A Case for A-AAGORA - An innovative gamification approach for public mobilization, engagement, education and to empower citizens to take action

To successfully fulfill the European Commission Mission on “restore our ocean and waters by 2030” (Mission Starfish 2030), innovative solutions are requested. A key objective is to foster participatory governance by actively engaging and mobilizing the public. This approach empowers citizens to take initiative and lead transitions through deliberative democracy, social innovation, citizen science, and targeted awareness campaigns." The EU-project A-AAGORA* pushes solutions for these objectives forward, focusing on three demonstrator regions: Centro Region in Portugal, Cork County in Ireland, and Troms Arctic Archipelago in Norway.

Here, we present a powerful gamification approach to foster stakeholder involvement, capacity building, and knowledge exchange. The game gives local actors a voice, raises public awareness, and contributes to education and decision-making. Within the game, the player has to solve different fictional cases, which all threaten specific and real-world aspects of the coastal socio-ecological system of the demonstrator regions. The quest is to find and combine the unique skills of members of the community in order to come up with an innovative solution. The storylines were developed in co-creation using a living lab approach. They highlight in a humoristic and entertaining way the importance of co-operation of different stakeholders to reach successful and widely accepted solutions. Furthermore, the stories provide background information on real-world ecological challenges within the socio-cultural settings of the regions. To this end, graphics of the game mirror local conditions, including e.g., typical or iconic buildings. All cases are available in English, Portuguese, and Norwegian. The game is designed to best work on mobile devices like mobile phones or tablets. Initial results from its use, including school classes, suggest that the game is highly motivating, fostering engagement as well as well-suited to improve communication. Thereby, the game will eventually contribute to community-forming and commonly accepted decision making. The game is based on a software platform for serious, gamified story telling that can be used for other/more cases and more types of interactive elements can be developed. The platform is multi-lingual, multi-tenant and easily adoptable to new requirements. It is able to record every session of each story and every decision that is made (even if it’s not submitted) for further investigations either for science or to change the interactive story. It is still in development and open for inspirations.
Consequently, it may serve as a lighthouse project that can be adapted and implemented for other projects, nature preservation areas, NGO’s, museums, schools, universities or elsewhere to strengthen stakeholder and/or audience communication and engagement.

 

*Blueprint for Atlantic-Arctic AGORA on cross-sectoral cooperation for restoration of marine and coastal ecosystems and increased climate resilience through transformative innovation – A-AAGORA (HORIZON-MISS-2021-OCEAN-02-03)