By Alice H. Aubert.
What is Triadic Game Design and what lessons does it provide for designing and analysing serious games in an educational setting?
Triadic Game Design
The Triadic Game Design is a design framework for serious games that defines three essential, interrelated elements—Reality, Meaning, and Play—that need to be integrated and balanced (Harteveld 2011).
Reality ensures the game represents the real world sufficiently (i.e., in a valid and reliable way that can be understood by the target players). Subject-matter experts model the Reality in the game focusing on the problem, its influencing factors, and relationships.
Meaning pertains to the game’s purpose and its transference to the real world, to create added value through playing the game. Teachers are usually the main Meaning experts, particularly in the case of educational games.
Play encompasses the medium’s features, such as gameplay, challenges, players’ actions, and technology. Play is crafted by game designers and artists.
Lessons learnt for game design processes
We used the Triadic Game Design framework to analyse the design process of one of our educational games on sustainable food systems. The aim of the game was to educate young people about making responsible food consumption choices that take sustainability and competing objectives between food production, environment, and health into account. The design team comprised agrifood system researchers (focused on “reality”), teachers in an advisory group (focused on “meaning”) and game designers (focused on “play”).
Our focus in the analysis was the tensions experienced during the design process between the three poles of the Triadic Game Design framework and how they were resolved. These learnings should be transferable to the design of other serious games.
Lesson #1. Tension between Play and Reality: “Giving up” was constructive
In our case there was tension between the complex quantitative model that the researchers wanted to use and the simplicity recommended by the game designers. After months of tension, the researchers abandoned their initial concept, writing off development efforts as sunk costs, and avoiding the “sunk cost fallacy.” The ability to accept this unexpected turn and re-align for the collective mission enabled the project’s successful continuation.
Lesson #2. Tension between Play and Reality: Mutual understanding and conflict management skills smoothed out the process
Resolving the Play versus Reality tension was supported by a growing mutual understanding between the researchers and designers, along with good conflict management skills. Mutual understanding between the teams was triggered by the discomfort surrounding the moment of conflict, as described by Rebecca Freeth and Guido Caniglia in their i2Insights contribution, Using discomfort to prompt learning in collaborative teams. The struggle to reconcile the divergent opinions of the researchers and designers provided a valuable opportunity for collective reflection on the limitations and complexities of the initial game concept.
Further, building this mutual understanding between teams with different “thought styles” requires time. The implicit goals of researchers and designers had to be made explicit and initially seemed incompatible, leaving the game design stalled for months. Acknowledging disciplinary differences and expertise took time, but enabled compromise and progress.
Previous experience was also helpful, with both the researchers and designers having previously developed games that were perceived as too serious and not playful enough by the target audience. This anchored the vision of creating the best possible game and enhanced the importance of Play.
Team members with diverse experience could also help bridge the different jargons used and identify hidden tensions early on.
Tension between Play and Meaning: User-centered design was key
In our case, the tension between Play and Meaning occurred later in the process, during the testing of the first prototype. The early engagement of the class teachers in our project was in line with the now standard approach of user-centered design and identified agreed-upon learning objectives and a series of requirements (ie., open-source learning materials and infrastructure guiding technological choices).
This user-centered design process most likely also facilitated a quick resolution of the Play versus Meaning tension that arose during the testing of the first prototype. The designers and teachers knew each other at that point in the process, therefore arguing for each point of view was both possible and sufficient to resolve the tension.
Conclusion
Using the Triadic Game Design retrospectively to analyse the design process of our game highlighted the unavoidable trade-offs among Reality, Meaning, and Play and provided an orientation for balancing them. Our own experience showed how such tensions can be constructive when mutual understanding and compromise are valued. In light of our experience and the Triadic Game Design, we would in future also give a more central role to those providing “meaning,” in our case the teachers.
What’s your experience in designing serious games? Do you have other lessons to share from using Triadic Game Design or other design frameworks? Do you have other tips for managing tensions?
To find out more:
Aubert, A. H., Bauer, R., Böckler, N. S., Jaisli, I., Mariani, E., Schmidlin, S. and Trachsel, S. (2025). Balancing Reality, Meaning, and Play: The Case of a Digital Game About the Swiss Food System. GAIA, 34, 3: 143 – 149. (Online) (DOI): https://doi.org/10.14512/gaia.34.3.13
Much of this i2Insights contribution is taken verbatim from this article, which also provides extensive references.
To see all blog posts from the partnership with the journal GAIA: https://i2insights.org/tag/partner-gaia-journal/. Thanks to GAIA for making this paper free to access until March 23, 2026.
Reference:
Harteveld, C. (2011). Triadic Game Design: Balancing Reality, Meaning and Play. Springer: London, United Kingdom. (Online) (DOI): https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-157-8
Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Statement: Generative artificial intelligence was not used in the development of this i2Insights contribution. (For i2Insights policy on generative artificial intelligence please see https://i2insights.org/contributing-to-i2insights/guidelines-for-authors/#artificial-intelligence.)
Biography: Alice H. Aubert PhD is a lecturer at the Institute of Natural Resource Sciences, Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) in Wädenswil, Switzerland. Her primary interests are supporting complex decision-making in participatory settings.