Hacking Participation: Young People's Climate Imaginaries and Board Games

In this paper we reflect on the research project, Games Imagining the Future: Play and the Environment," which took place between 2021 and 2022 in Greater Manchester. We describe the process of carrying out participatory research using the method of board game hacking. Hacking is a creative research method and mode of critical play that involves participants unmaking and remaking games by doing things like changing the game rules, creating new components, making new pieces for the game, or new art, and combining the different elements of the game in new ways. This experience was messier than we had envisaged when designing and pitching the project for our funders, Game in Lab and the Libellud Foundation, who are industry-based funding bodies promoting the scientific study of games. The semi-contained chaos in the room punctured the confidence of our written research proposal, which naïvely described a neatly complementary interaction of games and young researchers. This chapter is a reflection on what we learned as researchers, and an examination of the relationships that unfolded between research, game hacking and activism.