Igor Mayer

Igor Mayer
Breda University of Applied Sciences · Academy for AI Games and Digital Media

prof. dr.

About

167
Publications
141,949
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
4,077
Citations
Introduction
Igor Mayer (1965) is a professor (applied university) Serious Games, Innovation & Society, at Breda University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands. He is also an (endowed) professor of Playful Organizations and Learning Systems, Department Organizations Studies, Tilburg University. He is an annual visiting professor at Dalian University of Technology, China. Previously (''98-'15) he was an assoc. professor at Delft University of Technology.
Additional affiliations
January 2021 - present
Tilburg University
Position
  • Professor
Description
  • Endowed professor Playful Organizations and Learning Systems
August 1998 - December 2014
Delft University of Technology
Position
  • Professor (Associate)
August 1998 - January 2015
Delft University of Technology
Position
  • Professor (Associate)

Publications

Publications (167)
Article
Full-text available
Citation: Vasilijevic, A.; Brönner, U; Dunn, M.; García-Valle, G.; Fabrini, J.; Stevenson-Jones, R.; Bye, B.L.; Mayer, I.; Berre, A.; Ludvigsen, M.; et al. A Digital Twin of the Trondheim Fjord for Environmental Monitoring-A Pilot Case.
Article
Following social constructivism, the Metaverse can be seen as a “boundary object,” allowing “interpretative flexibility” across communities while maintaining a “common identity” to facilitate interactions and consensus. Understanding the social construction of the Metaverse requires acknowledging diverse perspectives that shape the discourse surrou...
Chapter
Full-text available
Within the simulation game research community, UX/UI design research publications often concern the effectiveness of the result, i.e., the actual game experience and interface design outcome, rather than the thinking and decisions leading up to it. This paper fills this gap in the literature by discussing the UX/UI redesign thinking and decision-ma...
Chapter
Full-text available
According to social constructivist theories on innovation, innovative concepts such as the Metaverse can serve as a 'boundary object' that allows for 'interpretative flexibility' across different communities while retaining enough 'common identity' to facilitate the interactions within and between these communities. To fully understand the innovati...
Book
Full-text available
Lecture, delivered at the public acceptance of the position of (endowed) professor of Playful Organizations and Learning Systems in the Department of Organization Studies at Tilburg University on June 17, 2022, by Igor Mayer.
Chapter
The MSP Challenge Simulation Platform helps planners and stakeholders understand and manage the complexity of Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP). In the interactive simulation different data layers covering an entire sea region can be viewed to make an assessment of the current status. Planners can create scenarios for future uses of the marine space,...
Chapter
Full-text available
Tourism is an important economic sector that has a significant impact on sustainability indicators, such as GHG emissions and cohesion. Local policy makers are increasingly challenged to manage the urban tourism system at large. As part of a EU funded project, the authors have conceptualized sustainable urban tourism as the ‘management of competing...
Book
The first section, titled “Reflections on Play, Games And Placemaking”, develops a theoretical investigation on the topics of play, games and placemaking in the evolutionary scenario shaped by the digital revolution. Key notions and critical aspects are introduced, delineating the conceptual framework that upholds research activities, lessons learn...
Article
Full-text available
This paper examines how a serious game approach could support a participatory planning process by bringing stakeholders together to discuss interventions that assist the development of sustainable urban tourism. A serious policy game was designed and played in six European cities by a total of 73 participants, reflecting a diverse array of tourism...
Article
Full-text available
The Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) Challenge simulation platform helps planners and stakeholders understand and manage the complexity of MSP. In the interactive simulation, different data layers covering an entire sea region can be viewed to make an assessment of the current status. Users can create scenarios for future uses of the marine space ov...
Article
Full-text available
Researchers explain the technological challenges and solutions underlying the development of the MSP Challenge simulation platform, a multiuser game-based simulation platform for integrated maritime spatial planning. Game changer for MSP Who should read this paper? This paper is relevant to those working in and researching marine or maritime (spati...
Article
Full-text available
Background. An increasing number of studies support a mediating influence of personality on video-game preferences and player experiences, and in particular, traits associated with playfulness, such as extraversion. Educational institutions, however, tend to reward serious personality traits, such as conscientiousness. Aim.To discern how students...
Book
Full-text available
The sustainable governance of water resources relies on processes of multi-stakeholder collaborations and interactions that facilitate knowledge co-creation and social learning. Governance systems are often fragmented, forming a barrier to adequately address the myriad of challenges affecting water resources, including climate change, increased urb...
