Playing at Planning: Game Design Patterns from Disaster Response Practice
Open accessAbstract
We draw on years of ethnographic investigation into the disaster response practices of fire emergency response, urban search and rescue, and incident command to inform the design of games. Our objective is to support training disaster responders, yet our findings apply to general game design. We identify critical components of disaster response practice, from which we develop game design patterns: emergent objectives, developing intelligence, and collaborative planning. We expect that, in implementing these patterns, designers can engage players in disaster-response-style planning activities. To support the design patterns, we survey exemplar games, through case studies. The paper contributes a set of game design patterns that support designers in building games that engage players in planning activities. \
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Information seeking and sensemaking are essential to SAR; responders use them to collect, filter, and interpret information, build a mental model of the overall information picture, and collaboratively create plans.
“Information seeking and sensemaking are essential parts of SAR [13], through which responders collect, filter, and interpret information to develop a mental model of an overall information picture and collaboratively develop plans.”
From Mapping in the Wild: Toward Designing to Train Search & Rescue Planning (2018) · cites this paper as [13]
In SAR cooperative work, planning and spatiotemporal skills are critical for success.
“In this complex cooperative work, planning and spatiotemporal skills are crucial to success [12,13], thus, responders constantly train to retain and enhance their knowledge and competence.”
From Mapping in the Wild: Toward Designing to Train Search & Rescue Planning (2018) · cites this paper as [13]
Planning is a primary component of SAR practice, performed by individuals or teams to make decisions and coordinate effort.
“Our analysis shows that a primary component of SAR practice is planning, which is undertaken by individuals or teams to make decisions and synchronize effort [13].”
From Mapping in the Wild: Toward Designing to Train Search & Rescue Planning (2018) · cites this paper as [13]
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Self-citationMapping in the Wild: Toward Designing to Train Search & Rescue Planning
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Toups Dugas, P. O., Hamilton, W. A., & Alharthi, S. A.
- Affiliations
- New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, USA
- Texas A&M University (US)
- New Mexico State University (US)
- ORCID
- Alharthi, Sultan A.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2016-10-15
- Pages
- 362-375
- OpenAlex
- W2530423415
- Cited by
- 26
- References
- 64
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 2 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 9.43
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (IIS-0803854, IIS-0742947)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Games and Gamification
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Games and Media
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Artificial Intelligence in Games
- Keywords
- game design patterns, disaster response training, planning, game-based training, fire emergency response, urban search and rescue, incident command, intelligence gathering, collaborative planning, serious games
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