Can Video Games be the Cheat Code to Get More Focus on Climate Change?
UPon perusing the usual media coverage of climate change, I came across a story titled “I Learned About Climate Change By Watching Fortnite on Twitch,” a headline that seemed more likely to come together via Mad Libs than reality. But the author presents an effort to spread climate education that isn’t quite as crazy as it might seem. Katharine Hayhoe, a lauded climate scientist, expressed incredulity that her climate science webinar had only received 10% of the views in a week compared with the views her 11-year-old son received in one day streaming himself playing the video game Fortnight:
Source: Twitter
UP until that point, her Tweet appeared to be a tongue-in-cheek expression of frustration about how difficult getting the climate message across can sometimes be, but energy professionals and climate scientists quickly took to Twitter to help brainstorm ways to combine the popularity of Fortnite (the unrivaled most popular game in the world today) with education on climate change. The eventual result was ClimateFortnite, a channel on the live streaming service Twitch that follows a group of climate scientists discussing the science of and solutions to global warming while playing Fortnite, an attempt to leverage the game’s massive influence to put climate change in the minds of a young audience who will be the ones who feel the effects of the climate crisis the most. Henri Drake, host of ClimateFortnite, explains:
It builds a community where people can ask the hard questions directly to an expert. For a topic like climate change that is steeped in misinformation, direct access to experts is critical.
Some may scoff at this as a patronizing attempt to take what’s popular and shoehorn in other topics, but the idea is still young and the potential remains massive. Fortnite only continues to grow in popularity and the recent IPCC Climate Report has shined a much needed mainstream spotlight on the climate crisis.
Any attempt to make the complex topics behind climate change more accessible to the masses, particularly to young people, should be celebrated; of course, this coming from the guy who’s used everything from Star Wars to game shows to fantasy sports to try and spread messages on energy and the climate. So, the ClimateFortnite channel has inspired me to do the same, this time with other video games.
Given that video games have already taught unwitting players on topics ranging from computer programming to rocket science, how can different popular video games be adapted to spread the critical information and education about the importance of fighting climate change? Here are my five suggestions, ranging from the silly to the more serious ideas:
Mario, but all the levels are water levels
Starting with arguably the world’s most recognizable video game character, what would a Mario game look like if his universe were to fall victim to the perils of climate change? Perhaps the warming planet would only be a suitable climate for baddies like Dry Bones, Pokey, and Bowser. But to truly demonstrate the consequences of rampant carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and climate change, I’d focus on the sea-level rise.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the average sea level has risen in 22 of the past 24 years due to “a combination of meltwater from glaciers and ice sheets and thermal expansion of seawater as it warms,” with the rate of rise only accelerating as global CO2 emissions remain high. These rising sea levels matter because they threaten population-dense urban coastal areas (8 of the world’s 10 largest cities are located near a coast) through flooding, shoreline erosion, and increasingly dangerous storms. Additionally, whole communities of people living in small island nations will see their entire existence in danger from the effects of rising sea levels and associated disasters.
DOWN to the wire as they might be, these climate effects can be difficult to truly imagine and the consequences still feel far off. But if the Mario universe were to undergo universal seal-level rise, the effect would surely be devastating in its own right; that’s right, EVERY MARIO LEVEL WOULD BE AN UNDERWATER LEVEL. I know I’m not alone in despising anytime a Mario game forces me to dive into water for the duration of the level, and being forced to play a Mario game where climate change made every level take place underwater would be a harrowing portender of the dangers that await humanity if we don’t act now.
Source: YouTube
Call of Duty, but focused on climate-driven war
DOWN the list of popularity only slightly, Call of Duty (the third-most sold video game franchise in history) comprises first-person shooter games that started out recreating World War II battles, before branching out to versions that mimic modern war settings and later envisioning futuristic wars. While popular for their multiplayer formats allowing combat against friends and strangers across the Internet, the single-player campaigns focus on historical wartime eras and have been noted for their appeal from an academic standpoint regarding public history. Adam Chapman, senior lecturer at the University of Gothenburg and author of Digital Games as History, noted:
Historical games have rapidly become one of the most successful contemporary forms of popular historical media…These games have similar potential to historical film and television, they can easily communicate a lot of visual information about historical environments and artefacts and they add life, movement and colour to history in a way that can be very engaging.
