Call for Projects 2026 – What do you mean by impact ?

A guide for Game in Lab applicants

Research impact is becoming increasingly important to research funders. Many now require applications to address potential non-academic impact within their research proposals. From this year, Game in Lab is also asking applicants to address the potential impact of their research.

Impact, in this context, means the benefit your research could bring to people and communities beyond academia. It is not about academic citations or how your work will advance your field. It asks a different question: who outside the research community might benefit from what you find out, and how?

This is not a new idea for board game research. Game in Lab’s mission is to demonstrate that board games generate societal value. Focusing on impact will help us in that mission because it asks you to think carefully and specifically about which people, organizations, or communities your research might reach, and what difference it could make to them.

Potential beneficiaries might include educators, health practitioners, game designers and publishers, community organizations, heritage institutions, policy makers, or the public. The connection between your research and these groups doesn’t have to be direct or immediate, but it does need to be credible and specific. Vague claims (“this research will benefit society”) are much weaker than targeted ones (“our findings about eco-anxiety and game play could inform how youth mental health practitioners design therapeutic interventions using tabletop games”).

A few things worth knowing:  

• – Scale is not the point. A modest, well-evidenced pathway to impact is more convincing than an ambitious but unsubstantiated one. Reviewers understand what is realistic for the research proposed.

• – Engagement is not the same as dissemination. Writing a blog post about your findings is dissemination. Co-designing your research questions with a community organization, or feeding findings into a practitioner network, is engagement. Impact tends to grow from genuine two-way exchange, not just outward communication.

• – You don’t need to have achieved impact yet. We’re asking you to think seriously about the potential for impact, and to describe realistic plans for pursuing it.

What does Impact look like? Some examples

• – Policy-facing outputs: policy briefs or position papers addressed to local authorities, national governments, or EU institutions; evidence submissions to regulatory or industry consultations; white papers making the case for change in industry or public sector practice.

• – Practitioner tools: educator toolkits, curriculum resources, or professional development guides that translate research findings into usable practice. These are particularly valuable where the research addresses sectors where practitioners need accessible, evidence-based guidance.

• – Public-facing resources: accessible reports, interactive resources, or exhibitions that bring research to non-specialist audiences, including game players, designers, publishers, and the general public.

• – Partnership and co-design outputs: reports produced in collaboration with non-academic organizations, event programmes developed with community partners, training materials co-created with industry.

• – Advocacy and communication: recorded talks, podcasts, or media outputs that bring research findings to audiences who wouldn’t typically read academic papers; participation in public debates, festivals, or policy forums.

A good example is the Game Hacking Education Report, published in 2026 as part of STRATEGIES: Sustainable Transition for Europe’s Game Industries (a Horizon Europe research project). The report was written by Chloé and Paul Wake at Manchester Metropolitan University and translates peer-reviewed research on game hacking into actionable guidance for university game design educators. It provides case studies, a five-stage hacking method, and practical recommendations for embedding sustainability-oriented critical literacy into game design curricula. It is open access, freely downloadable, and specifically designed to be useful to educators who may never read the underlying academic articles.

That project’s roots go back to earlier work on games and young people’s climate action, research that began life through Game in Lab funding, which shows how a funded research project can generate not only academic publications but tools that reach practitioners in education and the game industries directly.

Game research already makes a difference in the world, to players, communities, educators, designers, and beyond. Game in Lab exists because we believe in that difference. Your impact statement is your opportunity to show us exactly what it looks like in your research. We can’t wait to read it!