# Press Start: Video Games and the Climate Crisis ## Метаданные - **Канал:** Climate One - **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhsl0h7hP8U - **Дата:** 10.04.2026 - **Длительность:** 59:41 - **Просмотры:** 132 - **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/46343 ## Описание About half the global population spends some amount of their leisure time playing games, whether it’s a board game after dinner with friends or online role-playing experience through an alternate world. While many video and board games have long incorporated elements we can imagine in a climate-altered future — such as resource scarcity, conflict, and survival — some in the industry are working to shift players’ mindsets towards protecting nature and reducing their own climate impacts in the process.  Daybreak is a cooperative board game about stopping climate change. Cities: Skylines lets players do urban planning with climate-friendly policies such as offering free public transportation or implementing congestion pricing. And the UN’s Environment Programme is backing the Playing for Planet Alliance, which awards games that spark engagement while delivering an environmental message. How can games encourage  people to explore climate realities and possible futures in a way that allo ## Транскрипт ### Intro [] I'm Ariana Brochious. — I'm Kusha Navdar. — And this is Climate 1. This week we're all about games. So, to prepare for this week's episode, Kusha and I decided to play a video game together online. He helped me get set up, including choosing an avatar. I really like the lizard. That's I'm going to go back to being the lizard. — Yeah. I normally don't play as the mouse, but I found it very charming last time. ### Kousha and Ariana play a video game [0:30] time. Okay, I'm going to invite you. — Okay. We watch the opening story for the game called Overcooked 2 to get a sense of what we were supposed to do. — It's very spooky. — Yeah, — it's a grave graveyard. — Oh, it's like Frankenstein. — The unbread. — So, we're supposed to cook meals for the unbread. — I have no idea. — The zomb The zombie toast. — Yeah, I guess so. — A little ridiculous to be sure. But we got into it. Starting with making salads. And now we need a salad with tomatoes. — Okay, I got you. These are really healthy zombies. We're doing it. — You've shown some exemplary culinary skills here. — Have we? — Then we leveled up to sushi rolls. — Oh, now the timer started. So now we've got — Oh, — they're adding a little bit of pressure to us. — Cusha is a gamer who actually knows what he's doing. I on the other hand. Okay. Fish, too. Shrimp. Chop. Chop. Oh, is that what I was supposed to do? — Oh, we're on fire. — You're doing this rice like I can't even believe how fast you are. — Listen, — you have skills. — I love rice. I have skills. — It's a cooperative game, but I was not helping. Oh, — give me that rice. — And then things got a little heated. Now, be careful with the rice because if you let it in the pot too long, it'll light on fire. — Oh, wa. What is — So, you just picked up the fire extinguisher, which is proactive but not necessary. So, you should put that down. And now you need to pick it back up because there is a fire. Oh my. Okay. Yeah, there you go. Just, you know, — that fire is spreading. — Okay. Yep. We got to work together. — Okay. I think — Oh, we got it. Okay. — Oh my god, that was so much harder. That one we got -14. So, some room for improvement. You want to try it again? — Yeah, sure. It was a lot of fun once I got the hang of it or kind of it. I did keep setting fire to the kitchen. Oh, huge kitchen fire going right now. — Okay, we've trained for this. Don't worry. We'll continue fulfilling the orders that I can. — Cusha, you really saved our sushi in that game. I was a terrible sue chef. I feel like you are not giving yourself enough credit. Also, the whole point of a game is to have fun. And for that, I could not have asked for a better partner, Ariana Brochious. — Oh, thanks. Well, yes, we did have a lot of fun. And I have to give a quick special shout out to my friend Jason who let me borrow his Nintendo Switch so that I could play. How long have you been playing games, Kusha? — I have been playing games since I was five. I think my family bought a Super Nintendo for Christmas and I played Super Mario World and I thought that in order to get Mario to jump, you literally had to lift the controller up and uh and it's been great ever since. — Yeah, I play board games and you know the New York Times word games and things like that, but I don't consider myself a gamer. I guess because I don't play video games. But it's interesting because all of those things you mentioned including Wordle and New York Times crossword etc. those are games. There's a lot of gamers out there. — Totally. In fact, it's somewhere around 3. 5 billion people that play games of one sort or another which is, you know, approaching half the world population. — That's so many people. So why are we talking about games today? Well, because lots of games use themes of a climate disaster as part of their storyline. Some of my favorite games do that. And there are a lot of games today that are working to shift players mindsets towards protecting nature and reducing climate. — Yeah, there's Daybreak, a cooperative board game about stopping climate change. — And The Sims, the OG game about life simulation, has an eco lifestyle expansion pack where players can run a clean water and recycling project or build wind turbines to decrease their carbon footprint. — And those are just a couple examples. So today, we're pressing start and talking about how games let people explore climate realities and possible futures in ways that encourage engagement rather than anxiety and despair. Jacob Geller spends a lot of time thinking about games, how they're designed, the story lines, the art, and much, much more. He's a video essaist and author of How a Game Lives. Jacob ### Jacob Geller on video games and climate themes [5:00] welcome to Climate One. — Oh, thank you for having me. — So, you play video games sort of for a living and write about them and analyze them. Do you have an idea of, you know, roughly maybe how many hours a week or a year you spend playing? — Oh, that's it's an impossible question. Um, you know, when you make your hobby your passion and your career at the same time, you just kind of lose track of all hours. But I last year I rolled credits on about 60 video games. Uh which is a significant time commitment because you can watch a movie in two hours but some games take 50 100 hours to beat. — Wow. So rolled credits means you played the whole game all the way through. — Yes. And some of those games are an hour long but then some of them took months. — Days. Yeah. Months. Yeah. Okay. So, it's hard to make blanket statements about video games because it's a huge and diverse field. Tons of creators, tons of companies, so on. But many games use a version of a climate crisis, you know, where humans have essentially destroyed the world as we know it as a starting point for the story and the characters. Why do you think this is a common trope? I think games love to put you in challenging situations in which you need to use a number of