
For this blogpost Marina Batinić from Culture Hub Croatia, one of the partners of the pilot (discover more here) will take the lead and share what was the process of engagement of the community of citizens that participated in Playful Futures.
After setting up the project timeline with the team, in October 2022 we met to agree on the communication strategy and engagement methods. Explaining the project, the game and getting people on board was crucial for the success of the pilot, but we were well aware it might be challenging.
The reasons for this are multiple. First of all, engaging people in online activities in post-covid times is not easy. The general feeling is the one of “digital fatigue” with people wanting more face-to-face interactions rather than gathering online. Communicating about the project and explaining the game was also not an easy task at times due to the fact that it is a pilot and we had to make it comprehensible to a wide audience by setting clear expectations while also making it attractive and exciting for people to join. However, after implementing all the game sessions we can say our goals were achieved and we managed to attract a good number of citizens who contributed either by playing, testing or simply reading about the game and the project.
Our target groups were people and communities interested in climate change in general and more specifically in the topic of the sea level rise. In addition, we wanted to target experts in the field and activists, gamers, but also students and the general public. These two groups were key to creating a community of citizen scientists that not only were interested in the game or the topic but had a personal drive to explore change and solutions about it. The aim was to involve in playing the game at least 50 participants from Croatia and at least 50 international participants. Therefore our engagement methods were twofold: on the one hand, we were mapping the physical events in Croatia we can participate in to promote the game and mapping the organisations and individuals we can reach out to. On the other hand, we did the same to reach international participants, but focusing more on the outreach on social media, international networks and searching for online events we can integrate.

The first decision we made was to create engaging visuals that will make people interested to know more. In order to do this, and to make the project more visible at the early stage, we launched the call for illustrators in Croatia and gave them the task to propose illustrations on the topic of the future of Mediterranean coastal cities and their inhabitants. The call was open until November 17th and we received 24 proposals. All of them can be found here: https://edgeryders.eu/t/playful-futures-illustrations-from-croatia/18010.
We collected votes from the team members and decided to reward three illustrations. These were used on social media and for general project communication which proved to be quite useful. The illustrations were printed as postcards and distributed as an invitation to sign up for the game.

Recognizing the fact that people are more eager to engage in physical events and that this can help them understand better the game itself (by talking directly to one of the team members), we organised events in Split on the topic of climate change, sustainability and play, in the creative hub Prostor which is managed by Culture Hub Croatia.
Evening of socially engaged games
December 16th 2022

The main aim of this informal event was to gather people who like games and spend a nice evening just playing together. We were playing three games with a social mission: “Last Chance”, a game by the association SMART which deals with the goals of sustainable development; “Fierce women” with simple rules, cards with artistic portraits which represent women who were significant for our society and
“Pandemic”, a cooperative board game in which players take on the roles of virologists who have to balance the increasingly frequent pandemics and the search for a new cure. The crisis situation can only be solved with their cooperation. In a group of around 10 people and a relaxed atmosphere, we’ve got to know games that are not only fun but also encourage us to think about social issues. We used the opportunity to present Playful Futures and “A Town by the Sea” by also encouraging people to sign up for the prologue sessions.
Meet up with Crystal Clean Supply
January 12th 2023

Crystal Clean Supply is an environmental project led by designer Dora Bilandžić and cultural manager Andrea Šarić from Zagreb. Their project is focused on the idea of sustainability and community empowerment with a call to action. The topics that the Crystal Clean project deals with are: food production, waste management, consumer culture, and our collective relationship to the environment and living beings in it. At the beginning of this informal meet-up, we explained why the topic of climate change is relevant for us as an organisation and gave a short presentation of the Playful Futures project, distributed postcards and invited people to sign up for the prologue session. The event gathered around 20 participants.
Museum of Discarded Objects
January 14th 2023

