ArcticHubs 🎮 digital ‘serious game’ explores new horizons in Iceland

The emergence and widespread interest in the ArcticHubs serious game, provided one of the project’s most surprising outputs. Touch TD found itself moving up a steep learning curve, as we were immersed in a whole new world that is exploring the potential of serious games as an engagement or participatory tool connecting to different corners of research. Although the ArcticHubs project is now making its last moves within the project cycle, there is encouragement all around to sustain and build upon the achievements made over the past couple of years.

Workshoping a new serious game backdrop with Icelandic hub partners

Taking advantage of the existing interest generated around the annual Arctic Circle Assembly event in Reykjavik, Touch TD and it’s Icelandic ArcticHubs partners and friends continued the journey by exploring how the pilot serious game might be adapted and utilised in remote rural areas in Iceland. Perfectly hosted at the University of Iceland we started off by outlining the process through which the ArcticHubs game has been developed. Then the workshop brought together additional experiences around serious games as applied in the fields of innovation in education, and the communication of polar research to communities from outside of the Arctic region. Having shared about our different approaches to developing and utilising serious games, we then turned the gaze on to the remote Westfjords region that was the centre for hub research by ArcticHubs research teams in Iceland. Joined online by the Westfjords regional development agency, the discussions explored which forms of issue might be approached through a serious game approach and how a collaborative process might be shaped.

Hot on the tail of the workshop, ArcticHubs serious game then made the short transition across Reykjavik to the stunning setting for the annual Arctic Circle Assembly at Harpa convention centre. As one of the EU’s wide reaching polar themed Horizon research projects, we found an ideal location sitting on the EU Polar Cluster stand which showcased the variety of practical and far reaching research, including a screen where our ‘bridging worlds‘ pilot game was demonstrated. Throughout its intensive four years of activities, ArcticHubs has taken advantage of the closer exchanges and interplay of research that is being further facilitated by the polar cluster – for a closer look at that nexus visit https://polarcatalyst.eu/.

Thanks to the tremendous support of the European Polar Board and British Antarctic Survey we were provided with a perfect platform to bring the ArcticHubs serious game in to the gaze of an enthusiastic audience at Arctic Circle Assembly. Attendees covered not only a wide range of sectors and disciplines, but furthermore covered interests from business, governance and academia. Consequently the game attracted a hugely diverse suite of thoughts and queries, along with an interesting range of contacts to follow up and share further discussions with. As experienced throughout the ArcticHubs project, we were able to draw upon extensive local knowledge and input, on this occassion through our Icelandic hub researchers Anna Guðrún Edvardsdóttir (Holar University) and Rannveig Ólafsdóttir (University of Iceland). Rannveig and Anna Guðrún were able to immediately re-connect with the ideas that had just emerged from the serious game workshop, and share initial thoughts on how serious games might be further embedded within Icelandic research.

An ongoing and expanding framework for serious games development

One of the most exciting features of ArcticHubs digital serious game has been its ability to incorporate a variety of different approaches to co-produce not only the associated data or information set in to the game, but also to bring co-created ways to evolve the game design and strategy itself. Now with sharings and exchanges of experience across other research settings, we are looking forward to seeing how the ‘bridging worlds’ approach to serious games may migrate into alternative settings and cover new research or developmental issues. One significant challenge in the research project arena is how creative initiatives such as serious games, often find themselves stuck within project cycles and less able to upgrade or adapt. This point was discussed at various points throughout Arcitc Circle Assembly. In particular Touch TD are eager to consider what form of ongoing contact or collaborations with professional games production businesses might prove mutually beneficial?

Next stop on this pathway will be in Japan, where our blossoming partnership with Japanese institutions JAMSTEC and NIPR will take centre stage when hosting a serious games workshop involving UK and Japanese expertise. Keep a close eye on Touch TD’s website and social media channels to hear more about that chapter as it emerges.

#seriousgame #Arctic #EU_PolarCluster #PolarResearch