Playing games in the workplace – or in the classroom – can give us a better understanding of issues like climate change and sustainable development, according to a team of top UK researchers.
In playing what are called ‘serious games’ – designed to improve problem solving skills, it is easier to get to grips with complex issues, say experts behind the GamEngage project from the Universities of Warwick, Cardiff, York, and Sussex, who have come together to produce the ‘Serious Games Cookbook’, a new guide explaining how to use and design the games.
“The cookbook offers a practical guide to help beginners designing serious games, as an emerging and promising tool for learning, engagement, and research, especially in the context of sustainable development and climate change – though we hope it will also be applied more broadly too,” said Dr Feng Mao, Associate Professor of Global Sustainable Development, University of Warwick. “We hope to inspire and empower the cookbook’s readers to meaningfully engage with serious games.”
The cookbook, which instructs users how to pick games matching their own goals, will also be a handy new research tool.
“The cookbook and its parts can also be used as a research tool, for example as part of co-design workshops as it would help to engage general public with serious topics through the medium of game design: rather than playing games designed by others, they could explore topics important to them that could be introduced in future games or even inform other types of projects,” adds Dr Katarzyna Stawarz, co-author of the Cookbook and Senior Lecturer in Human-Computer Interaction at Cardiff University.
A free pdf of the cookbook is now online.
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