GREAT

GREAT Realizing Effective and Affective Transformation

In this project, the aim is to establish ways in which games can be designed to provide a link between citizens and policy-makers and to produce new knowledge on the role of the games industry and non-commercial creative practices in the EU to benefit society. Particularly, evidence of the innovation potential of games and play by showing how games can support new types of interaction and discourse on urgent social issues (the climate emergency is applied in this project), new insights into social dilemmas, and new models of citizen participation in governance will be gathered. A new channel between citizens and policy stakeholders, through cases studies working with large scale delivery of quizzes embedded in hit mobile games, and through collaborative dilemma-based games will be tested. In other words, when a citizen is gaming, a short quiz will pop up seeking their opinions and preferences on a particular climate issue. We expect to gather hundreds of thousands of citizens’ quantitative responses, which will be analysed and then shown to policy-makers, with the aim to influence them to make better decisions more suited to citizens’ needs. This quantitative data will be combined with the qualitative data obtained from the collaborative dilemma-based games, where stakeholders are invited to participate in either a face-to-face, remote or hybrid setting.

The cultural value of games in promoting a culture of social participation, and the risks to which participants may be exposed in engaging socially committed online activities is also investigated. The understanding generated will be synthesized to enable mainstreaming by the games industry and by policy stakeholders of the new creative practices developed by the project. Additionally, proposals for improving games in terms of positive impact on education, skillsets, responsible business models, employment chances, social cohesion and creativity will be generated. Lastly, the benefits and risks to individuals and society of using games to promote engagement with societal challenges will be assessed. This will provide evidence of the impact of games on European society, including their cultural value and risks.