Weblog

Climate Change Gaming

From “Stabilization Wedges“ to “Global Warning“, we’re seeing a rise of climate change- awareness games. Different from the “Stabilization Wedges“, “Global Warning” is a gaming software simulating everyday life situations, much similar to “The Sims“.

Players get to choose among various characters. From the young biotechnology Scientist Alex Verdant’s; to the enthusiastic travel agent, Jerry Emerald; to the sophisticated modern art museum curator, Kay Midori. Players then go about daily situations, whether it’s deciding to watch tv all day, to creating their own organic fertilizer, to buying a hybrid, and even, whether to decide to hold a barbeque for friends. The catch is, each action, indirectly leads to the increase and/or decrease of dumping activity in the landfill next door. Each character finds themselves victim to a dump company establishing an immense landfill next door. Hence, the mission of the game: stop the dump company, and save the planet by everyday environmentally-friendly actions. After each action, informative text will appear, giving players greater awareness on how the environmental impact of their actions.

Players have a total of 104 rounds, with four actions offered each round, to try to save the world, and better yet, survive. Actions have direct impacts on characters finances, health and morale; which, once you loose all three before reaching the 104th round, you’re out of the game. There are also “accidents”, events that randomly occur at any given time. For instance, breaking a leg, and being unable to work for some time, decreasing a character’s finances, health and morale.

Winning is extremely difficult, players need to achieve a minimum of a 100 points. Characters’ situations depend on random circumstances, and players often have at the most two out of four (sometimes none) eco-friendly actions to choose from. Very similar to everyday life, we echo Global Warning software developer, Midori’s words, “(Global Warning) reflects the real world. It’s hard and we want people to realize the harsh realities of life, no mater how devastating and frustrating. But this has a purpose, which is to inspire the player to change things for the better in real life.”

True enough, 104 rounds later, and 104 environmental tidbits more, Alex learns to harvest his own rain water, growing a more sustainable vegetable garden; Jerry learns he can make organic perfume for his girlfriend instead of buying synthetic perfumes that have the same chemicals as cigarette smoke; and Midori learns to make her own coffee, kicking $5/day coffee shop habit, and use the coffee grounds as compost.

Image copyright of Midori. Click here to comment on this blog.

Posted by Sean on 07/20

« Back