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

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Majhi, Arka, Galeote, Daniel Fernández, Nummenmaa, Timo, Hamari, Juho, Petty, Aaron, Vauhkonen, Jari, Peltola, Heli
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Majhi, Arka
Galeote, Daniel Fernández
Nummenmaa, Timo
Hamari, Juho
Petty, Aaron
Vauhkonen, Jari
Peltola, Heli
author_facet Majhi, Arka
Galeote, Daniel Fernández
Nummenmaa, Timo
Hamari, Juho
Petty, Aaron
Vauhkonen, Jari
Peltola, Heli
contents 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.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_04904
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Demonstrating SIMA-Play: A Serious Game for Forest Management Decision-Making through Board Game and Digital Simulation
Majhi, Arka
Galeote, Daniel Fernández
Nummenmaa, Timo
Hamari, Juho
Petty, Aaron
Vauhkonen, Jari
Peltola, Heli
Human-Computer Interaction
Computers and Society
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.
title Demonstrating SIMA-Play: A Serious Game for Forest Management Decision-Making through Board Game and Digital Simulation
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.04904