Time-snaking facilitated debriefings about energy system futures – A megagame case study

Participation in a Megagame and a consecutive facilitated debriefing can enable large groups to co-construct awareness and knowledge about the complex relations involved in developing sustainable futures for current societies. “Switching the current” is a megagame where 20 to 100 participants collaboratively experience the challenges involved in shaping future energy consumption patterns and energy production solutions for their region, just and sustainable from a social, economic and environmental perspective. This paper explores how collective discussions can be visualized to better understand how in-game experiences are connected to real-world phenomena. Doing so, a time-snake method has been developed which visually depicts how reflective group discussions move between “game content” and “real world phenomena”, as well as between “attention to details” and “a broad systems perspective”. The comprehensive analysis and comparison of two debriefing sessions shows how participating in a Megagame can develop awareness and understanding of complex relations in shaping sustainable futures of societal energy systems. It also demonstrates how applying time-snake visualizations can help to evaluate the richness of the reflective co-construction that occurs in facilitated debriefings.