New technologies, complex problems, interconnectedness between different actors: All these are challenges of our today’s society and characteristics of complex systems. Simulation games are a suited approach to analyse complex systems. The process of designing and developing those games for complex systems follows certain steps. One of such steps is the definition of the underlying problem. Deriving a concrete problem statement under consideration of the changing complexity of today’s society is crucial for the validation of a simulation game. Therefore, the following paper will introduce IDEAS, an approach to derive a specific problem statement as one part of the simulation game design process. In general, IDEAS consists of four steps: interviews, discussion rounds with experts, moscow analysis and gamestorm. The approach itself as well as a case study, where this approach has been used, will be presented. Finally, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the approach and give recommendation for future work.@en