Article
Full-text available
Tourism growth, particularly in cities, is coming under increased scrutiny. However, even often visited cities appear to find it difficult to agree upon a strategy to limit tourism growth. The current paper investigates this issue by looking at the extent to which different stakeholders’ perspectives on tourism development align. Q-sort methodology...
Article
Full-text available
In this editorial, the authors (and guest editors) introduce the Special Issue titled Understanding Game-based Approaches for Improving Sustainable Water Governance: The Potential of Serious Games to Solve Water Problems. The authors take another look at the twelve contributions, starting from the subtitle question: what is the potential? The autho...
Chapter
Full-text available
Business games are used for organizational performance interventions as well as for educational purposes. To what extent can games be designed for intervention and used for educational purposes (and vice versa)? The authors study the learning efficacy of a game originally designed to support the implementation of the growth strategy for a client or...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The authors present the design of the shipping simulation SEL and its integration in the MSP Challenge Simulation Platform. This platform is designed to give policymakers and planners insight into the complexity of Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) and can be used for interactive planning support. It uses advanced game technology to link real geo-and...
Article
Full-text available
This paper introduces the Smart City Hospitality Framework, which could serve as the foundation for a destination-design-driven approach to urban tourism governance and dealing with overtourism issues. This conceptual framework is purposely designed to stimulate collaborative (informed) reflections on overtourism and urban tourism development that...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The MSP Challenge Simulation Platform helps planners and stake-holders understand and manage the complexity of Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP). In the interactive simulation different data layers covering an entire sea region can be viewed to make an assessment of the current status. Planners can create scenarios for future uses of the marine space...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Tourism is an important economic sector that has a significant impact on sustainability indicators, such as GHG emissions and cohesion. Local policy makers are increasingly challenged to manage the urban tourism system at large. As part of a EU funded project, the authors have conceptualized sustainable urban tourism as the 'management of competing...
Article
Full-text available
The MSP Challenge uses game technology and role-play to support communication and learning for Marine/Maritime Spatial Planning. Since 2011, a role-playing game, a board game and a digital interactive simulation platform have been developed. The MSP Challenge editions have been used in workshops, conferences, education, as well as for real life sta...
Article
Full-text available
The inherent complexity of planning at sea, called Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP), requires a planning approach where science (data, evidence) and stakeholders (their engagement, and involvement) are integrated throughout the planning process. An increasing number of innovative Planning Support Systems (PSS) in terrestrial planning incorporate sci...
Chapter
This paper presents the design of the offshore energy simulation CEL as a flow network, and its integration in the MSP Challenge 2050 simulation game platform. This platform is designed to aid learning about the key characteristics and complexity of marine or maritime spatial planning (MSP). The addition of CEL to this platform greatly aids MSP aut...
Article
Full-text available
This article presents a review of the current body of academic literature concerning gamification of production and logistics to understand the status quo and provide suggestions for future research. The findings indicate that the execution and control of production and logistic processes has been addressed most often in the current body of literat...
Article
Full-text available
Modern day challenges of water resource management involve difficult decision-making in the face of increasing complexity and uncertainty. However, even if all decision-makers possessed perfect knowledge, water management decisions ultimately involve competing values, which will only get more prominent with increasing scarcity and competition over...
Article
Full-text available
The interaction of stakeholders is regarded key in modern environmental and spatial planning. Marine/maritime spatial planning (MSP) is an emerging marine policy domain, which is of great interest worldwide. MSP practices are characterized by diverse approaches and a lack of transnational cooperation. Actors with various backgrounds have to identif...
Chapter
Policy analysis is a multifaceted field in which a variety of different activities and ambitions have found a place. Some policy analysts conduct quantitative or qualitative research, while others reconstruct and analyze political discourse or set up citizen I. Some policy analysts are independent researchers, some are process facilitators, while o...
Article
Full-text available
The 2014 EU Directive on Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) lays down obligations for the EU Member States to establish a maritime planning process, resulting in a maritime spatial plan by 2020. Consultation should be carried out with local, national and transnational stakeholders. Stakeholder engagement in MSP is complex because of the great number a...
