Climate Crisis Game: TBD
I’ve been trying to make games about the climate crisis for a long time now. I’ve written about it briefly in this old post. It's been a constant struggle– especially the closer I get to making something that actually resembles a game. I spent a year trying to build ‘Tridal’ and I was really disappointed by how it ended up, especially given all of the potential everyone (including me) saw in it. Then, I came across these old notes about the game. And here’s the thing, I’m sick of Tridal, but those initial notes still seem SO exciting. So, I’ve decided to let sleeping dogs lie and not beat myself up about not completing something that no longer sparks joy. At the same time, I want to acknowledge that there is a huge well of ideas there that are yet to be explored– one that I still want to explore.
Here are some of my old ideas that I still catch myself thinking about:
A game on climate reparations where water levels are based on collective action. Players are tiny people in the game that can make decisions that are in self service or for the greater good. Either decision can be good or bad based on what everyone else in the game decides to do (hence collective action). In an ideal world this is a really well designed MMO, think Club Penguin.
A game modelled around carbon sequestering where good decisions take a long time to build and they can be undone really quickly and gravely. Players build a lot of this good behaviour unintentionally, not realising what was secretly good until they accidentally start to destroy those things.
A game about food and land use. Tridal was about land use and one of the best parts of working on it was coming across the FAOSTAT database. It’s a really cool resource that is perfectly calibrated for people who aren’t in the weeds of climate science information without reducing and simplifying it to the point of being meaningless. While Tridal focussed on land transforming, I would love for future games to be all about food during the climate crisis.
In the spirit of the old, the new, and the left behind… I was working on a prompt engineering exercise. And I put my old thesis idea into it to see what new ideas AI could come up with / how it would distill large chunks of climate science information. The results were pretty interesting and here are some games it made me think about:
A game on starting fires. Fires and floods seem to be the two big climate disasters that are ever present. I really love the rising sea levels game mechanic, but it can start to feel tired really quickly. However, with fires, there’s some potential I haven’t explored. I’m especially interested in forests x fires. More specifically, the act of setting fires can be socially responsible and beneficial while it’s contained; but a wildfire can cause irreparable damage.
A game on the blue economy ( I didn’t even know this was a thing) which is the sustainable use of ocean resources to create jobs, economic growth, and environmental health. Similar to the little sketch I drew out years ago, I thought that something that seemed to be an inconspicuous game about fishing could be interesting. The world of marine life, commercial fishing, boats and gear, yachts and cruises for the rich that on initial glance seemed to be about power and money was actually set against the landscape of rising sea levels, endangerment and aquatic ecosystem degeneration.
An ongoing internal battle I have while making these climate games is that an idea can seem compelling but following through is akin to Pandora's box. Especially with these games, I struggle with scope, often getting sucked into the grandeur of the narrative. I think because even the promise of this game means so much to me that I want it to be perfect – compelling, fun, thought provoking, interesting, novel, scientifically accurate, dense, replayable, dynamic, impactful, cooperative (cooperative game mechanics is a whole blog post in itself) and so much more. In trying to make the best kind of game to play and learn from; a game that is equally serious and enjoyable. That’s a tall order…
My earliest prototypes were simple sketches and mockups of the ideas; pen and pencil, figma and quick websites. This blog is me resetting the timer, going back to the drawing board and excited that on the turn of a dime, something amazing might emerge.
No pressure.