Games and Citizen Dialogue: Involving People in Sustainable Change
Games and digital twins can help citizens take part in decisions about how their communities change. Creative Crowd, a games-for-impact consultancy in Skellefteå, Sweden, works with interactive tools that make complex challenges easier to understand and discuss. Creative Crowd CEO Johan Linder shared this approach in a panel hosted by Viable Cities on Skellefteå's ongoing transition.
Why participation matters in sustainable transitions
Skellefteå is going through a major societal transformation. Large changes like this affect housing, transport, land use and everyday life. Creative Crowd's view is that meaningful transformation happens when people are not only informed about change but are actively involved in shaping it.
How games support dialogue
Traditional consultations often rely on documents, maps and presentations. Games and interactive experiences offer another way in. They let people:
Explore a challenge at their own pace
Test different choices and see the consequences
Compare alternatives side by side
Discuss outcomes with others on a shared basis
Digital twins as a meeting place
A digital twin is an interactive 3D copy of a real place. Used in dialogue, it helps citizens, organisations and decision-makers picture the same situation and compare alternatives together. Creative Crowd builds digital twins with real-time game technology and GIS data, for example in its GIS-Data to Reality project.
The Viable Cities panel
The discussion hosted by Viable Cities brought together Johan Linder, CEO of Creative Crowd, Karin Degerfeldt from Skellefteå Municipality and Viktoria Wistemar from Hej Främling. The panel focused on engagement and participation as a support for sustainable societal transformation.
