In playful design, there are no formal rules or predefined goals. Play can be described as “a free movement within a more rigid structure”¹, allowing exploration and spontaneity.
A pure game is “a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome”², relying on clear structure, goals, and measurable results.
Gamification involves “the use of game design elements in non-game contexts”³, or more broadly, “any elements that evoke gameful experiences”⁴. It introduces playful mechanics into activities that are not full games.
Serious games are complete games designed for non-recreational purposes, often educational or professional, simulating real-world scenarios to engage players and support behaviour change⁵ ⁶.
Design games, a subset of serious games, focus on participation rather than competition and use rules and tangible materials to guide design-oriented interactions. “Design games are co-design tools emphasising play qualities, supported by materials and rules. They create a common design language, promote a creative and explorative attitude, and help players envision and enact what could be.”⁷
To summarise, it is important to recognise what you are aiming for in your process: a playful activity, a design game enriched with gameful elements, or a full-fledged game. Each has its own structure, purpose, and potential—and knowing which one you are designing will help guide your decisions and outcomes.
IMAGE: Buckminster Fuller & World pease game
When discussing games as a method for futures visioning, it is important to understand futures studies—the study of possible, probable, and preferable futures, along with the worldviews and myths that shape them⁸. Games and gamification are now established methods within this field.
One of the earliest examples of gamified future visioning is Buckminster Fuller’s World Peace Game from the 1960s, designed as a tool to help players engage with complex global problems.
Another early method is the Future Workshop, developed in the 1970s by Robert Jungk, Ruediger Lutz, and Norbert R. Muellert. This participatory technique, particularly suitable for those with little experience in creative decision-making, guides a group through four phases: preparatory, critique, fantasy, and implementation—enabling them to generate new ideas and solutions for social challenges.
Since then, numerous games have been developed within futures research, design, and science (see Games4Sustainability). Sohail Inayatullah, an expert in combining gamification with futures studies, notes that games make specific futures more tangible and alternative futures more legitimate⁹. Games and foresight fit naturally together: foresight methods provide the foundation, while games expand on these insights to create meaningful, immersive experiences—similar to how laboratory experiments function in the natural sciences.
Games also provide a safe environment to explore wicked, complex, and frustrating issues like climate change or biodiversity loss. Players can step outside present-day restrictions to discuss, experiment, and envision potential futures in depth.
Using games or gamified experiences for futures envisioning is beneficial as they
- Make the possibility of understanding futures more likely,
- Lead to a greater insight,
- Allow for whole brain-body-spirit learning, i.e. all ways of learning are included,
- Allow cognitive faculties to be suspended while “body” catches up with futures information and
- Enhance the possibility of a more robust future. 10
As the future is yet to emerge, multiple ways of knowing, along with corresponding methods and tools, are essential. Serious design games are one approach that can make specific futures more tangible and alternative futures more legitimate¹².
Of course, achieving transformative change requires a holistic approach, including new economic models, innovative political practices, updated laws and global goals, and technologies that steer us toward regenerative futures. Within this broader toolkit, games stand out as a inspirational and valuable method, offering an engaging and experiential way to explore, understand, and shape possible futures.
Sources
1, 2
Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2010). Rules of play: Game design fundamentals. MIT Press.
3
Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., & Nacke, L. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: Defining “gamification.” In Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments.
4
Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., & Sarsa, H. (2014). Does gamification work? – A literature review of empirical studies on gamification. In Proceedings of the 47th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2014)
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Borges, S. D. S., Durelli, V. H. S., Reis, H. M., & Isotani, S. (2014). A systematic mapping on gamification applied to education. In Proceedings of the 29th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC ’14).
6
Degirmenci, K. (2017). Serious games for eco-effective transformations. ResearchGate.
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Vaajakallio, K. (2012). Design games as a tool, a mindset and a structure (Doctoral dissertation, Aalto University).
8
Amara, R. (1974, 1981); Bell, W. (1997). [Original works cited—please add full titles and publication info].
9, 10, 12
Inayatullah, S. (2017). Gaming, ways of knowing, and futures. Journal of Futures Studies, 22(2), 101–106.
11
Schell, J. (2008). The art of game design: A book of lenses. Morgan Kaufmann.