Gaming the environment

There's been a rise in the number of games being developed to increase awareness of climate change issues through virtual realities. Intel are currently working on a 3D game called Water Wars that allows residents of a certain area assume characters in the game and act out different scenarios, all around water budgeting. For example, a player could be a farmer who must determine the best way to water his crops, given a fixed amount of water use.The decisions people make in the game, such as going over their allocated quota, stealing form neighbours or conserving better will then feed into the government who will try and develop the best sort of policy to manage people's behaviour.

Gaming does educate and highlight real life scenarios for climate change through fun and interactive ways- but- many traditional, blockbuster  games succeed because they are part of an augmented reality. People may make certain choices in a game because it's less serious than in real life and there aren't real consequences in a game, aside from hitting the 'new game' button.Could gaming potentially be a dangerous way to teach people about the issues because on some level the issues may be perceived as less serious? Or could an action in a game like a player drowning over and over because of sea rise change people's perspective around real environmental issues?

Other games like Sim City took off in the past because people got to build and design a city firstly without specific goals to achieve. You could build your own community and make any use of the land as you saw fit. Then players would be start to problem solve when prompted with certain challenges, like transportation or water supply. Although Sim City's first aim was just to let people build a city, as the game developed some environmental issues surfaced, giving people the power to save or fix their city.

Clim City, is quite similar to Sim City but it's aim to get players to build their own Climate Plan.

BBC Climate Challenge is another game focusing on environmental policy. The player must sit around a round table discussion and negotiate with other countries different policies. Below is the aim of the game.

'You get to set polices for different aspects of government focusing on national, imports and exports, industry, local and household. This on-line environmental has you challenging policies for different category aspects of government: National, Imports and Exports, Industry, Local and Household. Click the relevant building icon to see the policies that you select. Resources available include: money; food; power; water which are evaluated by means of ‘red’ and ‘green’ effectiveness gauges'.

Sound fun? If only policy making was as easy as a click of a mouse. Although BBC's Climate Challenge definitely educates, it's likely not going to be top of the charts anytime soon.

As it's still an area with a lot of R&D, we'll just have to wait and both the success and impact of gaming climate change. All things aside, they are proving to be a good way of bringing important issues into the mainstream and providing education around climate change.

(Water Wars spotted on TreeHugger)

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