This paper explores how Dungeon Masters (DMs) design and facilitate scenarios in Dungeons Dragons (DnD) that scaffold the practice of emotional intelligence (EI) during play. This study used a qualitative, abductive methodology, drawing on interviews, co-design data and live gameplay recordings to examine how narrative and mechanics engaged players in emotional regulation, empathy and relationship management. DnD is positioned as an immersive environment for leadership learning, where emotionally intelligent behaviours are rehearsed and refined through narrative framing, role negotiation and in-character decision-making under uncertainty. Findings highlight a series of mechanics and design strategies such as soft failure, secret objectives and managed player-versus-player tension that support players in exploring emotional and interpersonal dynamics in character. These moments are deliberately structured to support reflection and interpersonal responsiveness; the construct of ’alibi’ enables psychological safety and experimentation, while ‘bleed’ facilitates personal insight and identity work. This analysis contributes a practice-oriented map of the levers DMs use to design for emotional engagement and identity work, as well as of how players respond in terms of leadership, identity and group dynamics.

Serious games (SGs) integrate pedagogical design with game development. Yet, current practices often rely on abstract frameworks that rarely provide production-ready artefacts, and static Game Design Documents (GDDs) that soon become outdated and clash with Agile workflows. As a result, teams adopt ad hoc processes and fragmented documentation, causing drift between design and implementation, increased rework, and limited traceability from learning objectives to gameplay. It also limits timely input from subject-matter experts (SMEs) and industry stakeholders, undermining instructional alignment and compliance assurance. This paper introduces HLDD-STRIDES, a two-layer framework addressing these challenges: a High-Level Design Document (HLDD) that captures core instructional intent and compliance anchors, and a STRIDES table that expresses instructional steps in a structured, runtime-aligned format. This combination enables SME authoring, rapid CSV re-import, and optional LMS integration (SCORM/xAPI). Deployed in six projects across mining, healthcare and creative sectors, HLDD-STRIDES illustrates how data-oriented documentation can link pedagogy to production while supporting Agile development in SG contexts.

Businesses, planners and policy makers must make decisions that influence a future about which they have incomplete knowledge. Whilst knowing the future may be illusive, the capacity to adapt as required, is desirable for both organisations and society. We examine what different perspectives can offer, considering how empirical-analytical (e.g., modelling, data), narrative-experiential (e.g., fiction, history, gaming), and socio-technological (e.g., AI, social media) approaches contribute to anticipating futures. From this overview we detect a fundamental role of narrative as a framing device, and we examine various aspects of its inescapable value no matter what the perspective. We assert that whilst narratives are important to the success of planning activities and to their subsequent uptake and utility, they are no guarantee of success, serving only to animate the body of experience. We identify that a good narrative starts an evidence-based process which is dynamic and evolves as others engage with it; little is achieved without engagement. Narratives can shift focus or intention, or become hijacked, and the evolving narrative becomes an emergent property of a complex system with no one person or group controlling the process. We argue that an understanding of the essential role of narrative is critical in considering futures, and in achieving desirable outcomes. To this end we identify narratives as complex dynamic systems that involve multiple actors and feedback loops. A better understanding of the drivers of such dynamics is needed as a precursor to developing techniques to limit the potential for narrative distortion or derailing.

Chatbots as recommendation systems have become promising for online retail, enhancing the customer experience by offering a virtual shopping assistant with product suggestions. Fashion brands increasingly adopt this technology to offer personalised shopping recommendations, reduce cart abandonment, returns and complaints. This study proposes an enhanced Recommendation System that combines a simple Graphical User Interface (GUI) with the DigAI chatbot, making the customer experience more interactive and presenting more relevant clothes to the customer. The design and evaluation of the chatbot interface followed a three-phase methodology: a systematic literature review, building DigAI, and a cross-cultural fashion consumer study to evaluate the chatbot's performance. In the study, fashion customers were to select an item from an e-commerce site both with and without the chatbot and then complete a survey questionnaire. The experiments took place in Brazil and England to identify possible cultural differences. Albeit these differences, the chatbot interface was found to provide a more satisfying user experience than the simple GUI. This effect was more pronounced among Brazilian individuals compared to those from the UK, suggesting that cultural or contextual factors may have influenced their perception of the interface improvements, which can eventually be exploited to guide fashion online retail strategies.

