Service Design Games as Innovation Tools, Knowledge Creators, and Simulation/Games

What is it that makes games and play so powerful that many practitioners at the front end of innovation turn to it in order to become better innovators? Consider the risks and pressure usually connected to recommending or suggesting the use of certain innovations. As play will not likely earn a person bonus points if it is proposed in a board meeting, we wondered why people believe in play and why it works. So we thought that developing a deeper understanding of the issue would be relevant both for practice and research. Welcome to the Service Design Games symposium issue of Simulation & Gaming. Service and organizational design games (SDGs) present fascinating conundrums to the study of gaming. First of all, no clear viewpoint or definition of SDGs currently exists, so they are defined more by the activities in which they are used than by any innate trait or structures (Eriksen et al., 2015). In general, SDGs tend to be more shallow in content than their educational counterparts, while still holding the same goals of knowledge innovation and construction (Hannula & Harviainen, 2016). They are highly effective in facilitating collaboration (Brandt & Messeter, 2004), because they allow participants to share past experiences and envision future ones (Vaajakallio & Mattelmäki, 2014). Practitioners and scholars from role-playing game communities might not acknowledge certain types of service design role-play (e.g., Boess, 2007) as actual role-playing, yet the results of those role-plays cannot be denied (Hannula & Harviainen, 2016). Furthermore, the very shallowness of the design is what enables these games to be tailored so they 662953 SAGXXX10.1177/1046878116662953Simulation & GamingEditorial editorial2016

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