skills to survive. Recently, the idea of kind of scavenging, collecting maybe like, you know, rusted or decrepit parts and building back something great is very popular in games. And all of these things work really well into uh dystopic settings. And a kind of postclimate crisis world provides a really good one of those. Uh especially because games often frame those worlds as very beautiful. Uh of kind of like, you know, the rivers are running through the streets of our cities and trees have overgrown our skyscrapers. You know, almost a humans have died out and nature has retaken over kind of world. — Yeah, I can see that there's some appeal there, though. It's kind of a scary concept, but also yeah, this idea of nature reemerging. Let's talk for just a second about a specific game. So, there's one called Frost Punk. This is a society survival game as you're describing. People have to make decisions in the last city on Earth to survive an apocalyptic winter. So, I don't want to stretch too far, but you've played this game. Are there climate lessons, climate ideas embedded within a game like that? — Absolutely. I mean, it is the context in which the entire game takes place. And Frost Punk is kind of a game built on difficult decisions, you know, where you are already at such an extreme state where there is this incredibly powerful ice age that is kind of encroaching on your city that you are constantly having to choose. Do you mind more fuel for your generator, even if that means people are working 18-hour shifts? Do you allow child labor? Do you stretch food rationing even further? And so it's all of these kind of nightmare questions where there are no good answers, but the game forces you to pick one because it's saying, "This is how extreme the situation is. This is what you're going to have to do if you want to survive this kind of crisis. " — That's kind of dark. — It's an incredibly dark game. I think it goes into the category of game where I would say it's very interesting and it's compelling. I don't really enjoy playing it. It's not something that I play to relax. — Yeah. And do you think there's a message that kind of a takeaway from the designers or is it more just to create this experience as a you know as a game? — I don't want to speak for the designers. Maybe they just wanted a fun context to make kind of a survival game. But for me it is a kind of eminently more imaginable apocalypse than say aliens descended or Terminator robots took over. you know, this feels almost foreseeable. And so, you know, when I'm playing the game, I am thinking, "My goodness, I hope we do everything we can to stop us from ever reaching the point where we have to decide on this kind of food rationing or child labor or whatever it is. " — Yeah. Let's keep it in the futuristic non reality. So, as you touched on, a lot of games involve elements of a kind of climate altered present or future, not just the setting, but even just the game play. So, resource scarcity, conflict, survival, rationing, you know, are those from a game design standpoint necessary because they introduce conflict and you need that for the drama? I do think that, you know, creating tension is always kind of leads to interesting game mechanics. You know, if supplies were everywhere and easy to find, then a player might not be motivated to go into more dangerous areas because they needed something specific. recently even, you know, recent Battlefield games, which I don't think of as a very thoughtful franchise, have incorporated ideas of climate disaster into them because it's more interesting to have a giant multiplayer shooting match if an enormous weather event breaks out in the middle of it. uh you know there are ways in that introducing these kind of disasters can just create more interesting scenarios but the question that I'm always thinking about with these is are they just using them as fun context or is there a more thoughtful reason that the game is putting itself in this specific situation? — Right? And that probably just depends to some extent on the game and the designers and so forth. So, we've talked a bit about some of the more dystopian frames and elements. There's also a lot of games that are ### World-building games that employ climate solutions and strategies [11:00] classified as worldb building where players create new cities or civilizations from scratch. To me, these seem more optimistic because the frame is somewhat more positive and players have a lot of agency. I mean, they have agency in lots of games, but you know, they can kind of create a world that they want. Do you think that's a fair assessment? — I think so. I mean for decades in games there have been these ideas of citybuilding games. Sim City is kind of the you know the progenitor of these and they've continued and many players I think find it rewarding among themselves to create their version of a utopian city and that often includes the city runs on renewable energy or we have lots of you know accessible public transport or something. But there's also kind of an interesting side effect that these games can have, which is that sometimes in pressuring players to make an effective city, they can kind of present the ideas or like the problems of modern civilization in just kind of a naturally occurring way. Or if a player wants to build a modern city, they build the city center and they build suburbs and then they realize just how much road infrastructure has to be built to connect the suburbs to the cities and they realize just how much of their city has to be taken up with parking lots because those cars all need to go somewhere. And so it's actually not an uncommon experience for players to be gently radicalized against cars just in the process of trying to make an effective and efficient city. — I like that. That's really interesting. I was going to bring up another game in this world of games, one called City Cities Skyline. It's very much what you're describing of a game people can use to build a city. And I haven't played this game, but from what I understand, you can do things like implement congestion pricing or offer free public transportation and then see how that plays out as you're saying, you know, how it affects maybe how many people drive cars and where you need to build things. So that to me that's really fascinating. — Yeah. You know, when you're making one of these city designing games, the question is always for a designer, where do you reduce the complexity? Because it would not be fun to make a player do every element of bureaucracy that goes into making a city. But in putting back in some of these what we think of as nittygritty legislative controls of congestion pricing and whatnot, the game is actually centering those questions of what it means to be an environmentally conscious city or a public transportation focused city. They're making the player think about that in the same way that if the game implemented tons of mechanics based around waste management, suddenly all the players would be thinking about how their own city dealt with waste management. It it's just a question of kind of what do the designers choose to prioritize when they're giving players controls. — Mhm. So, broadly speaking, who is making games that