Making the Board: Participatory Game Design for Environmental Action

• In Event: Games, Virtual Technologies, and STS - II

Abstract

Increasing global demands for helium are driving interest in discovering new helium reserves. In northeast Arizona, an area rich in helium deposits, exploration by industry has led to the rise of concerned citizen groups, including No Fracking Arizona (NFAZ). In fall, 2018, the Civic Science for Environmental Futures Collaborative, a group of researchers from Arizona State University, conducted knowledge-building workshops with NFAZ. Developing a “serious” game emerged from the workshops as a way to help NFAZ understand the complex technological, political, and social system surrounding helium extraction debates. Serious games are designed to provide knowledge to the players and help guide them through complex decision-making scenarios. Unlike prior games related to resource extraction that primarily emphasize economic interests and accumulations of wealth, Helium Futures is a co-developed game, designed in partnership with NFAZ, that encourage players to think about the long-term trajectory of their community and potential futures. By using serious games as a developmental framework this project expanded on participatory design through a series of workshops with NFAZ. In these workshops NFAZ identified topical priorities pertaining to helium extraction, as well as stakeholder perceptions related to concepts such as public participation in environmental governance. Data from workshops alongside discourse analysis of media, industry reports and policy documents informed the primary topical domain of the board game. The project expands on STS work on resource extraction and in building capacity in partnership with communities through participatory design and game studies and facilitated conversations about speculative futures grounded in contemporary events.

Authors

• Katherine Ball, Arizona State University

• Kirk Jalbert, Arizona State University