Development of an interactive water management role‐playing game as an educational tool representing the central Nebraska Platte River valley social‐economic‐ecological system

As members of the National Science Foundation\u27s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT), we have gained valuable experience abroad in Europe learning about and participating in research that utilizes serious role‐playing games representing a watershed with its land use and river system. The focus of this research is on the development of such a game representing the central Platte River valley and its dynamics according to the activities played by the players and uncertain streamflow inputs. The game is adapted specifically from two other games, one called Wat‐A‐Game, developed at the French public institutes IRSTEA and CIRAD (https://sites.google.com/site/waghistory/), and one called Lords of the Valley, developed at the Poland‐based Centre for System Solutions (https://lordsofthevalley.games4sustainability.com/). We present an overview of these other games, compare how our newly developed game differs, and then details of the development of our game, including a look at the game board, role instructions, and the flow of the game. Finally, we discuss our plans for testing the ability of the game to quickly introduce to and teach students about the Platte River social‐economic‐ecological system