Addressing the UN 2030 sustainable development agenda and the ESG index with serious games in virtual environments.
Authors: Markopoulos Panagiotis , Markopoulos Evangelos 
Published: June 2023

The gaming industry has been dominated by the entertainment games since the early 70s and evolved over the years with the technological advancements especially in hardware that allowed more demanding software to be developed. Over the time and in particular the last decade the serious games have emerged with gamified applications on any type of corporate operations. Serious games became a new global market as the gamification benefits radically impact operations performance, competitiveness, and brand awareness. However, a more significant contribution of serious games can be considered their immerse interaction with the users and the opportunities offer to participate and deliver business operations remotely, effectively, enjoyably and rewardingly. Without being the initial target of the gaming industry, serious games seem to contribute much on sustainable development oriented corporate strategies and operations. The integration of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality and now Metaverstic environments in gamified corporate applications signifies a new era in serious gaming that can be aligned with the UN 2030 Sustainable Develop agenda and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper introduces the use of gaming and futuristics interactive technologies applied on the UN SDGs. It explains how each SDG can be supported with such technology and what could be the impact in the society and the economy. Furthermore, it indicates how gamified SGDs applications can impact the ESG scores and points out the added value serious games can offer in organizational efforts to comply with the ESG requirements. The triangulation of the serious games with the UN SDGs and the ESG is powered by the Company Democracy Model as the catalyst for the democratic innovation developed to generate green ocean strategies with sustainable innovation and pink ocean strategies with social innovations.The paper introduces a matrix that highlights the combination of the gaming and futuristics interactive technologies that can be used for the support of each SDG and ESG category criteria. It also indicates ways and provides indicative examples of applications to practically addresses these combinations. The integration of the company democracy model in the developed of such gamified corporate or organizational strategies is empowered with the development of a democratic knowledge-based culture where gaming elements, concepts and techniques derive from the contributions of anyone with fantasy, imagination and creativity. The research conducted is supported with and extensive literature review, cases studies and primary research delivered with survey and interviews from business executives around he worlds and form difference business sectors. The research conducted in based on an extensive literary review, primary research with surveys and interviews but also with the analysis of several case studies to indicate the needs and the trends for the alignment of the gaming technology with the UN 2030 sustainable development agenda. Furthermore, the paper presents the pre and post condition on adopting such a strategy, highlights research limitations, and identifies areas of further research to be conducted for the application and the adaptation of such strategic approaches in vertical organizational sectors and geographic regions.