Marketplace-driven, game-changing IT games to address complex, costly community problems

Abstract

This chapter illustrates how digital marketplaces may be allied to gamified IT applications systems to support solutions for complex, costly community challenges in a sustainable manner. A generic modular architectural design for these marketplacebased games is proposed and instantiated to public health and water management problem scenarios so that the resulting games support expected solutions. Preliminary validation studies of the games' usefulness as a solution-support and business-promotion tool have been carried out for the cases of a game to combat disease-carrying mosquitoes and of a water conservation game. These games have then been applied to real-case scenarios pilot tests. The chapter reports on validation results and the contribution the embedded marketplaces may bring to these games and their sustainability.