Learning Sustainable Development with a New Simulation Game

Abstract

This new simulation game, the authors’first, has been created to introduce discipline-related concepts to a wider audience. The authors set out to create a game that would reduce an abstract concept to its basic components and present it within a frame, with the intent to capitalize on the benefits of gaming and simulation. The result of this creative effort is a card game called LEARNING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (LSD). This game is intended to create awareness to and explore attitudes toward environmental conservation and urban development. The concept of sustainable development has been chosen as the focus of the game, not only because it is one of the basic precepts of the authors’milieu but also because it presents a challenge in that it prompts players to reevaluate and potentially change their attitudes and behavior concerning routine practices. LSD has gone through extensive testing, revisions, and changes. Through this experience, the authors have concluded that simulation games can be used by practitioners and researchers to promote awareness to a novel concept in a particular field. © 2000, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.