Communicating Maritime Spatial Planning: The MSP Challenge Approach

The MSP Challenge paper presents an overview of a game-based communication and learning tool developed to support Marine and Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP). Its central argument is that serious games, combining role-play, board-based play, and digital simulation, can build mutual understanding among planners and stakeholders while making complex governance and planning dynamics accessible. The authors trace the tool's development from its origins in 2011, when a role-playing game was created for a HELCOM/VASAB/OSPAR/ICES workshop involving around 100 professionals, through the 2015 integration into three EU-funded projects, to the creation of a board game in 2015 and an interactive simulation platform that links geodata from sources such as ICES, HELCOM, IMO and EMODnet with ecological and shipping models.

The reported uptake is substantial. The board game, played on a 2.8 by 1.6 metre board by between 12 and 30 players, was used with roughly 40 stakeholders at an early EU meeting and has since generated variants for planning authorities and universities. The authors state that more than 3,000 people have participated in MSP gaming sessions across conferences, workshops and training programmes, and that the simulation platform has supported stakeholder sessions in the Baltic, North Sea and Clyde regions. Feedback from participants is described as overwhelmingly positive, with particular appreciation for a "safe place" to explore the roles, interests and political dimensions of MSP.

The paper is primarily reflective rather than empirical; it draws on the authors' experience and participant feedback rather than a formal comparative study. The authors acknowledge critical questions about who participates, the risk of misinterpreting the game, and whether simulations are seen as realistic enough to change behaviour. They conclude that the approach is most valuable when treated as a supporting mechanism with clearly defined learning objectives, rather than as a method for implementing MSP itself.