Gamification for Sustainable Management Education: Prosper Management Edition's Role in South Africa's Climate Policy Engagement

"Prosper Management Edition" is a gamified educational tool developed under the GREAT project at North-West University in South Africa, designed to strengthen sustainability literacy and strategic thinking among university students and young professionals. The paper positions the game as a response to the escalating climate crisis, aiming to connect future corporate leaders, citizens, and policy stakeholders around the integration of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into business and policy decision-making. Its central argument is that active, game-based learning can deepen engagement with complex sustainability issues more effectively than traditional instruction.

The theoretical grounding draws on constructivism, cognitive engagement theory, and Self-Determination Theory, which emphasizes autonomy, competence, and relatedness as drivers of intrinsic motivation. Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow is also invoked to explain how progressive challenges can keep players appropriately engaged. The game's mechanics center on problem cards representing SDG-linked global issues, which players match with solution cards through collaborative discussion and justification. A narrative layer and gradually increasing complexity are intended to mirror the difficulty of real-world sustainability challenges, while inclusive visual design aims to make the game accessible across cultural backgrounds and educational settings.

The paper is primarily a design and proposal document rather than a report of empirical results. Its planned evaluation involves pilot testing with educational institutions and businesses in South Africa, using pre- and post-game surveys, focus groups, and gameplay analytics to measure knowledge gains, attitudinal change, and learning patterns. The authors anticipate improved strategic thinking, greater awareness of sustainable management, and more effective communication of complex policy, but these outcomes remain expectations rather than documented findings. The work therefore contributes a theoretically framed design and an evaluation agenda to the broader literature on gamification for climate and sustainability education.