have a core focus on climate change? And are these games generally for a popular or more niche indie audience? — All sorts of teams of all sorts of sizes are making games that use climate change in some way. I will say that the more pointed games, the ones that are more kind of specifically have a perspective and can maybe be a little more explicit with their politics tend to be made by small independent teams. Some games, the biggest games have teams of hundreds or thousands of people working on them. Independent games often have a handful, five, 10, or even sometimes like one person. And those experiences I think can be much more personal and much more specific about how they're interacting with the changing climate. — Yeah. When we spoke before you mentioned one I'd like to talk about umangi generation which you told me translates to red sky generation and this is made by New Zealand developer after pretty dramatic kind of apocalyptic wildfires in Australia. Can you talk a little bit about where the game originated and what the designer's intent was in offering this game? — Yeah, so Umaragi Generation, it was made in response to the late 2019, early 2020 bushfires in Australia. Uh the developer is Malerie and you know is specifically dealing with questions of what it means to be indigenous and colonized in the context of this giant changing climate. And the game starts out and it seems that you're just kind of playing as youth who are kind of chilling out while the world ends. The first several levels are you playing as just kind of punk teens. It's actually a photography game and so your main mechanic is taking pictures of things and you're just taking pictures of your friends and different things on the skyline and whatnot. And as the game goes on, it becomes more clear that the game is not just about wildfires, which the g the game kind of uses this allegory of kaiju. So it's almost like there's Godzilla, but Godzilla in this case is a metaphor for climate change. The real villain of the game is not the kaiju though. It is the kind of institutions and industry that have allowed it to get there. You know, you realize that the naturally occurring things are maybe unpredictable or they're uncontrollable. They're hard to stop, but they've been allowed to happen this much because of the kind of neglect of companies and institutions that are supposed to be overseeing this. And so where the game ultimately ends up is not a confrontation with the climate disaster specifically, but a confrontation with police and government who are cracking down on climate protesters. It becomes very pointed at the idea of like who is perpetuating the climate crisis and who is profiting from what does it mean to protest these things. — Wow, that's really interesting. So, how popular are games like that in terms of the number of people playing them? Do these kind of climate or green games stack up to the more popular ones? It's difficult to put a specific number on it, but I do think that the widely popular kind of like more geared to a general audience games are less specific about the climate crisis. And games like Umarangi Generation, which are really pointed and really explicit in its politics, attract a more niche audience. You know, for me, I played that game because I was attracted to the idea of this kind of political message, but I am someone who really keeps on top of interesting developments in the indie scene. And I think most people probably haven't heard about it at all. It's harder to make a pitch on it's a photography game that's dealing with industry's failure to contain a climate crisis than what if you were a cool character running around abandoned buildings. It's a much easier video game to pitch. — Totally. Yeah. As we wrap up here, I'm wondering if you have recommendations of games that you think encapsulate some of this, whether it's a game that's enjoyable for playing, you know, regardless of the message, or a game, as you said, that makes you kind of think about these things, confront some of these questions. Are there any that you'd recommend to players? — I would certainly recommend Umarangi Generation. I would also recommend there's a developer named Carara Stone who's made a couple games that are very both climate focused and climate conscious in how they're made. Uh she's made a game called Unear You, which is in theory a game about having kind of a digital AI therapist, but becomes a game about kind of the toll that having an AI therapist might wreak on the world around it. And another game called Known Mysteries, which is about living in kind of a company town that's being polluted. Known mysteries is fascinating because it actually runs on a solar powered server that she just has in I believe her backyard. Um and powers the whole game purely through that meaning that it is a an emission net zero game which is a very uncommon thing. — That's really neat. I mean that is a whole aspect of this we haven't gotten into and the climate carbon footprint if you want to say of creating games is obviously something to consider and I know a lot of companies and developers are wrestling with that impact as well. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Jacob Geller is a video essaist and author of How a Game Lives. — Thank you so much for having me on. It was a pleasure. Coming up, a developer shares her approach to designing games with an environmental message and real world impact. We don't tell the player what to do. We don't say recycle at home or eat less meat, but we show a story that shows devastation to nature and the player is then naturally learning as well. That's up next. Press play to continue. This is Climate 1. I'm Cusha Navadar. I love it when my work and hobbies overlap. So, to prepare for our next guest, obviously I had to play the game she designed. It's called Long Leaf Valley. It's a mobile game free to download, which you can play on your phone. The mechanics are simple. You're merging objects to advance the game. And the further you advance, the more actions you can take, saving animals, creating habitats, planting trees, and as you score more points, those points translate into actual trees being planted in the real world. Laura Carter is CEO and founder of Trees Please Games, and she is a lifelong ### Laura Carter on her early love of games and environmental issues [21:30] environmentalist. — I just grew up loving games. I just remember from a really young age just playing games with my granddad, with my dad, with my sister. I grew up on Mega Drive games. It was Wonder Boy, Outrun, Sonic, a lot of those kind of classic games. And then became a PlayStation girl playing a lot of Tomb Raider and Jack and Daxter and a lot of arcade style games. I think for me I was just always drawn to games that felt really fun, quite light, nothing too dark and heavy and it was just quite a sort of a social fun escapist experience for me and it just was a natural like almost an obvious thing where there was no question in my mind that I wanted to work in games and wanted to make games. — Yeah. I I'm happy that you mentioned Sonic cuz I remember the moment that I bought a Sonic game on Game Gear with my mom. Like I remember the shop. I remember pointing to it and I have