Playing the serious game of DiadES : DiadESland

During the last weeks, our Serious Game developer Margaux Herschel from INRAE has been meeting with DiadES participants (University of Plymouth (UoP-MI), AZTI, University of Santiago de Compostela (USC-EHEC), and University of Évora (UE-MARE)) and training them in the use of the serious game of DiadES.

Since May 2021, she and a group of DiadES participants started to explore the possibilities of gameplay, and conceived it to be an entertaining and rewarding role-playing game : DiadESland. The goal is to encourage managers to explore alternative management strategies in the face of climate change by means of a joint tool. The serious game includes complex ecological and economic concepts that are at the core of DiadES activities, like diadromous species population growth dynamics shaped by the effects of climate change and human pressures, or assessment of ecosystem services associated to these species.

The game will be played in several sessions with stakeholders across Europe, in separate events at each country and also in a common event during the final conference. So it was the time that the Observers and the Game Masters learned all the tricks for the game to be played successfully.

The training was fun and the game is entertaining and very well thought. We just hope that the diadromous species managers will be open minded to use it.