Introduction and definition

So far, collaborative ICTs have dramatically augmented the capacity of people to connect and collaborate. Yet, less impact has been achieved in terms of actual change and action, as most collaboration remain confined to an elite of highly-motivated individuals and faces the traditional limits of human attention and motivation. As illustrated in other challenges, ICT can improve data collection and analysis, but if attention and motivation are not present, little impact can be achieved. This challenge deals with the closing loop of collaboration and depicts ICT solutions that enable behavioural change and action. Even when citizens and government are fully aware of necessary policy choices, they might irrationally choose short-term benefits.

Simulation and serious gaming (also known as interactive learning environments) offer opportunities to impact on personal incentives to action and showing long-term and systemic effects of individual choices, thereby lowering the engagement barrier to collaborative governance and augmenting its impact. In particular, serious games have been developed for educational purposes and raising awareness on particular issues while not requiring high levels of engagement.

Simulation tools enable users to see the systemic and long-term impact of their action in a very concrete and tangible form, thereby encouraging more responsible behaviour and long-term thinking. Gaming engages users through the “fun” and “social” dimension, thereby providing incentives towards action. Feedback and simulation systems include both individual and government behaviour, thereby allowing policy-makers and citizens to detect the impact of both individual and policy choices.

Engagement of domain experts is a crucial issue for building reliable games and simulation tools. Toolkits and modules enable a wider audience of stakeholders to take a direct, active role in games development, thereby enabling all relevant knowledge to be elicited and captured by the simulation and gaming scenarios and models. Pre-built toolkit enables the creation directly by thematic experts and not by technology experts.

Why it matters in governance

Most applications of simulation and gaming are developed into the context of education and learning, while more interactive feedback producing systems have been applied to personal health and energy conservation. The specific challenges of gaming for public policy awareness and action are currently less researched, but are very specific because of their large-scale interaction and systemic effects of individual behaviour, which characterised this field.

Furthermore, the availability of a simulation toolkit is necessary to empower a diverse and inclusive simulation landscape, where the most diverse set of ideas can be influential and listened to.

Recent trends

Simulation and gaming have started to be applied in different policy contexts in order to engage wider audiences. Games are developed “on purpose”, by highly skilled developers, in the public sector and by civil society, therefore requiring significant investment and without the specific thematic knowledge of the field. Furthermore, existing serious games lack flexibility to allow for unpredictable developments and non-linear behaviours, where scenarios evolve and adapt to users choices rather than being rigidly prescribed. Commercial solutions that turn long-term effects into short-term feedback are available, but still lack usability as well as the fun dimension of games and finally require high levels of engagement. They are designed for individual feedback and do not cover the complexity of systemic interactions, which are typical of public governance issues.

To sum up, serious gaming is still requiring high level of engagement, and progress is needed in terms of usability and appeal in order to reach “casual gamers” including, immersive and emotion aware games.

Current practice

Purpose-built gaming and simulation for understanding of policy issues and of individual behaviour

Public Policy Applications

Simulation and gaming can be useful to policy makers in the following terms (Mayer et al. 2004 , Bots and van Daalen 2007 ):

• Research and analyse a policy issue when it is not feasible to tackle the real system (due to time constraint or just because it does not exists) or to include human behaviour by way of a computer model (due to unrealistic assumptions such as perfect rationality). In this view the game becomes a laboratory which can produce a great deal of data which provide useful insights

• Design alternative solutions to a problem, analyze and assess the possible consequences of the alternative solutions in order to recommend a course of action for the policy-maker. In this view the game can be seen as a virtual design studio useful to boost out-of-the-box thinking about alternative solutions to a policy issue, and also to ponder recommendations’ consequences

• A game can be used to provide strategic advice acting as a virtual practice ring in which the policy maker can rehearsal different strategies. A typical example of such kind is given by the war games, in which the other players act as sparring partners for the policy makers, playing the role of another stakeholder as opportunistically as possible

• Many policy issues require mediation so that it is necessary to seek for consensus among stakeholders. This can be done by putting the players around a virtual negotiation table by the mean of a mediation game. In this way the changes in attitude and the discovery of new opportunities for conflict resolution are eased by the interaction among stakeholders during the game

• Normally experts and elites are involved in the policy-making process, while citizens and ordinary people are completely neglected. However, by defining virtual consultation forums it is possible to allow equal access for all the actors carrying views and opinions which would have been otherwise disregarded. In this respect using games and simulations bears and advantage given by the fact that ordinary people can focus and express themselves more easily when playing a role

• Clearly ethical questions and opinions have a great influence on the policy making process. Games and simulations can be used to clarify the values and arguments behind a point of view. While in ordinary political debate values remain implicit, by creating a virtual parliament it is possible to make them explicit. Furthermore gaming and simulations can be used to magnify positions and opinions of stakeholders, so that the game can be designed to reward players for quality and clarity of argumentation

Moreover readapting the taxonomy of Sawyer and Smith simulation and serious gaming can be useful in the following domains (cross-referenced with game objectives):

• Public sector and NGOs: public health education and mass casualty response (games for health); political games (advergames); employee training (games for training); provide info to the public (games for education); data collection/planning (games for research); strategic and policy planning, spatial planning (games for producing); diplomacy and opinion research (games as work)