actually have socks that are Sonic the Hedgehog socks now. So, I'm a diehard. Um, you spent most of your career working in the game industry while having side passions around environmental causes. And about 7 years ago, you merged those two interests and you founded your company, which is Trees Please Games. And you're explicitly making games here that protect nature, fight climate change, and are loved by millions. Was there a moment or a thought where you realized that there was a need for your company and what was the story behind that? You said it very similarly to how I feel, which is really a merging of my two halves of myself, which is very much around a sort of a purpose or a calling for nature and the planet. And just I think just from a very young age, I think I was three or four when I told my parents that I was going to be a vegetarian, that I didn't want to eat animals, that I started really caring about pollution and the environment. Um, so just — three years old. At three or four, you said? — Yeah. I think as soon as I was old enough to understand what a chicken was or what a cow was, you know, I I knew. So, yeah, I think it was just always there. And into my teens and 20ies, I did fundraising and, you know, activism and and very involved in all sorts of different campaigns around animals and environment. But meanwhile, I had this career in games and as I mentioned before, growing up playing a lot of games as a kid and that was my kind of my fun and you know, then the other side is my purpose. And I got to a point where it just really clicked that these two things had to come together and that the real opportunity, the real kind of activism where I could make a much bigger impact at scale was through reaching gaming audiences. You know, I was working on a game that had hundreds of millions of downloads. And you know, this that's where engagement time is, right? It's people are spending more time playing games than any other form of media. And it feels like the games industry was far behind other forms of entertainment. you know, we've seen in TV and in film and in the music industries lots of compelling documentaries or big movements around, you know, music as a way as to create, you know, awareness around different causes. And it felt like the games industry really wasn't kind of leveraging all of that engagement time to do good. So yeah, I decided to quit my job at a massive games company making one of the top grossing games in the world to actually start out and see if we could, you know, make a game and build a business that could reach vast audiences, but really leverage that scale to do good for animals and nature. — To me, it sounds like you're saying in order to make the biggest difference possible, you have to meet people where they're spending their time. Is that fair to say? — Yeah. This stuff keeps me awake at night, which I'm sure it does a lot of people who are really invested in environment and nature and planet and um I am just always looking for ways that I can do more impact and you know activism that actually really resonates and is valuable — and so it was obvious to me that like where people spend their time and money in games it's such a huge industry makes such an incredible amount of money and has engagement that there's a huge lost opportunity in terms of making a difference by doing impact gaming ultimately. — Yeah, it's a good point because environmental causes do keep people up at night. You know what else keeps people up at night is Candy Crush. So, they are kind of strange bed fellows if you'll excuse the pun. — 100%. — Let's talk about your game that you ### LongLeaf Valley and storytelling in games [26:00] created. Your flagship game is called Long Leaf Valley. The story of Long Leaf Valley asks players to uncover crimes of a mystery corporation behind a national park's destruction and development. So, this is an environmental challenge, but one thing that struck me is that it's different from what's driving real world climate emergency. So, for this game, how did you think about the story that you're telling? So like real world activism that I would be involved in versus the way that we portray things in games has to be obviously slightly different because games are ultimately about fun or escapism or whatever like motivation that players have. They don't come to games first and foremost to become educated or to uh make a change in the world. And so we have to really consider that carefully and engagement particularly in free-to-play gaming. So we we're focused on mobile freeto-play gaming and so that means the game is free to download. That means that keeping people's attention is incredibly difficult. There's tens of thousands of different free-to-play games available on the app store. So you're really competing in such a incredibly competitive market. Yeah. — So you have to be careful in terms of how you know preachy you come across, how heavy you are with some of these themes. So we really have to balance hooking people in, exciting people, um making the game fun and thinking about what does the audience want? They ultimately, particularly with the types of games we play, is often about relaxation, escapism, and quite casual but meaningful experiences. And so the story in Long Leaf Valley was really about people feeling a sense of purpose restoring and protecting a national park or a wild space. Um rescuing animals and nature, but it being a really positive, uplifting experience, but meanwhile, there's also themes of drama and interesting characters and compelling mysteries that the player is, you know, always kind of guessing at. And so you need those different aspects of light and joy and drama in order to to make the story compelling ultimately. — I'm really happy that you brought up this idea of being preachy because I think that's what a lot of people in different parts of climate world think about a lot when it comes to communications and storytelling. How do you think about it? Like what's the level at which you feel like you're being too preachy or do you have rules that you follow or is it just a gut check? Like tell me more about that when you're building a video game. — Yeah, I mean I think you could experiment and test this stuff to the nth degree and still maybe never get it exactly perfect. And obviously you're dealing with millions of different players and different players have got different levels of what's too frey for them versus you know other players who are incredibly sensitive to feel like they're being told anything. So it's difficult to get it exactly right. I think for us knowing that we are a mission focused studio and everything we do has to really push the boundaries of impact gaming you know we're kind of willing to take risks there and perhaps we are more on the preachy side than other games but ultimately yes we do have to balance that with enjoyment and fun I think about like a big part of my inspiration was the movie Wally um which is so good because it's such a clear yeah message it's such a, you know, compelling vision into the future of Earth that's been, you know, destroyed and everybody's living in space and um looking for life that they can restore on Earth and but it doesn't ever feel preachy because