Video Games in Civic Engagement in Urban Planning, a Methodology for Effective and Informed Selection of Games for Specific Needs

Video games are recognized as significant tools and mediums to be used in civic participation in spatial planning and fostering local communities. As the phenomenon is widely recognized in papers presenting singular case studies and broader analyses in the field, selecting such serious games with certain characteristics remains unclear. The informed process of choosing games with particular properties regarding genesis, graphic style, genre, and complexity as the response for specified needs and process assumptions appears to be supportive in preventing unnecessary costs and data overproduction. Such avoidance is an important part of sustainable digital transformation. Therefore, there is a need for a more conscious process of selecting video games to be used in a participatory process. The following paper aims to propose a numerical base for a decisional instrument that could be useful for specifying the characteristics of games to be utilized in participation. They performed a multicriteria analysis of documented cases of implementing video games in civic engagement, allowing the creation of a set of numeric indicators that help determine the properties of games that will be most appropriate for given process assumptions. Such a tool can prevent overproducing data on the one hand and may cause dissemination of the presented way of handling the participation process on the other.