Adaptive and interactive climate futures: systematic review of ‘serious games’ for engagement and decision-making

Abstract

Climate change is already having adverse impacts on ecosystems, communities and economic activities through higher temperatures, prolonged droughts, and more frequent extremes. However, a gap remains between public understanding, scientific knowledge about climate change, and changes in behaviour to effect adaptation. 'Serious games'-games used for purposes other than entertainment-are one way to reduce this adaptation deficit by enhancing opportunities for social learning and enabling positive action. Games can provide communities with the opportunity to interactively explore different climate futures, build capability and capacity for dealing with complex challenges, and socialise adaptation priorities with diverse publics. Using systematic review methods, this paper identifies, reviews, synthesises and assesses the literature on serious games for climate change adaptation. To determine where and how impact is achieved, we draw on an evaluation framework grounded in social learning, to assess which combinations of cognitive (knowledge and thinking), normative (norms and approaches) and relational (how people connect and network building) learning are achieved. Results show that factors influencing the overall success in influencing behaviour and catalysing learning for adaptation include generating high levels of interand intra-level trust between researchers, practitioners and community participants; strong debriefing and evaluation practices; and the use of experienced and knowledgeable facilitators. These results can help inform future game design, and research methodologies to develop robust ways for engaging with stakeholders and end users, and enhance learning effects for resilient climate futures.

Serious Gaming for Climate Adaptation—Assessing the Potential and Challenges of a Digital Serious Game for Urban Climate Adaptation

“…This demonstrates the trade-off between the wish to address several complexities and to disseminate clear messages about the value of measures. Balancing simplification and complexity is a common challenge for climate change games, and in line with earlier studies [6,7,20,26]. This also points to the importance of not using games as a stand-alone event but as an integrated part of a longer learning process [31,36].…”

“…Misconceptions exist among many, including adolescents, with regard to the purpose and complementary roles of adaptation and mitigation [4]. The progress of the interest for education on climate change can be mirrored in the increasing number of climate-related serious games, that more recently also include games with focus on climate adaptation [5][6][7][8][9]. The potential of serious games for climate change communication, commonly defined as games that are "designed to have underlying objectives beyond after the game, i.e., the debriefing [37], where most of the learning takes place.…”

Conceptualizing Serious Games as a Learning-Based Intervention in the Context of Natural Resources and Environmental Governance

“…Games are assumed to support a deeper understanding of contemporary environmental challenges [25]. For instance, Flood et al [1] in their review of serious games on climate change, find that besides educational outcomes, often these games also lead to improved awareness. Flood et al [1] comment that, during game-play, students' work with data and descriptions/simulations of real-world policy processes helps them in their learning processes, but also allows them to have a close-to-real-world experience.…”

“…For instance, Flood et al [1] in their review of serious games on climate change, find that besides educational outcomes, often these games also lead to improved awareness. Flood et al [1] comment that, during game-play, students' work with data and descriptions/simulations of real-world policy processes helps them in their learning processes, but also allows them to have a close-to-real-world experience. Chen and Martin [24] discuss the potential of role-playing as an educational tool for transformative learning.…”

“…Using serious games in natural resource and environmental governance, inclusive of water governance, has been slowly increasing since mid-1990s [1][2][3]. For instance, Flood et al [1] in their review note a trend of serious games being now developed and meant for use with stakeholders and policy makers. This trend seems to emerge as a response to the limitations ascribed to some participatory activities used in the research field of natural resources and environmental governance.…”