it's full of those comedy moments. Um, and the film doesn't turn to you and say, "Listen, you know, this is what you got to do to get your act together. " They're just observing the story and they're kind of putting two and two together themselves without being told. And I think that's the most important thing for us is we think about we don't tell the player what to do. We don't say recycle at home or eat less meat, but we show a story that shows devastation to nature and how the trees are being cut down. We have the characters um interfacing with each other saying, "Oh my god, I had no idea that animal agriculture was the leading cause of deforestation. " And they're learning between them. The player is then naturally learning as well. But I think anytime that you turn to an individual and tell them what to do, we know that from our own interactions with our families, right, that if someone tells you what to do, even if they're right, you're naturally defensive. — Yeah. Especially if you're the child. Yeah. — Yes. Or an adult dealing with an adult parent, right? Totally. Um so yeah, I think being not preachy is about the way that we convey the information rather than not conveying the information. And you, Laura, you are making a game, like you said, that's a premium game. You're trying to create the lowest barrier to entry possible. Why do you want to approach games in that way versus making a different kind of game that might be more suited for people who are really into video games, for instance? That's actually a really important point for us and it's very much a part of our strategy which is that I mean there's all different types of strategies that work really well for making top performing games but some of those might be for example you know a slightly more niche product that has a like you say a more traditional core gaming audience maybe it's played by people that you know play on a console or a PC and they're willing to spend a lot of money on a game and play for many many hours or weeks or months versus you a much more casual audience that might have a mass market audience. You know, everybody has the potential to be a gamer, anyone who has a smartphone in their pocket. But ultimately for me that was when thinking about the initial strategy when starting Trees Please, you know, how can I make activism become as big as possible in gaming, it's well, let's find where the biggest audience is. And ultimately that is through mobile freeto play and through you know casual games and people who often don't consider themselves to be games. And as I say, this was a big part of my inspiration was seeing how, you know, I always played games as a kid and all throughout my youth. And now my mom plays like three times as much games as I do, but she wouldn't call herself a gamer, but she plays, you know, the Candy Crushes and the Words with Friends and these casual social, you know, light games that still have an incredible amount of depth. So that's a big part of what we do is make games that feel accessible and that can reach a vast audience and that's both great from you know purely from a games perspective because you've got a vast audience to build a you know a hit game with. Totally. — Um but also from an impact perspective we've got a vast audience that we can use to both capture donations for different causes and also to um a big part of our strategy is around normalizing planet positive behaviors. And so the biggest audience possible that we can, you know, shift public opinion around is obviously where we want to target and focus. — Yeah. And speaking of the causes, let's go back to Longleaf Alley and the mechanism towards that because in the game, players earn tokens that translate into real tree planting credits, which you accomplish by partnering with tree planting organizations. And so far, you've helped plant more than 2 million trees. And my question to you is why do you think it's useful to get people to play a game to accomplish tree planting rather than simply encouraging them to for instance donate directly to tree ### Why build tree-planting into the gameplay [33:30] planting efforts. — So we're approaching 3 million trees now which is a massive exciting milestone that we're really looking forward to hitting — and I think the reason we've been able to plant that level of trees is exactly because we've embedded it in games and not asked people to go elsewhere to do something. And I think the reality is that the vast majority of people really care about the planet. They really care about nature. some cause or other, whether it's not climate, it could be whatever different need or campaign. But the reality is that the vast majority of those people don't necessarily donate consistently or regularly or do activism or campaigning. And that's just because life is so busy or people don't know what to do or how to help or where to start. And so I think the really important thing is to just in such a culture of just busyness, right, and just information overload is to just make things really easy for people. Like one of the ways for us as well is not only keeping it in game, but just to not build anything additional in game. So we don't send people to a different menu or or a separate website. Just keep it in your existing systems, in your existing loops means that players don't have to think about it and it's just effortless. And then people feel like purposeful and like they've done something great in a way that's really simple, which means that it's a win-win where the player feels good. You've raised money for charity and also you've retained the player within the game as well and you get that feedback loop, that reward, and that's fun for players. It means that the fund's happening regularly, but it's also meaning that when you're building impact into that loop as well, you're building um a repetition of of impact of positive player behavior and that's reinforcing that in the real world and making those behaviors stick more. — Yeah. How about skepticism though? I'm thinking about skepticism you've probably faced about the value of I mean tree planting as a carbon sequestration solution. I mean, do you have evidence that your tree planting work is making a difference? — So, we've been very selective about the different tree planting partners that we work with. They've been already reviewed meticulously and recommended by organizations like the UN environment policy team. So the organizations that we work with actually monitor and protect the trees for like a 10-year period. And they work very closely with local communities to build value amongst the communities to create jobs and to create value where the trees are more important to those communities when they're thriving as opposed to being cut down. — Yeah. Let's go to exploring games as a medium for experiencing this kind of work. like how can games let people explore climate realities and futures that are very possible in a way that allows for greater engagement rather than I reading a science report that just leads to anxiety and despair. — Just the fact that it's such an immersive medium, right? The fact that you know the player is actually doing rather than viewing and learning means that they feel that sense of