Game complexity and stylization in rural resource contexts – pastoral, human-wildlife conflict, and ecosystem service examples

A critical frontier in the use of games for both experiential learning and research is the tension across task complexity, the attention of the participant, and the degree of stylization necessary to make complex issues tractable within the short duration of an intervention. I present several different game designs varying in task complexity and in platform (NetLogo and Google Sheets), and which have been applied in varying rural resource decision contexts (pastoralism, human-wildlife conflict, ecosystem services) and with different goals – to measure and parameterize behavior, to identify policy priorities, as well as to influence beliefs and preferences. In this presentation I highlight the things that have worked well and those that haven’t, with the goal of better delineating the role of games as learning, policy, and modeling tools.