Serious Game Play for the Visualization and Generation of Complex Data for Civic Engagement

Jeffrey Plank, David F. Feldon, Gerard Learmonth, David E. Smith University of Virginia

Serious games provide the opportunity for players to assume the roles of real-world actors, whose decisions rely on extensive data collected from the world around them. When these games utilize data and underlying simulation models that are accurate representations of the real-world phenomena with which players must engage, they provide vehicles for civic engagement by citizens who can be newcomers to a game’s issues or veteran stakeholders with extensive knowledge and decision-making experience. Traditionally, the difference between “games” and “simulations” has been the extent to which authenticity and scope might be tailored to enhance playability. However, when serious games embody complex systems of coupled human behavior and natural processes in which players take the roles of critical stakeholders, they become participatory simulations that have both the playability of games and the scientific accuracy of simulations. The fact that these participatory simulation games have human players actually enhances their value as simulations. As simulated systems with independent agents, participatory simulations more closely mirror the behavior of complex systems than do deterministic mathematical models. Legacy mathematical models of watersheds now used for policy making, such as the Phase 5 model of the Chesapeake Bay utilized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, aggregate micro-scale natural process models to produce large-scale system models. However, the macro-scale behavior of complex systems cannot be inferred from such aggregation, because complex systems often exhibit counter-intuitive, unpredictable emergent properties that are typically the result of unpredictable interactions of independent agents. The participation of multiple players complements the underlying computational models by manifesting the distinctive properties of coupled human and natural systems, which depend on the independent behaviors of players through both the social interactions of the live players and the modeled behaviors of the stakeholder roles they are playing. Because player behavior depends on and involves the creation of economic and environmental data, participatory simulations of complex natural-economic systems provide a distinctive laboratory for exploring the interactions of data and behavior, especially during decision-making, data exchange, collaboration, and innovation.

Since 2009, University of Virginia faculty members and students have used the on-going development of the UVA Bay Game to explore these participatory simulation features. The UVA Bay Game allows players to take the roles of stakeholders, such as farmers, real estate developers, watermen, and associated policy-makers, whose decisions are critical to the flow of unregulated nutrients into the Chesapeake Bay. Players are arrayed in sub-watershed teams, such as the James, Potomac, or Susquehanna river basins; make 10 decisions over a 20-year period; and see the impact of their decisions on Bay health, the regional economy, and their personal finances.

What we learn from gameplays in and out of the classroom is that the visualization of data empowers players for civic engagement. Initially players work as individuals, but as they receive data about their own decisions and the decisions of other players on their own team and throughout the watershed, they seek to optimize relationships. Early on the crop or animal farmers and their policymakers begin to explore the economic and environmental tradeoffs for incentives; after a round of decisions they see the results. When a hurricane sweeps through the watershed in 2003, players see that increased annual flow correlates negatively with Bay health. After several decisions players can scan different charts to examine the relationships between their decisions, those of others, and factors beyond their control like weather and population growth. By the end of the game they have a much more sophisticated

understanding of the need to quantify processes and find the disproportionately important relationships and system drivers. In our iterative design process, we have identified nine key data elements and graphs that prompt player appreciation of complex systems processes. We show these on one screen; after the leader board that shows current team standings and each player’s decision/results screen, this metrics screen is the most viewed. For ecosystem management, the lessons are clear: to manage a changing nature we need adaptive management institutions, we need stakeholder collaboration, and data is the basic currency. How do serious games, such as the UVA Bay Game, change the policy conversation? Instead of limiting the policy conversation to experts and policy makers, serious games like the UVA Bay Game show how information can be accessed and understood by any citizen—and the participatory simulation provides the virtual civic experience that can serve as a basis for real-world civic engagement. The UVA team now is completing a generalizable platform, Bay Game Global, for open-source distribution that can be used to build simulations for any watershed in the world. This tool will accelerate the development and assessment of serious games for stakeholder engagement and innovative natural resources governance. For more information about the modeling of the Chesapeake Bay for the UVA Bay Game, as well as the game’s development process and user learning outcomes, see:

• Learmonth, Gerard, David E. Smith, William H. Sherman, Mark A. White, and Jeffrey Plank, “A Practical Approach to the Complex Problem of Environmental Sustainability: The UVA Bay Game,” The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal 16 (1), 2011. http://www.innovation.cc/scholarly-style/learmonth_sustain_inviroment_v16i1a4.pdf

• Plank, Jeffrey, David Feldon, William Sherman, and Jennifer Elliot, “Complex Systems, Interdisciplinary Collaboration, and Institutional Renewal,” Change (May/June 2011), 35-43. http://www.changemag.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/2011/May-June%202011/institutional-renewal-abstract.html

Jeffrey Plank (jp4q@virginia.edu) is an associate vice president for research at the University of Virginia (UVA); he leads the UVA Bay Game program and coordinates UVA sustainability research. He recently completed a three-volume study of architectural history, architectural photography, and building restoration—using the American architect Louis Sullivan as his case study—with Crombie Taylor: Modern Architecture, Building Restoration, and the Rediscovery of Louis Sullivan (William Stout, 2009). David Feldon (dff2j@virginia.edu) is an assistant professor of STEM education and educational psychology at UVA. He examines the development of expertise in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics through a cognitive lens and studies the effects of expertise on instructors’ abilities to teach effectively. Gerard P. Learmonth, Sr. is Research Associate Professor of Systems and Information Engineering. He directs the Complex Systems Modeling Laboratory and oversees the development of the UVA Bay Global simulation platform. David E. Smith is professor and associate chair in the UVA department of environmental sciences. Among his current research interests is the coupling of watershed science and policy, especially regarding low dissolved oxygen in the Chesapeake Bay; he also is president of the Association of Ecosystem Research Centers.