Source: Wikicommons
LEFT to the imagination of game creators, could that same educational aspect of historical wars in Call of Duty be applied to potential future wars that are influenced, or even caused by, the effects of climate change? While the games set in a future universe used the opportunity merely to imagine what weaponry might look like in the coming centuries, they could instead take a page from the historical versions of the game and provide a context to the war that feels real and engaging to the player. The backdrop to a future Call of Dutygame could easily be built around climate-caused conflict to foreshadow to players the very real domino effects of a changing climate. Not only do climate issues already contribute to global conflict today, but futurists have predicted wars in a world ravaged by climate change fought over scarce water resources, food riots as crops become more expensive to produce, and uneasy conflicts expected to come with mass migrations from unlivable environments. Setting a futuristic Call of Duty game against a backdrop of any of these types of climate change conflicts would surely spark conversation among players who may have not realized the consequences of climate change could come so soon or be so tangible.
EA Sports Games, where climate change upends normal function of the sports
RIGHT behind the first two games in terms of audience, EA Sports has for decades created games allowing players to live out their fantasies as athletes across numerous different professional sports leagues. The game developers have found resounding success by consistently providing realistic simulators of the world’s most popular sports, but if they want to be completely realistic then future iterations of those games should integrate the effects that climate change are expected to have on the world of sports:
The highly popular FIFA series, replicating the world of soccer, would have to deal with problems associated with rising temperatures that real soccer teams must: increased cooling breaks, players facing extra fatigue, tournaments that must move to new locations or be shifted to the winter time, and more.
When players want to simulate their golf game, they pick up the PGA Tour series, but a climate-ravaged entry might include wetter winters and coastal erosion, both of which will lead to disrupted tournaments and increasingly damaged golf courses.
The wildly successful Madden NFL series often includes incidents of players getting injured on a random basis to replicate actual risks of the game, but a hotter climate elevates the threat of heat exhaustion and heat stroke on the field. Future editions of the Madden NFL series could include a nod to the world’s heating trends by emphasizing these injury risks, particularly in outdoor stadiums during the warmer part of the season.
The National Hockey League (NHL) is the only major sports league to have issued a sustainability report, making EA’s NHL series the perfect candidate to include climate-related changes. According to the NHL, a warming climate threatens to eliminate up to one-third of the outdoor skating period in eastern Canada and one-fifth in the west. Such drops in outdoor hockey season would threaten the number of people who play hockey and diminish the quality of players, so the NHL has committed to a wide variety of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other environmental measures. Replicating this experience in the latest NHL game could put the player at the helm of the NHL with the same decision– invest in climate-saving measures today or see the quality of players coming into the league in the future dropping significantly.
Source: GameSpot
Mario Kart, but add electric vehicles
Returning to the universe of everyone’s favorite plumber, the Mario Kart series has seen Mario and his friends competing in go-kart races for over 25 years. On top of wacky courses and the various weapons to use on opponents, these games have focused on the kart mechanics. The different difficulty levels are labeled as 50 cc, 100 cc, and 150 cc engine classes, with the use of cc (cubic centimeters) implying the use of internal combustion engines (ICE) in the karts.
LEFT among the various prescriptions of the IPCC report, decarbonizing the world’s transportation sector represents one of the most significant priorities, and the United States in particular lags in those efforts. So why not use a Mario Kart game to demonstrate the advantages of converting from gasoline-powered vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs)? The most recent installment in the series allows players to select which type of kart they want to use, each with their own unique statistics– so adding in the ability to choose between an electric motor and an ICE would not be a great break from the norm.
