Video games can make climate change real for players - here's how
The ice caps have melted. Continents have been reduced to a handful of islands. Survivors seek to rebuild what is known as the Floodlands.
That is the premise of a video game released this year that represents a new approach developers are taking: using games to educate players on climate change, and what might happen if they fail to rein it in.
In an earlier game, Eco, the land is still vibrant and human society is growing. Eventually, an asteroid strikes, but the inhabitants do not know that yet.
Eco and Floodlands approach climate change differently - the former as imminent doom, the latter as its aftermath. Both are part of efforts by the $200-billion gaming industry to be a part of the growing discussion on climate change.
"The game shows the worst-case scenario," Kacper Kwiatkowski, Floodlands designer and head of game studio Vile Monarch, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation over email.
"Our early research indicated that a realistic rise of sea levels is several metres. We decided to assume 10-15 (metres) in the game for more dramatism. Now it seems that this dramatic scenario is not necessarily an unlikely one," he said.
Globally, there are about 2.6 billion gamers. Activists and governments are hoping they can encourage behavioural change among gamers through green nudges, where points are awarded for protecting the environment in consumer games, or explicitly educational, interactive play.
The goal is to close the psychological gap between what people know and what they resonate with, said Hamid Homatash, a lecturer on computer games at Glasgow Caledonian University.
"You can be told all this information that the ice caps are melting, but what does that really mean? It's quite alien in a way, because
Read more on tech.hindustantimes.com