The Museum of Discarded Objects is the first Croatian sustainable museum that, through zero waste concept and an interactive and interdisciplinary exhibition-performance program, connects culture and art with environmental issues, social action and digital technologies. Through education on sustainable development, the concept of the Museum encourages the reuse of objects in order to reduce waste. During this one day event, the general public was invited to bring an object that lost value for them. After collecting the objects and their stories, they were exhibited followed by a performance. The visitors were then able to take any object they liked from this temporary museum. The event attracted around 40 people who were either bringing the objects, adopting them or just visited. During the event we were sharing the postcards encouraging people to sign up for the prologue sessions of our game.
Playful Futures: illustrations exhibition
January 23rd – February 1st 2023
Since the illustrations received on the open call were really interesting, we wanted to further promote those that received votes from the project team so we printed them and made an exhibition in the creative hub Prostor in Split. It was possible to see the exhibition from both inside and outside as it was placed in the large windows of the space. We estimate that a high number of people saw the illustrations as on a daily basis many people pass by the street. Roughly 30 people came to the space with the intention to visit the exhibition.

Playful Futures team members also participated in other third-party online and offline events. Lucija Klarić, CHC team member, attended game events in Zagreb organised by the non-profit organisation Talus and the conference “Fantastikon” organised on 19th of March in Split, on the topic of sci-fi games where she presented the project and the game. Matteo Uguzzoni led multiple playtests (8) with players in the US and this led to some of them becoming more and more engaged and interested in the final pilot
After reaching the end of the playtest session we discovered that the game was working with smaller numbers than expected, while in the proposal we thought that we were able to host sessions with up to 6 players, we realised that the game worked better with smaller numbers (3 or 4 players).
GOALS SET AT THE BEGINNING:
Prologue sessions
- 2 between early December and beginning of February
- expected number of Croatian participants: 30
- expected number of international participants: 30
Offline events in Croatia
- 3 events between early December and January
- expected number of participants: 40
Game sessions
- 10 sessions starting from 16th of January until the end of February
- expected number of Croatian participants: 15 (1.5 per session)
- expected number of international participants: 15 (1.5 per session)
GOALS ACHIEVED
Prologue sessions
- 4 between January and February: 61 registrations
- number of Croatian participants: 23 participants (40%)
- number of international participants: 38 participants (60%)
Offline events in Croatia
- 4 events between early December and January
- number of participants: 70 (+approx. 30 visitors of the exhibition)
Game sessions
- 7 sessions starting from 17th of January until beginning of March
- number of Croatian participants: 8
- number of international participants: 10
CONCLUSION
During the process of communication and dissemination of Playful Futures and the game “A Town by the Sea” it was crucial to create a strategy from the start, but also be flexible enough to adapt along the way. The biggest challenge for us as a team was to make sure people show up online after registering. The decision to organise prologue sessions prior to the actual game (and make them obligatory), was made in order to explain the world of Witness in which the game takes place, to participate in a worldbuilding exercise and already have the idea of where the actual game will take place and what tools will be used during the play session. This was very useful, however we understood it was hard to make people join two times online. As the sessions were recorded, we were then sharing the footage with the people who wanted to play. We managed to implement the sessions as planned, at times with a minimum number of participants, but for the last couple of sessions we also tested the approach of involving teams rather than just individual players. People were encouraged to sign up as a group. This iteration worked well and it was way more resource intensive compared to finding participants from a generalistic pool. The fact that people knew each other a little was good also for the game aspect of it, it was easier to get into their role and interact with each other.
For future iterations of the project we will definitely consider this approach as the one to start with.
The numbers were lower than we expected, we hit the mark with the Prologues sessions, but the attendance to the game was lower than expected (but this was good for the game sessions since it was possible to finish in time and players enjoyed a more intimate space of interaction).
To conclude, various approaches were tested during the project and what worked best was the word of mouth and reaching out to specific organisations and individuals we knew would be great participants. Considering this is a pilot, we can say with confidence that we achieved our goals and we are convinced that the outcomes will be very interesting and valuable.
Next steps include: adapt the game to a physical setting and try playing with groups face-to-face in different communities (we will test this approach at the MLE meeting in Marseille at the end of May) and follow up with all the participants (both that attended the prologues and the play sessions) to share the results of the project after the digital ethnographic work.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Matteo Uguzzoni (May 2, 2023). Communicating Playful Futures – Phase 2. Playful Futures. Retrieved March 14, 2026 from https://playfutures.hypotheses.org/175
