Gaming simulations (games) for policy and decision making have been the neglected “sibling” of educational and training games. The latter have experienced a widespread usage by practitioners and researchers, while the former have had limited, yet slowly increasing, adoption by organisations. As a result, various issues developing and using these games remain unaddressed. This includes the design of games, their validation, the actual game sessions, and applying the resulting knowledge from games in organisations. In this paper, solutions for issues identified in these four areas of gaming simulations are proposed. Solutions vary from purely analytical to purely social, stressing the interdisciplinary approach required to tackle the issues associated with them. The result consists of several theoretical and practical contributions as well as philosophical considerations regarding games for policy and decision making.@en

Decision-making on large infrastructural projects is complex. The complexity arises from the interdependencies within and between technical and social systems. The dynamic environment in which the decision-making takes place adds to this complexity. In this dissertation, we use game concepts to understand complex decision-making processes, and to support these processes. Game concepts describe decision-making situations as a game in which decision makers make (strategic) choices that lead to outcomes. They are particularly useful for addressing the agency of actors, i.e., their responsibility, and the dynamics of the process. Different decision-making processes of the Dutch railway sector are described and interpreted by using game concepts. The game concepts explain a large part of the process and analyses reveal a classification of game concepts over time, decision levels, and interactions. Additionally, this thesis has shown that game concepts are valuable for decision makers themselves to gain insight in the actor complexity of the process and to formulate next steps. To model these decision-making situations, one of the game concepts, the Multi-Issue game, has been formalized.@en

Background. The abstraction of complex systems, which is required by default when modelling gaming simulations, is a convoluted and time-consuming process. For gaming simulations to be efficient and effective, the problem of the real system they imitate needs to be narrowed down and simplified as much as possible. Additionally, even after abstraction of the real system, multiple design decisions need to be made and these may differ depending on the gaming simulation. Aim. This article proposes a framework for formalizing, and consequently standardizing, expediting and simplifying, the modelling of gaming simulations. Method. The proposed framework applies game concepts pertaining to game theory in the abstraction of the real system and the game design decisions. Results. Application of the framework in three case studies reveals several advantages of incorporating game theory into game design, such as formally defining the game design elements and identifying the worst-case scenarios in the real-systems, to name but two. Conclusions. Given the framework’s advantages in general, and the game design recommendations it offers in particular, it is safe to conclude that, for the cases presented in this article, the framework make positive contributions towards the development of gaming simulations.

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Decision-making on changes to large infrastructural systems is complex. It involves many actors, the system shows unpredictable behaviour and the environment in which decision-making takes place is dynamic. In a unique development case of the Dutch railway sector two decision-making processes regarding the same issue are performed in two consecutive years. Although, from a technical perspective, the elements of the processes are similar, the decisions in each year are different. In this paper, we use game concepts to explain the different outcomes. Other frequently adopted decision-based models that focus on the technical perspective do not distinguish between both processes. Game concepts are able to reveal the hidden actor and context dynamics of the process and provide action perspective. To identify the game concepts present in the decision-making process, we first consider whether these concepts are mentioned in interviews with decision-makers in our case. Thereafter, we interpret the processes using the identified game concepts. The fact that, in the second year, more external issues are discussed and pressure increased created room for another decision.

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The design of a new timetable for a railway system is a complex process. Focusing only on the product and the exchange of information between design phases, does not cover the complexity. Strategic actor behaviour and contextual factors are underexposed by research on theory of designing civil infrastructures. Therefore, we investigate the redesign process of the timetable for the Dutch railways from two perspectives: 1) an engineering perspective; 2) an actor and context perspective. To indicate the successes and failures of the redesign process it is characterised using the PSI framework which includes these two perspectives. Several design phases are distinguished and at the transitions misalignments are identified. The misalignments are compared with empirical data to conclude on a set of improvements. Areas perceived as problematic are knowledge transfer between design phases, decomposition of one design phase into several products, and composition of multiple products into one final design.@en