Developing Foresight with Video Games

The ongoing crises have reminded us of the importance of developing foresight in business. We understand that this involves detecting early signals of changes, imagining different future scenarios, and taking action based on this information. Although, this all sounds reasonable, the real challenge lies in actually developing foresight. How do organizations search for trends and build scenarios?
Although we have plenty of knowledge about how to develop foresight, it seems that we're not yet fully utilizing cultural products as a valuable source of information. In a previous project, motives & fiction, we explored using science fiction movies and novels to develop foresight. Now, in this new project, we're looking at video games.
 
Despite the massive revenue generated by the video gaming industry, and the occasional application of gaming methodologies in workshop settings and engagement formats, it's not commonly used for trend detection or scenario development. In this project, students from the Master Global Foresight and Technology Management at the Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt discovered that video games provide a wide range of trends to analyze and offer a unique learning experience, by allowing players to emotionally engage with different future scenarios.

With this project and Website, we aim to push the boundaries of developing foresight. Video games not only represent a new source, but also a new frontier; challenging the way we think about developing foresight altogether.

Prof. Dr. Jan Oliver Schwarz
Research Professorship Strategic Foresight and Trend Analysis
Bavarian Foresight Institute
Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt

seven clusters

Gaming & Foresight is a joint research project of the Foresight Academy and a new, international program at Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt: the Global Foresight and Management Master Program.

in transfer

new foresight master program
Technical University of Ingolstadt
Motives & Fiction is a collaboration of Foresight Academy and the Technical University of Ingolstadt: A new Master program dedicated to foresight started in 2021.
value studies
How do we want to live in 10 years?
Students of the Global Foresight & Management program reviewed a wide range of existing video games for this project. An overview of all sources can be found here: