Serious gaming for climate adaptation—Assessing the potential and challenges of a digital serious game for urban climate adaptation

This study set out to discuss to what extent a digital serious game on climate adaptation can support knowledge co-creation and increase the understanding of the complexity of climate adaptation. Based on the results of surveys conducted to evaluate gaming sessions with Swedish high school students, we assessed to what extent different aspects of the game, namely the game narrative, gameplay, content and didactics, bear potential to support an increased understanding of the needs and benefits of adaptation actions. Serious gaming has gained increasing prominence in climate change communication, and provides opportunity to engage new audiences and new platforms for knowledge co-creation and dialogues.

The results of this study indicate that the game can engage players to reflect upon challenges related to climate adaptation decision making, but also point towards the challenge of including a high degree of complexity which can make it difficult to grasp consequences of individual measures, as well as to link these to the natural variability of the occurrence of extreme climatic events.