agency means that players just have that additional buy in. I think the fact that you can influence the outcome of a game, right? Means that there's a different level of engagement that you can get. there's such an effective system for kind of shaping thoughts and feelings and ultimately behavior because of that level of immersion and emotional engagement. So I think where games are able to let the player feel like there's a sense of hope, there's a sense of, you know, I can influence this is much more compelling than just being inundated with negative sentiment or statistics. — I think that's such a good point. The sense that there is agency. You're not just seeing a story unfold. there is this sense that you have control over what the story is much different than like a documentary for instance. So that I'm really happy that I heard you say that. I think I'm gonna carry that with me for a while because there is that sense of um you said hope. I don't even know. Yeah, I think hope is true but the sense of like I have agency that is so important because that's what's missing from life in a lot of — even if we don't have agency to solve it in the real world if you can escape into a game and feel like you're solving these problems. I think making people feel that little bit better through the experience they're having in game is certainly something. — Yeah. Laura Carter is CEO and founder of Trees Please Games. Her game that's available right now is called Long Leaf Valley. Laura, thanks so much for making games do good work and for hanging out with us. Appreciate it. — Thank you so much and really a great opportunity to chat to you and some really awesome interesting questions. So, I've really enjoyed our conversation. Thanks so much. Coming up, video games allow players to experience alternate realities and future climate impacts in a way other forms of media can't. Nobody can really understand what does a few degrees of temperature mean and look like, but the video games offer a crack in the door so we can start to anticipate what might come next and then we can be more adaptive or resilient. We're going to the next level when climate one continues. — Kusha, are you familiar with the green games jam? — Not really. Can you tell me about it? — Sure. Yeah. Uh so it's basically an annual competition for the gaming industry to showcase their efforts to drive player engagement and activation around environmental and climate issues and it's run by the Playing for the Planet alliance which is actually part of the UN's environment program. — The UN they're doing things with video games. — The UN. That's right. — Oh, that's interesting. And I So let me make sure I got it. So as a game developer, you're getting resources to incorporate environmental themes into your game. But I'm guessing since it's the UN, you're also getting support about how to actually make your game development more carbon neutral. Is that right? — Exactly. And I talked about all this with Sam Barrett, chief of youth education and advocacy at the UN environment program. And my first question to him was simple. Why video games? — I get asked that question quite often, like why video games? And I think for us, we hold it in balance with a ### Sam Barratt on why video games medium is so critical for engagement [40:00] portfolio approach. So we work on formal education, getting governments to think about green jobs and skills. We work with universities, but on nonformal education outside of the core curriculum, we think we need to go where people are in the mediums they love and they spend their time. And having spent a lot of time with my son playing various games with my friends playing games, I know that the video games medium really is winning hands down when it comes to engagement, the attention economy. And so we think the video games industry has high potential for impact in terms of engagement and that's why we've uh dropped tank there. — Yeah. And can you say a bit more about the size of the audience that you think you have to work with here? — Yeah. I mean, the size of the audience is monstrous. It's 3. 3 billion people that play games. And they range from my mother-in-law that will sit with Candy Crush just flipping left and right. They range to my wife who plays Wle in the morning. Uh they range to my son that's got a whole list of games. Uh some of which are approved, some of which aren't. Um, and it ranges from a whole spectrum of games, but it's 3. 3 billion people, so 50% of the planet Earth are playing games, whether it's casual or serious. So, it's massive. And the thing that I think is really different about games, it's a lean-in medium. It is the ability to really engage with people and be active with them. Like when you play a game, you are the hero on that journey. Uh, sometimes when you listen to music, you're like, I love this artist. and you're emotionally attached. When you play sport, it's a collective endeavor. But I think there's something very different about this cultural lever that if you pull it, it can allow people to socialize that conversation with their friends that they play with. It can allow them to experience and journey by play to learn, whatever it might be through that game mechanic. And so I think video games have a bit of magic in them, something slightly different. Uh that if we could harness it and tap it and touch it in the right way, always respecting those that make the games uh to know what they're doing, then I think there's something in there. — Yeah. There's an interesting oped you wrote earlier this year called All Still to Play For. And in it, you mention one of the sort of unique powers of video games, even ones that aren't fully immersive, like virtual reality or something that even basic video games can give us a glimpse, a sense of an alternate reality, possibly a future one, and particularly things that might be hard for us to imagine day-to-day like a climate disaster or what climate impacts we might be facing — in, you know, the next few decades. So can you explain a bit more of what games or scenes you're referencing there? What you're thinking of? — Yeah. So there's a great quote that I often refer to which I can't source but it's about the way we talk about the future shapes it. So the kind of the stories that we tell ourselves can be prophetic and there are many games where the hero has a journey which can be fairly bad in terms of the outcomes uh and they're fighting against all odds. There's so many games out there where the character is looking to either survive or try and make the world the one that we all want. So I think there are a number of games out there that I think are really interesting about how the people that play them can see either a very deep immersion in nature. So, and there's an opportunity through the landscape of the biodiversity that's often in the in the background of the game could come through to the foreground or to look at that very difficult systems game where you have to keep things in balance. And I think we've seen that with — Alo 1800, Minecraft where it's all about how you can keep everything on an even keel. — Many of the games that I've played in my past and present I think have that jeopardy in them. But the jeopardy I think