This one-day studio aims to catalyze discussions and experimentation around non-textual academic documentation methods. With the understanding that human knowledge transcends written words, we aim to explore innovative ways to present and disseminate research outputs in diverse forms and of varying materiality. By bringing together researchers, practitioners, and academics from different disciplines and backgrounds, we seek to challenge the status quo of textual output and envision a future where knowledge production embraces the multisensory nature of human data.

In an increasingly digital business environment, the development of critical leadership skills such as emotional intelligence and critical thinking is paramount for individual and organisational success. As organisations evolve, innovative and experiential development methods such as serious games become indispensable but these remain underutilised due to reservations around credibility and return on investment. This study employed the Delphi method to consult a panel of experts in leadership development and serious games design, exploring how serious games can foster the development and application of leadership skills. Three master themes emerged, outlining elements of successful serious games for leadership development: simulated interpersonal dynamics, reinforcement for behavioural adjustment and authenticity of learning experience. Sub-themes included motivation and reward, feedback provision, adaptive learning and personalisation, experience of consequences, competitive versus co-operative environments and simulation of complex decisions. Findings are discussed in relation to Flow theory, Social Constructionism and Identity Theory in order to advance the understanding and implementation of serious leadership games for modern contexts.

Recently, the advancement of generative AI has brought about the opportunity to adapt and personalize learning material to individual students with little effort. This paper explores the application of large language models, such as ChatGPT, to help educators adapt educational serious games at runtime. To incorporate adaptation into serious games in a systematic way, we employ the MAPE-K loop framework. A key focus is the inclusion of educators in the adaptation process, who ensure that AI-driven changes align with educational goals. We thus propose an architecture that integrates player/learner data, game logic, and AI-generated adaptations, monitored and approved by educators via a dedicated browser-based dashboard, in a human-in-the-loop fashion. We show how we integrated this architecture into Untitled Bee Game, an existing educational serious game for eco-sustainability.

This chapter provides a conversation in the form of an opinion piece about strategies commonly utilized in games that can be "transferred" to Serious Games (SGs) and games for serious contexts. The aim of this chapter is to provide different perspectives and examples that are currently utilized by entertainment games that could be utilized in SG development. SGs are often developed for particular situations, and with that, the development process might be attached to specific stakeholders, becoming, most of the time, a "one-off" product, which may limit the SG life cycle and game repurposing. This chapter brings with three complementary perspectives to address future challenges and opportunities regarding emerging aspects of player agency and SG modification and transferability across different contexts. First, we discuss emergent possibilities, bringing examples from digital entertainment transferability. Second, we take into consideration "modding" strategies to provide insights for SG modification and transferability, discussing the role of the "context" in games development. Third, we demonstrate the importance of AI emotion modelling to inform better game design. To conclude, we respond to these ideas and provide suggestions for SG research and practice.

This paper describes and summarises the design process of making a board game for young people from coastal communities in England to engage and discuss perspectives about their futures. The board game was created around imagining plausible futures and aimed at providing scenarios for players to make decisions about their futures considering social, economic and health inequalities. The paper showcases an exploratory approach of identifying game design elements based on co-design sessions with stakeholders (young people between the ages of 14–17) and experts, while using real-world scenarios and game design balancing techniques. The contributions of the paper are twofold: 1) it describes the process of making the board game via stakeholder participation, game design systems and game balancing; and 2) it provides a research-through-design method in which the design of the game reflects the intrinsic system in which young people live and suggests ways to overcome barriers established by these systems. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research such as the use of the game in participatory design sessions, mentoring classes and as an initial framework for serious games that can emerge from the discussions (e.g., teaching life skills, entrepreneurship competencies, etc.).