Games for Impact: How Creative Crowd Uses Game Technology, GIS Data and Digital Twins to Create Real-World Change
Creative Crowd is a games-for-impact consultancy based in Skellefteå, Sweden at the old Brunnsteatern. We use game technology to build serious games, gamified platforms, interactive experiences, digital twins and simulators. Our work supports education, public engagement, behaviour change, planning and research for public organisations, EU-funded projects and private companies.
What is Games for Impact?
Games for Impact means using the tools, methods and design thinking of the games industry for goals beyond entertainment. A well-designed game makes complex information easy to explore. It encourages people to take part and gives them a safe space to test ideas, make decisions and see the consequences.
At Creative Crowd, we work from a Game for Good approach. We design serious games, gamified platforms and interactive experiences that help people learn, take part in discussions about their community and change behaviour. Our work spans public engagement, education, environmental action, and health and rehabilitation research.
Examples of where Games for Impact can be used include:
Education and training: interactive learning environments where people learn by doing rather than by reading.
Citizen dialogue and public engagement: games and visualisations that make planning processes easier to understand and easier to join.
Environmental and sustainability work: experiences that show how decisions affect forests, rivers, cities and climate.
Health and rehabilitation: game-based tools that combine motivation with movement data and research.
From GIS data to digital twins
A digital twin is a digital copy of a real place, object or system. When it is built with real-time game technology, a digital twin becomes something people can explore freely in 3D, rather than a static map or a drawing.
The foundation is often GIS data (geographic information system data). GIS data describes the real world in a structured way. It can include:
elevation and terrain models
aerial and satellite imagery
laser scanning (LiDAR) point clouds
buildings, roads and infrastructure
rivers, lakes, coastlines and vegetation
In Sweden, open geodata from authorities such as Lantmäteriet, combined with municipal and project-specific data, can serve as a starting point. Many organisations already hold this kind of information.
How a GIS-based digital twin is created
Collect and prepare the data. The relevant geographic datasets are selected, cleaned and converted so that a game engine can read them.
Build the 3D environment. Terrain, buildings, water and vegetation are generated from the data and refined visually so that the place is recognisable and easy to read.
Add interaction. Users can move around, change perspective, switch data layers on and off, and compare scenarios such as before and after a planned change.
Adapt it for the audience. The same digital twin can be adapted for a planner’s desktop, a public exhibition, a classroom, a web browser or a virtual reality headset.
In Creative Crowd’s words: “GIS data becomes the bridge between the physical city and its digital counterpart.”
Example: a digital twin of Skellefteå
Through our work with GIS-Data to Reality, Creative Crowd has recreated Skellefteå and the Skellefte River in a 3D environment using real geographic data. The digital twin shows how existing GIS data can support visualisation, planning, communication, education and public engagement in a format that anyone can explore.
Simulators: testing decisions before they happen
When a digital twin is combined with rules, data and interaction, it becomes a simulator. Simulators let people test “what if” questions in a safe environment, for example:
How would a new building, road or park change a neighbourhood?
What happens to a landscape when water levels rise or a forest is managed differently?
How can a team practise a process, an emergency or a work task before doing it in real life?
Game technology makes these simulators fast, visual and engaging. That makes them useful both for experts who need to analyse scenarios and for citizens, students and decision-makers who need to understand them.
Motion capture and human movement data
Creative Crowd also works with motion capture to study human movement and turn it into data-driven experiences. Through Studio Brunns, our virtual production and motion capture facility north of Stockholm, we can combine digital environments with real human movement for research, prototyping and interactive content.
Why use game technology for real-world challenges?
It makes complex information understandable. A 3D environment is often easier to grasp than reports, tables or technical maps.
It invites participation. Interactive experiences lower the threshold for people to engage, ask questions and share opinions.
It reuses existing data. GIS data and other datasets that organisations already have can gain new value.
It works across platforms. The same solution can run on screens, on the web, at events or in VR.
Working with Creative Crowd
Creative Crowd is based in Skellefteå in northern Sweden and is a member of Dataspelsbranschen, the Swedish games industry association. We work with public organisations, research partners and private companies, and we help organisations design and apply for EU-funded innovation projects, from idea to funding.
If you are looking for interactive and creative solutions, such as a serious game, a digital twin based on GIS data, a simulator or a gamified experience, contact Creative Crowd to discuss how game technology can support your goals.