is pretty similar to the jeopardy that we face outside of game in the real world around what kind of future we face. So for me I do think video games offer the chance for us to think about what might come next to explore it to test it. I think nobody can really understand what does a few degrees of temperature mean and look like, but the video games offer a crack in the door so we can start to anticipate what might come next and then we can be more adaptive or resilience to that future which we may or may not want. — Elsewhere in this episode, we talk with a games reviewer, Jacob Geller, who really views them as an art form. you know, there's so much um beauty in some of these landscapes that are created that are all virtual that can also have a really affecting power on our human psyche, right? Because as you said, you're sort of exploring these landscapes that may or may not be akin to what we see today or what we could see in the future. — We talk with Jacob about how many games tend toward a dystopian frame. That's kind of a common trope. It introduces drama and tension. and it's useful in a gameplay sense, but also it's shaping the way we're thinking as you said. So, how do you think about what players take away from a game that's framed more dystopian rather than, you know, utopian? — Yeah. So, I mean, I do think that's a problem that's not just in this medium, but also in film and TV, which is it's easier often to tell a pessimistic narrative that you recover from rather than an optimistic narrative that you then participate within. So I think there is a dynamic tension there around how we as a species like to view ourselves and I think we always have crises whether it's a nuclear war crisis whether it's a climate crisis I think we've always had a shadow that leans over us and that leans to stories kind of coming out in that way but things I like is like John Master the lead character in Red Dead Redemption galloping around on the horse uh across the US I don't know when it was sometime last century but I know a lot of people enjoy just going on the top the mountain and just looking down at the view. And so the awe of nature, the awe of landscapes, the wonder of the world, and the richness of the artistry of those that make the games, I think is really I agree with Jacob who said that it is a form of culture, as a form of art. — So you helped found the Playing for the Planet alliance in 2019. What was the idea inspiration behind that? There have been a lot of people that have been doing some thinking on this. So Jude who's now at um Planet Play has been doing some great work and I'd had a ### Playing for the Planet Alliance and Green Games Jam [46:30] couple of conversations with her in London. Trista Patterson who was at Xbox at Gradarandal. She and I had some ideas about what we think we could do. So there's a number of people that were scratching the surface of this. But what I've always been interested in is big ideas. And I play with my son a lot particularly in in uh the co era where he wasn't really at school. Um, but the games were a way to connect with friends and play and he had the bad luck for me to be one of those people that played with him. So, um, I just saw how much time he played and we were trying to manage and mitigate that to some degree as fairly good parents. But um I felt like having worked in my past on organizing climate marches to get 400 500 a million people out on the streets that there's something really interesting in what the video games industry can do in terms of capturing the imagination. But also what I think it can do is it can give people the opportunity to be incentivized to take action to have information presented to them that I don't think any other medium can because say for example an artist on the radio says I care about this I would like you to do this you have to remember what she's he or she has said remember where you have to go and then do the thing whereas I think in the games domain it's all there for you so I do think it's an interesting place where the opportunity and the attention is captured so you convert that into action relatively efficiently if you come up with a great idea. So that is a bit of the theory behind it. But the practice of it was also talking to people like Jim Ryan at Sony PlayStation um who then wrote to Phil Spencer at Xbox and said normally we're mortal enemies on many things but on this cause we can agree to come together. — And for me change happens when people down their weapons and choose to collaborate rather than compete. And so the spirit of playing for the planet is how can a sector lean in together on a cause to see what difference that they can make uh when they choose to. — Mhm. So a survey by the nonprofit Planet Play released last year found nearly 50% of gamers reduced their environmental impact after playing games that highlighted the issues of climate change. And about the same number of respondents said games can play a role in solving climate change or addressing environmental issues by raising awareness, educating players. That's all really encouraging. Do you have any real world experience or stories that backs that up of changes you've seen from players? — Yeah, I think there's examples I'll give you which are beyond those macro stats. One is Wuga who have got a lovely game called June's Journey that's always in the Green Game Jam. normally always wins players choice and they ran an activation that shows how you can build engagement by putting these themes in play. They ran it for four months and there was a massive bump in daily uses for them 1. 5% above what they would normally get which is significant. They were able to raise much more money than they anticipated which planted 25,000 trees. And so by putting this theme in that game, they got really good response from their audience who were looking for things like this so they could play games that were there to make a difference and to give them that opportunity to kind of click through for impact. So that's one. I think there's something interesting around what Sony have been doing with Oxford University. Uh so they developed a game with Media Molecule to look at food choices and they gave players a budget where they could go and buy some food and learn to play to understand what difference a plant-based diet could make. And they found that even 3 weeks after people playing the game, 20% of the people were still staying with their plant-based habits, which I think is really interesting. And the difference wasn't just that people were being given the incentive to do it, but it was the socialization of it. So for me, the way that the games industry has this superpower is the reinforcement of choice by people like me doing things like I think the right thing to do gives you validation around the choices that you're making. And so this Oxford research is fairly breakthroughish in inverted commerce and that I think is what we want to spend a bit more time on to see what's the difference that makes the difference and to look at that a bit more. — Yeah, that is really interesting. I mean the socialization there's so much discussion around that in the climate space just this idea of kind of positive examples. You see your neighbors have