This summer, people around the globe experienced record-breaking temperatures, catastrophic flooding and insatiable wildfires. Some of us who are able might retreat into the fictional worlds of video games for a chance to escape, but what if games could actually help us tackle the climate crisis?
Most of the world-building games of the past were all about using up natural resources in service of some end goal – like building a metropolis in SimCity or raising an empire in Civilization – usually destroying the natural world in the process. The ends justified the means and saving the planet wasn’t much of a priority. But what if it were?
That’s one of the questions driving a growing movement of game developers, scientists, educators, and activists who believe that games are an underutilised resource in the fight against climate change. So what do these games look like? Are they confined to the realm of dry, uninspired edutainment? Or could they be much more than that?
We’ve been here before. The original Civilization, released back in 1991, was way ahead of its time and featured climate change as a consequence of creating too much pollution. Will Wright’s SimEarth, released the year before in 1990, went even further and put an entire planet - with its own ecosystems and climate as well as the possibility of rising temperatures, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, natural disasters, and more – entirely in the player’s hands.
In the intervening years it’s been pretty slim pickings, but all that’s starting to change and gaming is beginning to take climate change seriously once again. From simple, pick-up-and-play arcade romps to deep, richly detailed simulations. Whether it’s a playable science textbook that puts an interactive Earth on your phone, or a turn-based card game that challenges you to guide humanity towards a sustainable future - there’s something for everyone.
One of the first in a new line of climate change-focused games was survival game Eco. Developed by Seattle-based Strange Loop Games, this massively ambitious civilisation simulator includes everything from detailed ecosystems and realistic climate modelling to player-driven government and economies. Players work together in a shared online world where every action impacts the environment around them. Laws to restrict or encourage almost any kind of behaviour can be suggested and enacted to test their effects on the world. Collaboration is absolutely key to success which sets Eco apart from most solitary survival games, and provides better lessons for the real world in the process.
A recent Minecraft mod adds climate change to the wildly popular sandbox game. Now player actions like cutting down trees and smelting ore will increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and ultimately raise the global temperature, resulting in sea level rise, less snow and ice, forest fires, and more. Players can plant new trees to offset their negative impacts and even purchase “carbon offsets” which create tree-planting bounties that encourage others to do the same.
Over the past few years hundreds of other climate-themed games have been released. Often these are developed as part of game jams where people come together, in person or online, to create games based on a theme in a set time. Game jams are a great way to rapidly generate and prototype lots of ideas to discover what works and what doesn’t. The Games for Change nonprofit hosts such jams regularly. And earlier this summer a group of scientists from Wales hosted an online climate jam with entries judged in part based on their scientific accuracy, as determined by a panel of climate scientists. Entries included a deck-building card game in which resources from a small ecosystem must be carefully managed, and a simple arcade game starring a time-travelling polar bear that uses Pong-like mechanics to explain albedo feedbacks.
And this grassroots work could soon start to trickle up into more popular, mass-market games. Right now, games like Civilization and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri belong to a genre of games known as 4X games that encourage players to "eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate". That is, the pursuit of endless growth at any cost. But what if the goalposts where shifted? 4X games take place on a massive scale – often over hundreds or thousands of years – that lends itself to incorporating the short and long term effects of climate change.
Imagine if the next Civilization did just that. Achieving victory conditions would have to be balanced against the natural limits of the planet. The more fossil fuel-burning industry you choose to build now, the more natural disasters and uninhabitable areas you’ll be stuck with later. And that “later” might be just hours away, making it much easier to understand your impacts than the years it can take to start seeing feedback in our own climate system.
Strategy game players are no strangers to making decisions in big, complex, systems-driven environments so climate change would be a natural fit. Games allow us to make decisions, experience the impacts of those decisions, and learn from them in a way that other mediums like film and TV, just can’t match. And if things don’t go to plan? You can just hit the restart button and try again with your newfound knowledge and wisdom at your side.
Creating a big strategy game that integrates climate change in a meaningful way is the premise behind Flourish: A Climate Grand Strategy Game. It’s being developed by EarthGames out of the University of Washington in Seattle in collaboration with meteorologist and climate writer, Eric Holthaus, as well as an international team of contributors and volunteers. It will combine an accurate climate model with turn-based, roguelike gameplay to encourage replayability and experimentation.
Another renowned simulation game franchise, the SimCity series, is well known for giving players the tools to design cities however they see fit. But a few key aspects, which have been staples of the series since its inception, end up enforcing some big limitations.
The American-style zoning system that features in almost all SimCity titles prevents mixed-use of land and requires that residential, commercial and industrial developments are kept separate. Combine this with a more robust toolset for creating roads than public transport links and the result is cities that tend towards urban sprawl and single-use skyscrapers and away from diverse networks of mixed-density, sustainable communities.
With tools like these it’s easy to create a Los Angeles or a New York, but a lot harder to create a London or a Paris, and harder still to create a truly green city. But how we design and develop our cities is a key part of the battle to mitigate climate change. Most city-building games - with a few exceptions such as the experimental neighbourhood simulator Blockhood - aren’t giving us the tools we need to help us imagine what those cities might look like, but they could be.
Imagine a SimCity that puts people (not cars) and sustainability (not endless growth) first. Where designing a city that’s easy and safe to navigate on foot or by bike is not just possible but rewarded, with lower pollution and healthier citizens. Where constructing energy-efficient buildings provide long-term in-game benefits like lower energy demands, as well as a chance to learn about real world trends like passive housing.
This could be a SimCity where 100 per cent renewable energy isn’t just a nice-to-have but an essential part of any long-lived city. Where the longer you rely on burning fossil fuels, the higher the costs to replace them, and the more rapidly the transition needs to happen to avoid the worst impacts on your cities: fires, droughts, pollution. California has plans to get to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2045 – our digital cities could be getting there a lot sooner.
There are lots of possibilities. Many of them are only being explored in smaller, less mainstream games right now, but that can quickly change. Several popular franchises and genres are already well placed to integrate climate change to enhance gameplay rather than feel like a tacked-on, preachy gimmick. In so doing they could give millions of people the tools, courage and optimism to engage with what is arguably the most important issue of our time. And have fun doing it.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
