A Planning Game Over a Map: Playing Cards and Moving Bits to Collaboratively Plan a City

Micael Sousa

doi:10.3389/fcomp.2020.00037

Abstract

Rational systemic planning and collaborative planning seem to be two conflicting approaches in spatial planning practice and research. However, some authors are trying to make them compliable through new approaches, more human-centered. Applying games to planning processes can be one of many solutions to consider. This article describes the process of developing an analog game session, and the first test of this serious board game approach. This game approach departed from the modern board game design elements as a starting design base, adapted for further developments in game-based planning processes, following the methods of serious games through the adaptation of the DPE framework. The purpose of this game session is to create a simple and flexible tool to train students and future planners for the use of games in the development of collaborative urban planning processes, contributing to filling the gap and absence of simple and flexible games to use in daily planning practices.

Highlights

Creating a game is not an easy process
The game dynamic considered the importance of game mechanics (Järvinen, 2008; Sicart, 2008) in an approach related to the DPE model used for serious game processes (Winn, 2009), in which the game designer creates a playful dynamic system to generate experiences through the use of game mechanics, considered more broadly
The potential of game mechanics is known for serious games (Michael and Chen, 2006; Dörner et al, 2016), the specific game mechanics present in modern board games are not yet fully explored and established in the literature as the recent work from Engelstein and Shalev (2019) shows

Summary

Introduction

Creating a game is not an easy process. Developing a serious game to apply to educational purposes or to be used as a support for participative and collaborative planning processes, in which budget, time constraints, or even expert skills are lacking (Ampatzidou et al, 2018), can be even harder (Crookall, 2010). The intent of this research is to contribute to developing new game approaches that address this tendency toward integration between rational systemic approaches and collaborative planning ones. This was done through the use of analog tabletop/board games, tested during a practical lecture with civil engineering students in a class on regional and urban planning. The game exercise consisted of two different games that happened in a sequence over the same map of the city. The two games had very different components and game mechanics they formed a logical sequence and were played over the same map

Methods

Results

Conclusion