Participatory game prototyping – balancing domain content and playability in a serious game design for the energy transition

Game design mostly engages future players as users and testers, whereas in the field of serious game design, approaches involving players more substantially are slowly emerging. This paper documents the participatory prototyping process of Energy Safari, a serious game for the energy transition in the Province of Groningen, and reports on the differences of the contributions made to the game development by separate groups of stakeholders. Each group contributed the most to the game elements that are most relevant to their interests. Overall, this study points to the potential of participatory game prototyping as a method to develop serious games that are balanced both in terms of domain content and playability, are meaningful for future players, and well embedded in the local context