Chapter
Full-text available
The Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) Challenge game: Short Sea Shipping (SSS) Edition is a table-top strategy board game, designed for policy-makers and stakeholders involved in MSP, short-sea shipping and the Blue Economy. It is a ‘serious game’, allowing the development of a better understanding of the issues involved in MSP through creative and i...
Article
Full-text available
Background. Despite the increasing pervasiveness of digital entertainment and serious games in organisational life, there is little evidence for the validity of game-based team training and assessment. Aim. The authors used the game, TEAMUP for a series of team training and assessment sessions, while at the same time researching the internal validi...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
We review the current body of academic literature concerning gamification of production and logistics. The findings indicate that production execution and control has been addressed most often in the current body of literature, which consists mostly of design research. Objectives and goals, points, achievements, multimedial feedback, metaphorical/f...
Article
Full-text available
How do policy analysts perceive the various roles that Models, Simulations and Games (MSG) have, or can have in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM)? Fifty-five policy analysts in water management in The Netherlands and China were interviewed, following the procedure of the Q-method. Comparative analysis of the combined quantitative and qua...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The authors investigate the potential of Mixed Reality (MR) games for team building and assessment. The AMELIO game was designed for a highly immersive MR lab. The game is a multi-player team challenge based on the concept of an escape room, staged in a space colony emergency situation. An explorative empirical pre-post measurement study was carrie...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
One of the key challenges in the rapid technological advance of Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR) concerns the design of collaborative experiences. VR systems do not readily support team collaboration because they tend to focus on individual experiences and do not easily facilitate naturalistic collaboration. MR environments provide solut...
Book
Full-text available
Extended version of the Inaugural Lecture delivered by Igor Mayer on the occasion of his appointment as Lector/Professor of Applied Games, Innovation and Society at NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands, 1st June 2016.
Article
Full-text available
The meaningful participation of stakeholders in decision-making is now widely recognized as a crucial element of effective water resource management, particularly with regards to adapting to climate and environmental change. Social learning is increasingly being cited as an important component of engagement if meaningful participation is to be achi...
Chapter
Full-text available
The authors explore how framing theory and the method of frame-reflective discourse analysis provide foundations for the emerging discipline of serious games research. Starting with Wittgenstein’s ‘language game’ and Berger and Luckmann’s social-constructivist view on science, the authors demonstrate why a definitional or taxonomic approach to seri...
Article
Full-text available
The authors explore how framing theory and the method of frame-reflective discourse analysis provide foundations for the emerging discipline of serious games (SGs) research. Starting with Wittgenstein's language game and Berger and Luckmann's social constructivist view on science, the authors demonstrate why a definitional or taxonomic approach to...
Article
Full-text available
The authors present the design and results of a comparative study into multidisciplinary on-scene command teams at work in virtual emergency training exercises. The main question of the study is: How do on-scene command teams coordinate multidisciplinary objectives and tasks, and how does the way they do this determine their performance? The study...
Technical Report
Full-text available
The report has been commissioned by the Nordic Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) network under the auspices of the Nordic Marine Group (HAV). It presents a step in an ongoing process of Nordic capacity development and collaboration on sustainable management of the marine environment. The report summarises the results of a workshop conducted in 2013 on...
Article
Full-text available
The paper discusses adoption of Serious Games (SGs) for supporting development of an entrepreneurial mindset in university students of technical and scientific universities. The paper relies on the authors experience in the eSG project, which aims at introducing students, mainly through practice, to basic concepts of entrepreneurship and company ma...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The authors present and discuss the conceptual and technical design of the game Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) Challenge 2050, developed with and for the Netherlands' ministry of Infrastructure and Environment. The main question in this paper is: What constitutes the socio-technical complexity of ma-rine areas and how can it be translated into a sim...
Article
Full-text available
The authors discuss and analyse the complex interplay between rail transport and urban development around railway stations in the Netherlands. Although this interrelationship, known as transit-oriented development (TOD), has been theorised and studied in the academic literature, the complex and dynamic underlying mechanisms and the appropriate plan...
Conference Paper
The authors present the design and results of a comparative study into multidisciplinary on-scene command teams at work in virtual emergency training exercises. The main question of the study is: How do on-scene command teams coordinate multidisciplinary objectives and tasks, and how does the way this is done determine their performance? The study...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper deals with the relationship between serious games and system dynamics. Games have been used in SD since the beginning. However, the field of serious gaming also has its own development. The purpose of this contribution is to provide a broad overview of the combination of serious gaming and SD and discuss the state of the art and promise....
