New White Paper: Design Patterns as a Tool for Ecogame Design
New White Paper: Design Patterns as a Tool for Ecogame Design
We are delighted to share a new white paper from WP5 lead Dr Stefan Werning (Utrecht University), Design Pattern Research and its Applicability to Ecogame Design. The paper surveys existing research on game design patterns and assesses how this body of work can inform the STRATEGIES project's emerging Design Pattern Library for ecogame design.
What are design patterns, and why do they matter for ecogames?
The concept of design patterns, which originates in architecture and adapted for games by Bjork, Holopainen and Lundgren in 2003, offers designers reusable solution templates for recurring creative problems, alongside a shared vocabulary for discussing how those solutions relate to each other. For ecogame design specifically, the white paper argues that design patterns can serve four distinct functions: as practical problem-solving tools, as inspiration in collaborative design contexts, as a structured means of condensing complex ideas, and as a framework for communication across different stakeholders, including academics, industry partners, and educators.
What does the research cover?
The white paper reviews three main bodies of relevant pattern research.
The first addresses patterns for climate communication games. Drawing on work by the IGDA's Climate Special Interest Group, Werning identifies and discusses patterns including Abstraction, Intrinsic Integration, Forced Discomfort, and Conflicting Goals — each with specific applications to games about the energy transition and sustainable futures. Importantly, the paper is candid about limitations: Forced Discomfort, for instance, risks fostering apathy if players are given no sense of viable solutions.
The second section covers patterns for social interaction, with a particular focus on collaborative rather than competitive design. Patterns such as Complementarity, Limited Resources, Shared Goals, Concurrency, and Resupply are reviewed and reframed for ecogame contexts — for example, considering how "Resupply" mechanics might model mutual aid and collective resource management in energy transition scenarios. The paper also flags design risks, including the "alpha player" problem, where more experienced players can inadvertently dominate collaborative play.
The third section examines patterns for specific literacies, including data literacy, financial literacy, and, crucially, energy literacy, which is an area the paper identifies as a significant gap in existing research that STRATEGIES is well-placed to address.
Towards a framework for ecogame analysis
The concluding section moves beyond design patterns as a purely practical toolkit, proposing a more holistic framework for ecogame analysis. This includes drawing on sustainability-oriented design patterns from non-game contexts (such as Lockton et al.'s behaviour change toolkit), and outlining approaches to validating the impact of design patterns through structured playtesting and post-play assessment.
Central to this framework is the Green Mediography — the STRATEGIES project's emerging online platform, which embeds the Design Pattern Library within a broader taxonomy linking patterns to game analyses, climate communication research, and sustainability scholarship. The platform uses three interlocking taxonomies (genre, motif, and affective tags) to create a living "pattern language" that connects patterns to each other and to a corpus of over 200 game examples. Notably, the platform does not separate positive patterns from anti-patterns, reflecting the reality that the same design element can function productively or problematically depending on play context and player disposition.
Read the white paper
Design Pattern Research and its Applicability to Ecogame Design is publicly available as part of the STRATEGIES project's WP5 outputs: read the full white paper here. We welcome responses from game designers, educators, and researchers working at the intersection of games and sustainability.
