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Short abstract

This study highlights a Cross-Impact Balances inspired serious game that can facilitate participatory scenario building for uncertain developments and collective exploration of actions.

Long abstract

How we imagine distant catastrophes profoundly shapes our understanding of emerging risks and our ability to find solutions in the present. In addition, the urgency of potential crises often clashes with the uncertainty surrounding the possible courses of action, demanding approaches that can handle complexity without reducing it to a single, rigid pathway. Therefore, we ask: how can we approach these uncertain developments in the present in a way that considers essential factors while minimising unnecessary ones? In this context, the following work explores an extension to the Cross-Impact Balances (CIB) method, which uses an algorithm to examine different scenarios by incorporating various factors. However, as this algorithm makes the method and the results relatively deterministic, incorporating an element of playfulness and participation could enable us to explore diverse, less deterministic alternative scenarios that align with the perspectives and imaginations of those involved in creating them. This is achieved by creating a serious game application usable for any CIB model, which has been tested with stakeholders in three case studies on future water conflicts in Germany. Participants can use the game to explore even inconsistent scenarios that the algorithm would not typically produce, and, through interaction with, or possible modification of, the factors, identify appropriate actions for future developments. Additionally, since the serious game uses the same algorithm, the scenarios continue to reference the embedded factors and maintain traceability.