2003 Volume 13 Issue 2 Pages 149-156
This paper proposes a design of role-playing gaming which enables local citizens to direct their attentions to their local society and regional environments. In this gaming, virtual decision makers, who are strangers of the town, acts as proxies of their corresponding real players. Real players are citizens who know each other very well. There are three key points regarding the exchange of information in the game. First, citizens can only observe discussions by their proxies and cannot interrupt them. After the first discussion, citizens can clarify to their proxies about what they want to say, and then they observe second discussion. Second, none of the citizens know whose roles the other proxies represent. Third, we request each proxy to express his/her opinions by taking his/her corresponding citizen’s place during the discussion. Here, the opinions should be based on his/her own preferences and not his/her corresponding citizen’s views. Evaluation roughly consists of two aspects: whether citizens can be aware of their regional context, and whether citizens and proxies can grasp points at issue in regional environmental planning.
