Angelica Ericsson Making the Switch: creating a serious game to study individuals in a transformation Supervisors: Therese Lindahl, Elizabeth Drury O’Neill Expert reviewer: María Mancilla García Examiner: Tim Daw Serious games have been used for some time, and are becoming an increasingly popular research method within sustainability science. While most studies use serious games to teach or raise awareness about a topic, the games’ interactive, immersive, problem-solving, and creative features make them suitable for more complex studies, especially when combined with other research methods. This study advocates for a novel methodological approach, using a serious game in combination with group discussions and an in-game survey to explore how players think and act during a transformation. The game was set up as an experiment with two near-identical game versions - one climate-related and one not - to test if the transformation setting influenced the player’s behaviour. The results showed that the game was played in a similar way in both versions, and the group discussions revealed how the players’ ideas about change and agency guided their strategies in the game. These results not only suggest that serious games have a broader potential than their current use, but also that people’s behaviour in a transformation is connected to their perception of change and what they believe their own role in a transition can be.

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