Toshiko Kikkawa – författare

This book focuses on how to connect the gaming experience to the real world. Looking back at the history of the Simulation and Gaming field, it has offered the solution to social problems such as policy making, decision making for business strategies, education and training, environmental issues, urban planning, or disaster awareness. In other words, Gaming Simulation always has had a close connection to the reality. The interconnected modern societies nowadays have become even more complex and ambiguous, as the UN SDGs goals show. Gaming is one of the suitable tools to suggest ways to achieve our goals in a world of uncertainty. Learning starts by experiencing games and their effects in a safe environment. An important part of the gaming simulation process are methods for a transfer of the game-based learning to and an application within reality. However, connecting the experience to reality is not always facile for all the participants, no matter how comprehensive the debriefing is. In addition to debriefing, further transfer methods and conditions have to be implemented in order to create a real change of behavior and systems. The book''s authors tackle the challenge by introducing concrete practices and offering various hints for readers struggling to solve a similar issue. In addition, when applying the experience of gaming, we have to carefully consider several ethical issues, which are also covered in this book.

This book is a tribute to two pioneers in the field of gaming simulation: Richard de la Barre Duke and Cathy Stein Greenblat. Duke was a professor of urban planning at the University of Michigan who introduced gaming simulation into urban planning and policy making in the early 1970s. With his 1974 book Gaming: The future’s language, he proposed simulation games as a multilogue language for bringing different disciplines and stakeholders’ perspectives together. He was co-founder of the International Simulation and Gaming Association (ISAGA). Cathy Stein Greenblat was a professor of sociology at Rutgers University, using gaming simulation education and health care beginning in the mid-1970s. She was editor in chief of the international journal Simulation & Gaming for many years. Duke and Greenblat worked together and authored several influential books, and both were honorary members of ISAGA until they passed away in 2022.

The present book focuses on the past and actual scientific and practical impact of their work for design and development, facilitation and debriefing, evaluation, and research of simulation games. The book contains discussions and case examples of how their key concepts are still used and can be used in the future to have a social impact through gaming simulation. Furthermore, the book shows how their work and guiding simulation game design principles continue to inspire ongoing and future research in the context of dealing with complexity and to support social and environmental transition through gaming simulation- Included are interviews with the two pioneers and contributions of other outstanding experts about their work.