (grant no: 14200116). We would like to thank the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes project for inspiring the development of the FPC Simulator. The article was supported 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. This work was also 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. Finally, this article is supported by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) who funded the NWO Vidi project ANTICIPLAY (project number VI. Vidi.195.007) and its research team. Funding Information: This paper was realized thanks to the valuable support of several projects and a number of excellent people. First of all, we would like to thank Alasdair Reavy, Cara Henney, Dylan Nichol, James Campbell Milne, Jessica Louise O'Neill, Marie Camille Juliette Jeantet, Hamid Homatash and Ross Anderson for their invaluable work on the Tipping Point Negotiations Game. We would like to thank the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Purdue Policy Research Institute, the members of the Gaming Climate Futures project for supporting this game. We would like to thank the German Development Institute (DIE) for hosting some of the Tipping Point Negotiations game sessions. For the Kyoto-based Food Policy Council Simulator and its research, we are grateful for the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature and the FEAST project (grant no: 14200116). We would like to thank the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes project for inspiring the development of the FPC Simulator. The article was supported 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. This work was also 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. Finally, this article is supported by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) who funded the NWO Vidi project ANTICIPLAY (project number VI. Vidi.195.007) and its research team. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s)
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