Circulate.Now-game building process

1. Conclusions
Foresight is used to anticipate future developments and
trigger responses to them. Serious games can enhance
foresight by creating engaging experiences and
increasing interaction between participants. In this paper
we studied how serious games can be used to generate
new insights about alternative futures. We structured
existing approaches based on their type and purpose and
described a case study of developing a web-based
foresight game on circular economy. Based on the review
and case study we suggest that foresight games that are
balanced between the dimensions of idea generation,
informing and experience are well suited to provide
insights into the practices and strategy of the players’
organisation.
The main purposes of games in foresight
We categorise the approaches to games in foresight roughly
based on their emphasis on three purposes. 1. Idea
generation: the creation and aggregation of signals, trends and
future developments without processing them further. 2.
Informing: the communication of existing ideas, scenarios,
trends etc. 3. Experience: moving towards other “ways of
knowing”, that is feeling, sensing and going through alternative
future developments. Finding these three in foresight games is
challenging and dependent on the context. But once the
balance is found the end result is a game that opens up new
opportunities but is connected to the everyday work of the
player – a game that can be used to generate new insights
about alternative futures.
Introduction and background
Major disruptions and systemic changes such as a transition to
the circular economy require a long-term perspective and
challenging of existing mind-sets. Serious games offer one
solution to enhance learning in foresight. They can be used to
support internalising knowledge, communicating and sharing
ideas, increasing and broadening participation and creating
new futures knowledge. Games can create fun and engaging
experiences that increase the interaction between participants
to the foresight process as well as with the data gathered.
Figure 2. Phases of the Circulate.Now foresight game.
Circulate.Now -game
As a case study, the project team designed a game where
players develop new ways of creating value for their company
by tapping into the potential in circular economy. In the game
players create new business ideas and assess their
economical, social and environmental sustainability, aligned
with future trends. The players then invest and re-assess each
others’ ideas. As a result new business ideas are created,
shared and tested. Randomness and surprise is brought into
the game via changing trends and hiding the direct influence of
indicators that the player assesses when creating an idea. The
player gets constant feedback in the form of scores,
achievements and return on investments
Figure 1. Three main purposes of games in foresight.
Figure 3. A snapshot of the game in
ideation and assessment phase.
Contacts
Mikko Dufva
Tel. +358 40 765 8412
mikko.dufva@vtt.fi
Outi Kettunen
Tel. +358 40 760 1843
outi.kettunen@vtt.fi
Approaches to Gaming the Future:
Planning a Foresight Game on Circular Economy
Mikko Dufva • Outi Kettunen • Henna Sundqvist-Andberg • Timo Tuomisto • Anna Aminoff • Maria Antikainen
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd
Circular economy
The circular economy is gaining increasing attention in Europe
and around the world as a potential way for our society to
increase prosperity, while reducing dependence on primary
materials and energy. The basic notion of circular economy is
to eliminate waste by designing out waste. Products are
designed and optimized for a cycle of disassembly, reuse, and
refurbishment, or recycling. New innovative business models,
when changing from ownership to performance based models,
are instrumental in translating products designed for reuse into
attractive value proposals.