CHECKMATE: Let the Game Do the Teaching

Some topics are difficult to teach through presentations. Climate change, misinformation and political decision-making are good examples. We can explain how misinformation works, show examples and discuss reliable sources, but sometimes the strongest learning happens when participants experience the problem themselves.

This is the idea behind the CHECKMATE Facilitator Guide for Youth Workers. Instead of asking young people to sit back and listen, the guide gives you four ready-to-use simulation games where participants become decision-makers. They take on roles, defend interests that may be completely different from their own, react to changing information, negotiate, vote and sometimes discover that the information influencing their decisions was misleading. 

And you do not need to be a climate scientist, debate coach or experienced game master to facilitate them. What matters more is being willing to give participants space to disagree, make decisions and sometimes get things wrong before helping them reflect on what happened.

Four games, four different experiences

The guide includes four complete simulation games, and you do not need to use them all. The best starting point is to think about what you want your participants to experience.

Oil Rig or No Rig places participants in a fictional coastal town deciding whether an offshore oil rig should be approved. Economic interests, environmental concerns and changing news stories gradually influence the debate and public opinion. To Build or Not to Build focuses on multi-stakeholder negotiation and competing interests. The Electric Shift is particularly useful when you want participants to understand the difference between misinformation, disinformation and malinformation. Shadows of the State takes a different approach, exploring systemic responsibility and challenging the idea that complex environmental problems always have one clearly identifiable guilty party. 

The guide even helps you choose according to practical realities. If you have fewer than 12 participants, Oil Rig or No Rigis the easiest fit. If you only have around 90 minutes, Shadows of the State was designed for that shorter format. If your group is new to the different forms of misinformation, The Electric Shift introduces them most explicitly. 

What makes the simulations interesting?

The roles are assigned rather than chosen according to participants' own opinions. Someone concerned about climate change might suddenly have to defend an oil company, while someone sceptical about green policies might represent an environmental organisation. This forces participants to understand an argument from the inside rather than simply debating what they already believe. 

Then comes another layer: information starts entering the room.

Across the CHECKMATE games, participants encounter accurate information alongside misinformation, disinformation and malinformation. A convincing speaker may have weak evidence. An emotional headline may shift the discussion. A true statistic may be presented without the context needed to understand it. Participants experience how information can influence their own decisions before the facilitator reveals what was happening. 

That reveal can be one of the strongest learning moments, because suddenly the conversation changes from “Did our side win?” to “Wait, why did I believe that?”

A few tips from the guide

The Facilitator Guide does more than provide game instructions. It also addresses the small facilitation choices that can determine whether a simulation works.

Keep speaking times strict. Confident participants can easily dominate a simulation, so the games generally use short speaking limits and recommend a visible timer. A placard-based speaking queue also gives quieter participants a clearer opportunity to enter the discussion. 

Do not rescue the discussion too quickly. When participants get stuck, avoid giving your own opinion. Ask questions such as “What information do you still need?”, “Who has not spoken yet?” or “Does anyone have another perspective?”Your job is to move the process forward without deciding where it should go. 

Prepare the room before participants arrive. Groups need space to talk separately while still seeing one another, and the guide recommends a circle or semicircle rather than classroom-style rows. Keep misinformation materials hidden until the right moment. 

And perhaps most importantly: do not rush the debrief. The game creates the experience, but reflection turns that experience into learning. The misinformation reveal is deliberately treated as the heart of the CHECKMATE simulations. 

The game ends. The learning shouldn't.

One risk with misinformation activities is that participants leave thinking that nothing online can be trusted. That is not the aim. The guide encourages facilitators to finish by returning to practical verification habits and making sure participants clearly understand which information introduced during the game was accurate and which was intentionally misleading. 

It also recommends ending with a small action participants can take afterwards. This can be as simple as analysing several social-media posts, taking one questionable claim and finding two sources that confirm or challenge it, or bringing the verification process into another youth activity. 

For youth workers, that is perhaps the biggest strength of the CHECKMATE approach. You are not expected to stand in front of the room with all the answers. You create the situation, let participants experience the complexity, and then help them unpack what happened.

If you are looking for a method that combines climate education, media literacy, critical thinking, negotiation and a little bit of controlled chaos, choose one game and try it with your group.

Explore the CHECKMATE Simulation Games & Facilitator Guide

For more information about the project visit the project website: https://checkmateproject.eu

Erasmus+ Cooperation partnership

Living Labs and Game-Based Learning to Checkmate Climate Misinformation

Project No.  2024-2-LV02-KA220-YOU-000266268

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.