Demonstrating SIMA-Play: A Serious Game for Forest Management Decision-Making through Board Game and Digital Simulation

TL;DR

SIMA-Play is a serious game that uses visualization and simulation to teach complex forest management trade-offs, aiming to improve understanding and decision-making skills.

Contribution

The paper introduces SIMA-Play, a novel board game and digital simulation that enhances forest management education through interactive gameplay and visualization.

Findings

Players better understand trade-offs in forestry practices.

Visualization feedback improves decision-making comprehension.

The game supports systems thinking in forest management.

Abstract

Board games have shown promise as educational tools, but their use in engaging learners with the complex, long-term trade-offs of forest management remains strikingly underdeveloped. Addressing this gap, we investigate how forest growth simulation data can inform decision-making through information visualization and gameplay mechanics. We designed a serious game, SIMA-Play, that enables players to make informed forest management decisions under dynamic environmental and market conditions, simulating forest growth over time and comparing player performance across economic and sustainability outcomes. By using visualization to give players feedback on their choices, at the end of the game, it supports systems thinking and makes the trade-offs in forestry practices easier to understand and discuss. The study concludes with a research roadmap that outlines future experiments, longitudinal studies, and digital versions of SIMA-Play to assess its long-term effects on learning and engagement.