Play for the Earth: 5 climate change games for the holiday season

Most people in the UK are concerned about climate change, but disagreements over what to do can be polarizing, especially at Christmas when norms around travel, presents and waste are in the spotlight. is remarkable. People who are concerned about climate change and environmental sustainability can feel isolated from family and friends who don’t want to have difficult conversations. We think games can be helpful.

Research on game design and climate action shows that games can be a playful way to understand climate change, promote learning, engage imagination, and stimulate non-threatening conversations. The game has the potential to demonstrate social, political, and economic responses, emphasizing the importance of urgent action.

During the game, all players are part of what the Dutch historian and author of Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (1938) calls the “magic circle.” They can be and do anything as long as they follow the rules. Because it’s based on the rules of play, it’s a powerful way to explore new possibilities and imagine alternative futures without feeling pressured.

Here are five games you can play to spark conversations about climate change this holiday season.

1. For Mayoral Aspirants

Carbon City Zero is a board game that can be played competitively, cooperatively, or solo. Players are challenged to utilize available resources to build a zero-carbon city before time runs out. Players purchase and exchange cards representing governments, industries, and public activities. To create a more sustainable city, players must overcome challenges such as funding cuts, public apathy and opposition, greenwashing, and the global recession. In the competitive version, the first player to reduce their carbon footprint to zero wins.

2. For Bored Relatives

Cranky Uncle is the perfect way to entertain families in need of screen time this Christmas season. This free-to-download app “gamifies” the science of misinformation and climate change denial. It draws attention to how fake experts, logical fallacies, impossible expectations for evidence, cherry-picking of evidence, and conspiracy theories work together to undermine climate facts. Humor helps players notice misinformation and avoid manipulative communication.

3. For all-night players

Daybreak is a cooperative game about stopping climate change, where everyone succeeds or fails together. Victory will be achieved if we act on behalf of blocs of countries to collectively mitigate and adapt to climate change and limit temperature rise to avoid crisis.

Players will achieve this by reducing emissions, protecting carbon sinks (oceans, rainforests), and building social, ecological, and infrastructure resilience. The game doesn’t shy away from the impacts of climate change and the need for urgent action, but it also presents solutions inspired by Project Drawdown, using QR codes that link to information outside of the game. Masu.

4. For story makers

Climate Dice encourages players to create stories related to climate change and climate action. Players simply roll wooden dice with pictures painted on each side. 42 different images, including cars, footprints, and birds, provide visual cues on themes such as nature, wildlife, danger, traffic, and behavior. The thing is, stories have to have happy endings.

This game can be played by any number of people. It can be completed within minutes or used as a tool to build more complex stories over a longer period of time. Climate Dice sees climate change not just as a problem to be solved, but as a challenge to be collectively overcome in the stories they build.

5. For strategists

Catan: New Energies is a competitive board game focused on the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy in the construction of new towns and cities.

Players accumulate and exchange resources and use them to build new cities. Players start with cheap, polluting fossil fuels, but as they invest more in renewable energy, they are rewarded for sustainable strategies. If pollution levels remain high for too long, the game ends in disaster, and the player who invests the most in renewable energy wins.

Because the winners are the players who create sustainable development and wipe out pollution, the game raises out-of-game questions about green growth (the idea that economic growth is environmentally sustainable) and the challenges associated with the energy transition. Possibly.

Settlement, resource extraction, and trade are the cornerstones of Catan, but some other game designers are drawing attention to the connections between justice, colonialism, extractive industries, and economics that are driving climate change and exacerbating global inequality. Some people collect them. For example, a game called Navaroud is currently being developed by game designer Anukriti Gupta to do just this. It’s inherently unfair. Based on India’s history of colonization, Navalud allows players to explore what a more just international policy might involve.

Climate action is about imagining what a new world could or should be like, with the intention of creating more sustainable and fairer ways of living and being. means to act accordingly. Climate change games provide an interactive way to entertain, inform, combat misinformation, consider alternative climate change solutions, experience their impacts, and envision a better future.

Games help you discuss ideas, questions, dilemmas, and confusion and reach new understanding through non-confrontational conversation. These allow you to imagine a better world with your family and friends, highlighting the collective action that is most needed to tackle climate change.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.