The Linkmaster’s Dilemma
The Game
The Linkmaster’s Dilemma
An educational board game about data linkage
The Linkmaster’s Dilemma turns the technical, ethical and practical challenges of data linkage into a hands-on, collaborative learning experience. Players take on roles, make decisions under uncertainty, encounter trade-offs and leave with a richer understanding of how linked data systems work — and what’s at stake when they don’t.
What is The Linkmaster’s Dilemma?
The Linkmaster’s Dilemma is a serious game — designed not primarily to entertain, but to teach. Players navigate a series of data linkage scenarios, making decisions about matching records, handling uncertainty, weighing data quality against completeness, and considering the real-world consequences of their choices.
Unlike passive learning, the game creates shared experience. Players encounter the same situations from different perspectives, discover where they disagree, and have to negotiate those disagreements — which is often where the most useful learning happens.
Why we created it
Data linkage underpins health research, social policy, public services and more. But the decisions made inside linkage systems — about thresholds, matching rules, data quality — are largely invisible to the people they affect.
Most education about data linkage is technical and inaccessible to non-specialists. The Linkmaster’s Dilemma was designed to change that: to make linkage legible, discussable and interesting to a much wider range of people.
It was also designed to support interdisciplinary teams — bringing together researchers, policymakers, ethicists and public participants around a shared experience rather than a slide deck.
What happens when you play
Facilitated play typically moves through several phases. Exact session structure depends on the facilitation format and audience.
🎯 Take on a role
Players join as teams of “Link Masters” competing in creating the largest, most accurate linked data system to restore order.
🔗 Making decisions
Participants work through scenarios & process involving trade-offs between population coverage, linkage accuracy and fairness.
⚖️ Weigh trade-offs
Every decision has consequences. Players must balance accuracy, fairness, coverage and public benefit.
💬 Discuss and debrief
Structured debrief conversations connect in-game decisions to real-world data systems, governance frameworks and ethical principles.
What participants learn
By the end of a session, participants will have developed practical understanding of:
Record linkage methods
Matching uncertainty and error rates
Data quality and completeness
Bias and fairness in linkage
Governance and oversight
Public benefit and risk
Interdisciplinary perspectives
Communicating linkage decisions
Who it’s for
🎓 Researchers and analysts
Teams working with linked data who want shared vocabulary, better interdisciplinary understanding, or CPD-style structured reflection.
🏛️ Policymakers and commissioners
Decision-makers who commission or govern data linkage infrastructure and want to understand what they’re asking for.
🌍 Educators and public engagement leads
Facilitators, lecturers and engagement professionals running sessions on data, health research, public services or research ethics.
How it can be used
The game is designed for both facilitated use and self-directed play. It works in a range of contexts:
- Workshops and professional development days
- University seminars and postgraduate teaching
- Public engagement events and deliberative panels
- Research team away days and onboarding
- Conference fringe sessions and training programmes
Where we are now
The Linkmaster’s Dilemma is currently in development. We are refining game mechanics, testing facilitation approaches and building the supporting learning materials.
✅ Concept and design
✅ Initial prototyping
🔄 Playtesting and refinement (current)
⬜ Facilitation guide and materials
⬜ Pilot sessions
⬜ ⚠️ [DATE TBC] Public availability
We are actively looking for pilot partners. If you work in research, public engagement, policy or education and would like to be involved in testing the game, we’d love to hear from you.
Get involved in the pilot
We’re looking for organisations and facilitators to help us test The Linkmaster’s Dilemma in real settings. Whether you want to run a pilot session, co-develop facilitation materials, or simply stay informed — we’d like to hear from you.