Meaningful Play

Abstract

Interactive multiplayer simulation games have the potential to provide a more mature and statistically accurate approach to help better understand human behavior in relation to local environments and situated contexts. This could be used as a tool to better inform policy and research around environmental issues such as sustainability, food, and climate change. The Games Learning Society Center at the University of Wisconsin at Madison is currently working on an ecological simulation game, Trails Forward. In this game, three players, a lumber worker, a conservationist, and a housing developer, all work and compete within an accurate model of the Vilas county landscape. Trails Forward provides a template of how play in a simulated environment can inform our understandings of human behavior given real-world privileges and restrictions.