Opportunities and risks of city building simulation and strategy games in spatial and urban planning Environmental and Infrastructure Planning Master Thesis P.F.M. Fouraschen (s2219522) Colophon Title Playing with the future Subtitle Opportunities and risks of city building simulation and strategy games in spatial and urban planning Author Pascal Franciscus Maria Fouraschen S2219522
[email protected] Study MSc Environmental and Infrastructure Planning Programme Faculty of Spatial Sciences (FRW) University of Groningen, the Netherlands Supervisors dr. F.M.G. Van Kann dr. T. Busscher Version Final Place and date Rotterdam, August 25th 2016 Cover Vorobev, 2016 ii Abstract City building simulation and strategy games have become more and more popular the last decades. At the same time, serious gaming is gaining momentum in various fields of study. Temporary spatial and urban planning issues are becoming more integrated and complex, while the public participation, and a representative one, becomes harder to achieve. In light of these developments, this research sets out to explore how city building simulation and strategy games can be used in spatial and urban planning. This has been done using an extensive game analysis and a game experiment. The game analysis covers a multitude of city building and strategy games from the past decades to determine the changes in game characteristics and mechanics these games have undergo. Overall, games have become more complex, realistic, more co-operative oriented, with improved monitoring tools, game customisation options and mobile features. A game experiment was conducted to find out how the participants reacted to playing a city building simulation and strategy game in a serious way.