Article
Full-text available
War games 'on the loose' Het ging wat verloren in het mediageweld rondom de NSS. Het was niet alleen praten geweest, maar ook actie, zei Obama over de top in Den Haag. Misschien bedoelde hij de war game, die naar verluidt op maandag voor wat commotie had gezorgd. Het was interactief en vernieuwend geweest. Iets te vernieuwend voor sommige wereldlei...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Socio-technical complexity is at the forefront of public policymaking, and managing socio-technological complexity is the common denominator among the grand challenges of modern-day society. The current efforts to further Global System Science (GSS) highlight methods for integrated policy analysis. The authors argue that a de/reconstruction of inte...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The author presents the methodological backgrounds and underlying research design of an on-going scientific research project concerned with the scientific evaluation of serious games and/or computer-based simulation-games (SG) for advanced learning. The main questions of this research project are: 1. what are the requirements and design principles...
Article
Full-text available
The authors present the background and results of an explorative evaluation of the use Serious Games (SG) in a Master’s level course in entrepreneurship at TU Delft in the Netherlands. The main questions concern the extent to which the use of SGs contributes to entrepreneurship (or learning related to entrepreneurship), as well as the factors that...
Article
Full-text available
The authors present the methodological background to and underlying research design of an ongoing research project on the scientific evaluation of serious games and/or computer-based simulation games (SGs) for advanced learning. The main research questions are: (1) what are the requirements and design principles for a com- prehensive social scienti...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Integrated Spatial Planning and policymaking strongly rely on scientific and expert knowledge captured in a great variety of models, simulations and games (MSG). In China, the world of science is quite familiar with computer models and simulations. The whole idea of socially and technically integrated policy analysis and integrated methods (IM) how...
Article
The authors analyse the complexity of Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) and explore the role that simulation gaming (SG) could play in addressing it. They present the set-up of and insights from a game-based, quasi-experimental study and policy intervention involving MSP. The simulation game MSP Challenge 2011 was played in Lisbon on 3 November 2011 by...
Chapter
Full-text available
VEERKRACHT is a game for servant-leadership development. Although the first version of the game already provided a rather authentic environment for professional training, some players reported that it did not sufficiently provide the rich and meaningful interaction required to practice leadership skills. To revise the game we took inspiration from...
Chapter
Veerkracht is a game for servant-leadership development. Although the first version of the game already provided a rather authentic environment for professional training, some players reported that it did not sufficiently provide the rich and meaningful interaction required to practice leadership skills. To revise the game we took inspiration from...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
There is not much research on team collaboration in digital entertainment games, nor is there much evidence for the efficacy of game-based team training or the validity of game-based team assessment. This is a shortcoming because of an increasing pervasiveness of serious games in organizational life, e.g. for operational training, management and le...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The authors present the study design and main findings of a quasi-experimental evaluation of the learning efficacy of the Serious Game (SG) ‘Hazard Recognition’ (HR). The SG-HR is a playable, two-level demonstration version for training supervisors who work at oil and gas drilling sites. The game has been developed with a view to developing a full-...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The authors analyze the policy discourse on the utility of games for society at the level of the European Union, and for five EU countries, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Norway. The ongoing study is part of a Research Roadmap developed within the GALA Network of Excellence on Serious Games (2010-2014, EU FP7). The authors...
Article
Full-text available
The authors define the requirements and a conceptual model for comparative evaluation research of simulation games and serious games (SGs) in a learning context. A first operationalization of the model was used to comparatively evaluate a suite of 14 SGs on varying topics played between 2004 and 2009 in 13 institutes of higher education in the Neth...
Article
Full-text available
This paper explores how, in the light of global economic downturn and rising student populations, new academic–industrial models for research collaboration based upon specific technological expertise and knowledge can be developed as potential mechanisms for preserving and extending central university research infrastructure. The paper explores two...
Chapter
Full-text available
Several widely used practices for leadership development, such as formal training and personal reflection, exhibit the weakness of poor learning transfer: sending managers out to a leadership training often leads to disappointing results. In this paper we infer that games that are designed as ‘authentic learning environments’ may improve the learni...
Chapter
Full-text available
The objective of this chapter is to provide an overview of the different methods that can be used to evaluate the learning outcomes of serious games. These include Randomised Control Trials (RCT), quasi-experimental designs, and surveys. Case studies of a selection of serious games developed for use in higher education are then presented along with...