Mini-Games to Support Civic Participation

Abstract

Games have been put forward as a way of easing participatory processes ever since the sixties, having the ability to give form to cooperative environments and support actor interaction. However, developing a good game is time-consuming and thus costly. Considering that civic participation requires the involvement of multiple audiences, typically addressing a multitude of issues over longer periods of time, it is clear that such a process calls for a series of games, making it virtually impossible for one organization to cope with. As such, this paper proposes to no longer reasons in terms of complete games, but rather in terms of generic mini-games addressing particular challenges/ objectives of civic participation. These mini-games can then be combined into a ‘full’ game in order to align the actions of all actors involved.