Throughout March and April 2016, we held a series of game prototyping sessions at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences at the University of Groningen, to receive feedback and ideas from researchers working on the topics of energy transition.
The research project “Playing with Urban Complexity - Using co-located serious games to reduce the urban carbon footprint among young adults” aims to foster the understanding of complex urban problems by combining participatory processes with serious games in a co-located setting. In particular, the project seeks to explore how game mechanics can be used to engage the actor group of young adults to make informed decisions that have an impact on their respective urban carbon footprints. Investigating both existing games and novel game-based approaches, the project partners endeavour to create a tested game mechanics toolbox that can serve as a resource for participatory, game-based urban development scenarios.