Play!UC is an initiative that developed a series of serious games and following participatory processes to raise awareness and deal with the individual carbon footprint of young adults. The term ‘serious games’ can describe all kinds of physical or digital games that are developed and played not only for entertainment, but have a functional scope as well like education, training or exploration. Different games like a strategy board game that requires players to build an energy network for their region or a smartphone application to navigate vehicles across the urban spaces trying to keep CO2 emissions minimal are meant to raise awareness thorugh gamification and storytelling.

Each game addresses a specific social issue within the thematic area of urban carbon footprints.

The games are meant to be available for users in their home town or city to create a direct relation to daily behaviour and raise awareness on possibilities to take action as an individual  

By understanding complex urban problems and how individuals can contribute to their resolution, the games are planned to be combined or followed by participatory processes.

Recurring initiative (from 2014 to 2017)

The project aims to actively engage adults in serious games to trigger collaboration and behavioural change towards better decision-making in relation to their urban carbon footprint. Even though it mainly targets individuals, the collective games may also lead to group reflections and enable collaborative ability to action.

By prototyping and experimenting with serious games as an approach to support the understanding of complex urban problems, these games were improved throughout the project. The games are fundamentally different from one another depending on their scope and target group. They range from a mobile application to simulate traffic patterns to a board game that turns the players into leaders of urban development campaigns.

The individual games were developed by different institutions and initiatives, but all of them made the templates and instructions available to support replication 

Play!UC was initiated as a part of the JPI Urban Europe Pilot Call II involving three universities (Uiversity of Groningen, Hasselt University & University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria) together with the Green City Lab in Vienna and the Ars Electronica Center, a “museum of the future”, as main partners.

The project partners have mainly developed the games that were then tested directly with citizens taking their opinion and reaction into account to further refine and develop the games.

• Citizens, Young Adults - Consulted, informed. As active participants of the testing and execution of the games, citizens were directly involved and later on asked for feedback on how to further improve the games or engage them long-term in the topic on carbon footprints.
  
• Project Partners - Accountable. Project partners had few involvement apart from general updates on the progress of the development and the use of the funding/resources provided 

• Political: Engaged policymakers, open for new suggestions from citizens
• Economic: Funding to buy games and hold the gaming sessions 
  
• Social: Availability and motivation of citizens to play and move things forward

• Political: Regulatory frameworks and siloes that hinder change and make it difficult for citizens to make actual impact
• Economic: Missing funding for the implementation of planned changes and therefore loss of motivation
  
• Social: Lack of motivation or perceived benefits from the activity, conflicts of interest and different opinions on climate neutrality and potential solutions within the group

Self-organisation of citizens can be a powerful tool, but self-organised groups that do not have any connection to policy-making or political agendas can also focus too much on specific issues without considering the long-term or broader influence and consequences. A certain level of guidance by impartial experts can help reduce this risk and develop more holistic and effective solutions.

The games are all designed in a way that they can be played in various contexts and situations lining out their potential to make long-term change when the playfully obtained challenges and ideas are then further developed and discussed.

Main positive lessons/opportunities identified:

• Games can facilitate civic participation
• Complex problems can be broken down
• Enable citizens for self-organization
• Fostering communication in a diverse group

Main failures/barriers identified:

• Possible lack of representation of entire groups 
  
• Need for guidance and establishment of a dialogue with decision makers