1.3. Serious Games (Laura)
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Serious games have long been used for planning in the healthcare, defense and education sectors (Chew, Lloyd, and Knudsen 2015). More recently, hardware and software advances has enabled them to be developed for the natural resource management sector to help players understand complex adaptive systems (CAS), promote knowledge co-creation and help participants develop a common vision for management of the resources at play. Teaching about CAS can be difficult but by using serious games, players can understand theories and concepts by experiencing them through the game (van Bilsen, Bekebrede, and Mayer 2010). Ecosystems can be described as complex adaptive systems, meaning that the parts of the system interact non-linearly, usually through balancing or reinforcing loop relationships, and emergent properties resulting from the interactions of different parts of the system (van Bilsen, Bekebrede, and Mayer 2010). When making decisions that affect a CAS, it is difficult to understand the impacts because of these loops and emergent properties, the effects or existence of which are often unknown. Therefore, decision-makers are faced with an added layer of complexity. Serious games can help understand how these CAS function in two different ways. The physical-technical interface of the game is made of a physical model with a game layer on top (Mayer 2009). This model must be realistic enough so that obvious inconsistencies don’t make the players doubt the validity of learning outcomes (van Bilsen, Bekebrede, and Mayer 2010). This allows the players to understand the concepts of balancing and reinforcing loops as well as emergent properties. Furthermore, the participants themselves become part of the CAS and model the social-political complexity of the system (Mayer 2009). Serious games provide a safe environment for participants to make decisions and learn about CAS. This characteristic lowers pressure associated with decision-making and allows the participants to discuss different management strategies, which promotes knowledge transfer. One of the premises of serious games is that the learning that happens when playing can be used outside of the game (Mayer 2009). Since the game abstracts the participants’ formal roles and places them on the same playing field, it helps equalize power, which promotes transparent discussions (Mayer et al. 2013, Levesque et al. 2017). Additionally, as the game progresses, trust builds between the participants. This trust helps information sharing during the game and can lead to lasting trust outside of the game setting (Levesque et al. 2017). With equalized power and trust between the players comes the building of a common understanding of issues. Since serious games allow participants to test out management strategies over long periods of time, it doesn’t allow for negotiated nonsense. In a real-life setting, actors can sometimes make decisions collectively which please most actors, but that lead to disaster or simply bad management practices when applied. The game will also expose any tyranny of small decisions since it shows the cumulative impacts of decisions over time. These features of the game promote communication and planning between participants. However, this communication isn’t necessarily smooth. In fact, players of MSP Challenge 2011 reported that contentious discourse during the game led to better planning outcomes (Mayer et al. 2013). Although the use of serious games in natural resource management is novel, it can help participants learn about CAS, promote knowledge transfer, and help build a common vision for a management strategy.
1.4. MSP - What is it and Challenges (Muhammad)
MSP challenge 2050 is a serious game simulation that provides a virtual environment for strategic planning of marine resources. MSP challenge 2050 as the name indicates portray a challenge situation for sustainable management of complex maritime and ecological systems. It provides a platform for vision 2050 planning to achieve ‘Good Environmental Status’ for an imaginary sea shared with six countries that may have different interests, administrative and legal systems, and planning cultures (Mayer et al. 2013). Common challenges include but not limited to transboundary planning, ecological and environmental sustainability, and stakeholder engagement.
In addition to these challenges, MSP considered spatial variability for considering social and ecological interactions. MSP consider planning in five dimensions e.g. deep below sea floor for oil and gas exploration, slightly below sea floor for cable, below sea level fish and aquacultural, sea level for shipping and above sea level for migration of birds. Ocean planning without considering the interaction between system ecology, habitat structures, and site tourism may adversely affect the sustainability of the system. MSP is an innovate tool that provides help in achieving amicable solutions together with policy-oriented learning of conceptual principles for analyzing MSP as a complex, multi-actor and sociotechnical system.