• Defence: rehabilitation and wellness (games for health); recruitment and propaganda (advergames); soldier/support training (games for training); school house education (games for education); wargames and planning (games for research); war planning and weapons research (games for producing); command and control (games as work)

• Healthcare: cyber therapy/exergaming (games for health); public health (advergames); policy and social awareness campaigns (games for training); training games for health professionals (games for education); games for patient education and disease management (games for research); visualization and epidemiology; biotech manufacturing and design (games for producing); public health response planning and logistics (games as work)

• Education: inform about diseases/risks (games for health); social issue games (advergames); train teachers/workforce skills (games for training); learning (games for education); computer science and recruitment (games for research); P2P Learning (games for producing); distance learning (games as work)

Inspiring cases

Let’s some inspiring cases of serious games applied to policy making:

• SimHealth : The National Health Care Simulation is is a management simulation of the U.S. Healthcare system released during Congressional debates on the Clinton health care plan
• SimCity 2013 : is an upcoming city-building/urban planning simulation computer game allowing allows players to visualize data, such as pollution and water distribution, which will be realised in February 2013
• City One : the game teaches industry professionals and civil servants the real-world planning in fields such as optimization of banking, retail, energy and water solutions
• Democracy 2 : government simulation game in which the player acts as the president or prime minister of a democratic government introducing and altering policies in areas such as tax, economy, welfare, foreign policy, transport, law and order and public services
• Close Combat Marines : serious game for military training purposes, with particular reference to the United States Marine Corp
• Incident Commander™ NIMS-compliant training tool for Homeland Security: in this game the player mimics the role of incident commander in case of natural or manmade disaster, terrorist attack or hostage situation. Application: US Department of Justice officers’ training
• Virtual Battlespace Systems 2 : this is an interactive military simulator developed for the United States Marine Corp and the Australian Defence Force to meet the individual needs of military, law enforcement, homeland defence, loadmaster, and first responder training environments
• Pulse!! Virtual Clinical Learning Lab for Health Care Training: the game recreates a lifelike, interactive, virtual environment in which civilian and military heath care professionals practice clinical skills in case of catastrophe or terrorist attack
• Levee Patroller : immersive 3D game-based environment to train levee inspection knowledge and skills, in order to be prepared to cope with unexpected flooding
• Construct.it : game-based learning environment allowing players to experience and debrief some of the complexities involved in large-scale urban projects. Application: development plan for Scheveningen-Harbour of The Hague
• Simport-Maasvlakte 2 : computer-supported multi-player simulation game that mimics the real processes involved in planning, equipping and exploiting the new area in the Port of Rotterdam
• Pro Rail : capacity optimization of a complex infrastructural network, in this case the Dutch railways. Applications: cargo capacity management, opening of the Vecht-bridge, increase traffic on the A2-corridor
• Win Win Manager: online multiplayer negotiation business game in which players conduct a sequence of bilateral negotiations pursued through private threads on the general game board
• Management Business Game: business game focussed on the simulation of a company’s management in a competitive market, which can be played both online and offline
• Management Utilities Euroshop: management of a chain of retail stores selling electronic products, through which players identify the relationships between management issues and competitive market factors
• Shadow Government: serious game based on the gamification of real countries, systems, and worldwide events. Based on System Dynamics, customized at the country level, it allows players to test several policy interventions and evaluate their impacts2

Key challenges and gaps

Following Mayer (2009) we can identify the following challenges and gaps:

• Cultural changes concerning the interaction between science in politics, democracy. Changes in the role of elites, activism and citizens’ participation, as well as the recent emergence of game cultures
• Changes in public policy making perception, i.e. from rational comprehensive to political and incremental
• How natural and human-caused events can influence the political agenda (climate warming, pollution, depletion of natural resources, terrorism)
• Institutional changes and the emergence of new industrial or institutional actors
• Technological innovation in computing and simulation modelling, such as agent-based models, cellular automata, or virtual game worlds.

Moreover following IDATE we can display the following key challenges regarding in particular serious gaming:

• Restructure the game in order to cope with specific purposes and broaden the audience
• Innovate the existing business models
• Automating a portion of the production process, such as for example the integration of sector-specific elements
• Try to persuade reluctant users and create sector-targeting serious gamins and persuading reluctant users
• Investing in all connected platforms

Current research

• Kit-based serious games
• Integration between policy models and simulation
• Design of appealing, adaptive and context-aware interfaces. Impact of simulation and gaming on individual behaviour
• Unconscious impact of feedback systems

Research disciplines: human-computer interaction, sensors, information visualisation, sensor design, psychology, pedagogy, public policy

Future research: long term and short term issues

Short-term research

• Citizens- and experts-generated gaming
• Immersive interfaces
• Large-scale collaboration in development
• Casual serious gaming
• Ethical issues in serious gaming
• User-controlled simulation and gaming
• Non-linear and adaptive scenarios for gaming in policy context
• Integrated analysis of information and behavioural change
• Impact of simulation and gaming on systemic behaviour

Long-term research

• Augmented reality citizens-generated gaming and simulation
• Ubiquitous feedback systems on public governance
• Model and display long-term systemic effects of individual choices on public policy topics
• Interplay between different feedback systems and other information outputs