Source: Super MarioWiki
RIGHT now, the different karts vary just based on aspects like weight, acceleration, and traction. Going further and providing Mario Kart racers the option to go electric would present an opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of an electric car over a gasoline-powered car, while also putting the negatives of EVs in context. Racers could be given a specific budget with which to work and have to face the higher upfront costs of purchasing an electric kart, but they would quickly realize the logic of doing so as charging with electricity is cheaper than gasoline and maintenance on electric vehicles are less frequent and less expensive (plus, hopefully the powers that be in Mushroom Kingdom would extend those valuable EV tax credits). Then to be fair to the realities of EVs in today’s world, Nintendo could present fewer EV options than ICE options (representing the fact that EVs are currently less customizable with fewer choices on car lots), while building in a mechanic that demonstrates the more limited range (pit stops during a race?) and longer charging times (longer load screens?). Lastly, to demonstrate how continued driving of ICE karts could lead to accumulation of CO2 emissions from the tailpipes, a certain amount of gasoline use in the game could trigger some sort of catastrophic effect– certain courses becoming unplayable do to climate change effects on the environment, the screen going hazy with the smog of emissions, or other mayhem. Sure, some people will still want to wheel out the Ferrari-like toys on occasion, but those threats would prompt you to think twice.
Civilization, where the main goal is a successful clean energy transition
Based on millennia of history, this series of turn-based strategy games allows players to build their own civilization, putting them in the seat of the government of one of several competing cultures working to use exploration, economics, conquest, and diplomacy to achieve a number of ‘win conditions.’ The developers specifically took cues from ancient to modern history to replicate actual causes and effects of large civilizations throughout time, providing a microcosm of how humanity has successfully progressed, while occasionally setting ourselves backwards through negative actions.
Source: Wikicommons
A version of Civilization for classroom instruction is already in the works to “provide students with the opportunity to think critically and create historical events, consider and evaluate the geographical ramifications of their economic and technological decisions, and engage in systems thinking and experiment with the causal/correlative relationships between military, technology, political, and socioeconomic development.” A missed educational opportunity, though, is the failure to build a Civilization game centered on climate change and the energy transition.
In response to climate concerns, ideas get thrown around about a rapid transition to 100% renewable energy or implementing a massive worldwide carbon tax immediately as solutions. But the reality that even the staunchest clean energy advocates must recognize is that there are many economic, geopolitical, technological, and cultural roadblocks that must be carefully navigated while the push to clean the world’s energy mix advances. A Civilization game that demonstrates the unintended consequences of too-strong too-fast climate policies that don’t take these issues into consideration, while requiring the player find an achievable solution anyway, could elucidate the difficulties in global climate policy while also demonstrating what sacrifices are necessary to reach global goals.
Additionally, different difficulty settings of gameplay could see the game start at various points in society’s history: if you take control at the advent of the Industrial Revolution then you would have a lot more options and preventing catastrophic climate change would be easier to achieve, a more difficult (but still largely winnable) gameplay would then have you take control at the turn of the 20th century, and each of those versions would be a piece of cake compared with taking the reins in 2018 where drastic action is needed immediately and wiggle room is minimal. A truly educational aspect could then come from the Expert Level– waiting years from today to when little to no runway remains and every single move the player makes must be perfect or the coasts will sink into the ocean, ecosystems around the world will be destroyed, and mass casualties (from natural disaster and human conflict) will be unavoidable. Playing these different difficulty settings would serve to emphasize how important action is now compared with waiting, as researchers have calculated that the longer the world waits to transition to a zero emission economy the costs to do so increase exponentially. Having this concept play out in increasingly difficult video game settings would hammer that point home.
START by resisting the urge to roll your eyes at ClimateFortnite or any of these ideas. Conveying the severity of the pending climate crisis through evolving media like video games can be effective in reaching new audiences. Consider how great it would be if the world’s next great climate scientist was inspired because of a Twitch stream or even by a lesson taught through a game itself. If the message reaches and makes an impression on just a handful of kids, who knows what the potential impact could be!
Do you have any other ideas on ways to integrate climate change mitigation strategies and/or consequences into popular video games? Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter.