Gamified governance

Videogames allow us to model economic, political and social systems in simulated environments. Experimenting with imagined worlds, whether realistic or entirely fantastical in approach, allows us to implement joint decisions about our cities, aiming to create more sustainable, ecological and inclusive worlds, both on and off screen.

This section shows examples of this, such as the 3D sculpture inspired by Block’hood, a commercial videogame which rather than the typical dynamics of growth, accumulation and exploitation of natural resources, invites us to aim for balance, with an ecological rationale.  Videogames like Block’hood allow us to understand the complexity of city-building. The game focuses on ideas of ecology, interdependence and decadence, with the challenge of maintaining an ecological equilibrium among more than 200 types of block, since each block put in place will consume and produce different types of resource. Those blocks that are not given the required input will slowly break down and deteriorate, until they ultimately collapse. The game is both an educational and a research initiative exploring the link between games and sustainability, contributing to a form of digital infrastructure for the ecological and systemic thinking needed in contemporary urban planning.

Gamified Governance also shows the results of the ArsGames Craftea project to involve citizens in urban design processes, a comprehensive programme focused on mapping our immediate surroundings in order to develop collective urban planning proposals to improve public spaces, virtualised by means of the videogame Minecraft, and then fed back into reality. Craftea is intended for a population excluded from decision-making in the current political system, and which is one of the most vulnerable populations within urban spaces: children. This project combines intervention on the ground and direct contact with our adjacent realities, with the possibility of imagining and designing alternative spaces in virtual environments, which can then be brought back to the real world in the form of proposals.

A similar approach, this time intended for an adult audience made up mainly of policymakers, may be seen in the proposal Games for Cities.  This is a set of projects undertaken in cities such as Boston, Bangalore, Cape Town, Istanbul, Nairobi, Moscow, Shenzhen and Sydney, addressing issues such as migratory flows, the problems derived from climate change, the provision of quality public spaces and the adaptation of these cities in line with a circular economy.

According to statements on the platform itself, this type of gamified governance practice is already giving way to the practical creation of cities deeply rooted in the collective experience, creativity and intelligence of increasingly diverse groups of people. 

These projects show how we can cross the digital-analogue barrier, impacting the way we devise the space around us, and allowing us to set out a discourse of proposals, structured in line with our collective needs.