Playful Utopias Sandboxes for the Future HARTMUT KOENITZ SIMULATION AND (SAFE) FAILURE Video games have been described as the Art of Simulation 1 and the Art of Failure 2 . These descriptions are not exclusive. Together, they illustrate functions which distinguish video games from other mediated forms. Games allow us to simulate complex situations and experiment with it, to play ‘as if’ and try out different strategies. A crucial element of this playful process is that we can fail without danger, in a safe space. These character- istics make video games especially valuable in in the light of the many challenges societies are facing in the 21 st century, from the refugee crisis to global warming. Indeed, the potential for video games as tools to represent and under- stand serious topics has long been a subject of discussion, with Ian Bo- gost’s coinage of “persuasive games” 3 and his investigation of a specific procedural rhetoric being an important milestone. This line of research and 1 Aarseth, Espen J.: “Genre Trouble. Narrativism and the Art of Simulation,” in: Wardrip-Fruin, Noah/Harrigan, Pat (eds.), First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 2004, pp. 45-55. 2 Juul, Jesper: The Art of Failure, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 2012. 3 Bogost, Ian: Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, Cam- bridge, Mass.: MIT Press 2007.