solar panels and you think oh maybe I should do that. You see EVs being driven around your neighborhood or you know your work and you think oh maybe I'll get on board with that. And so this is another version of that for people who are spending a lot of time as many of us do in the games space. So according to some estimates, the gaming industry represents the carbon footprint of a small country and your alliance is partially focused on decarbonizing the industry. What progress have you seen on this front? — So yeah, I mean I think the carbon intensity of the games industry is nowhere near the size of aviation or steel or cement. So what we're looking to do is to support the industry to become an exemplar sector that has a plan that it's putting in place. Then also if it's going to be calling on players to maybe consider doing things and they haven't taken action themselves, then that's a slightly hollow approach that might get seen through fairly quickly. — So the work ### Why it’s important for games industry to decarbonize [52:00] — exactly the two circles overlay each other. So I think on the decarbonization we've seen some really interesting things coming up and just at GDC the other week fascinating conversations with — what's GDC? — GDC is a games developers congress which is now a festival over in San Francisco and we hosted a round table with about 15 of some of the biggest video games companies in the world around what they're going to be doing on energy efficiency and that was with engines that kind of power most the games. So whether that's Unreal and Unity, that's with the platforms — and there's some really good energy about what people can do with energy in a different way which was really reassuring and um other actors like the sustainable games alliance got other good ideas which are worth looking at as well but I'm seeing momentum on this but the main thing is speed. That's the thing I worry about more than anything. — Yeah, and I think it's a fair point that this is not one of the biggest contributors. So certainly it doesn't have the same impact as maybe some other sectors that really need addressing. When we spoke before you mentioned that players have an interest in this. From a aspect of wanting to have games that are lighter, that run faster, that take less energy and thus let them play longer. What do you hear from players about these priorities? Do they like playing green games? Do they care if the companies decarbonize? You know, what what's kind of their assessment? — Yeah. So there is evidence that players are are into this for a range of reasons. Some of them are altruistic, but also about helping them play a game for longer and lighter without the buffering. I do think we've seen with both Xbox and Sony doing uh efficiency toolkits for studio CUS that they are being taken up and being deployed, which is great. Uh that wasn't happening 2 years ago, but it's happening now. So, I think it's in everyone's interest to not spend so much money on power by having games that are running too hard, to be able to potentially play uh for longer, for lighter, and then also to think about how we can support the industry to reduce its emissions as fast as possible. — Yeah. Okay. What advice do you give today's game developers and companies for how to incorporate climate consciousness into their work? — H We'd rather see ourselves as the librarian that can offer a great book for somebody to go away and think about which can inspire them to think how they could then deploy it within their context, within their culture and within their organization. So, so for us, I think there are two tricks of the trade. One is to give people great advice, science-based, let them know what has worked, some really good use cases, um, which we have on the site, and then also to get people together in a room where they look at everyone else, say, "Oh, you're doing that. I hadn't thought of that. " So, for me, ideas are currency that people like to trade in. And so, we try and give people the opportunity to come to the table and do that. I love that because we've recently interviewed a couple mayors on climate one and they say they have a similar way of thinking that they like stealing ideas from each other. There's this sort of friendly competition but that is ultimately rooted in like what's best for their city and for their constituents. So that's interesting that sort of healthy friendly competition maybe. — Yeah. And the thing that I think is really encouraging is um uh Supercell, who do some of the biggest games on the planet on your mobile phone, um really start to think about this about converting this from not just being something that happens as a season like with the Green Game Jam, but making it part of a ritual. So then it can become part of an identity. And so what they're starting to see is engagement rates of 90% in some of their offerings on these themes because people now expect it of the games like heyday that they do these kind of things. And I play these kind of games cuz they give me the opportunity to make a difference. — And so in the same way that in my youth I used to love going to the scouts mainly to spend time in the woods, hang out with mates and do different things. I used to love we had this countryside club at school. I had the chance to really kind of get close to birds. And birds for me are the things that I always look up to the sky and it'll tell me uh if all is right or wrong with the world about when the swallow arrives, when it leaves, the sounds I hear of the chiff chaff, when they come, when they go. And so for me, I think the rhythms and the sounds of the planet are things that really happen in the real world. And so what I'm really thinking about is how do we keep that connection to nature so people are on their screens because kind of challenging that I think is tricky and we're seeing that all over the shop whether it's on social media or video games or even with AI as it comes through. But what I'm thinking about more and more is about that connection to nature delivers so massively on mental health. It delivers so much and about if we spend time in nature we'll fight for it. So the challenge that I'm thinking about is how do we use Playing for the Planet and the themes of the natural world to make sure that people spend time in it so that they think about the value that it can give all of us and we do not take it for granted because that's one of the greatest risks I think we all face as a species on this planet. — Sam Barrett is chief of youth education and advocacy at the UN Environment Program. Thank you so much for joining us on Climate One. Ariana, it was an absolute pleasure. — Hey listeners, it's Ariana and Kusha. It's the end of the show and we're excited to share a message we got from a listener in response to a past climate. One More Thing. So, a few weeks ago, I mentioned the ongoing efforts in many states to legalize balcony solar. Listener Sarah Woodhouse used our handydandy speak pipe on our website and left us this message. ### Climate One More Thing [58:00] — Hi, thank you for the climate. One more thing about um balcony solar. I just wanted to let you all know I'm calling from Virginia. My name is Sarah Woodhouse and our general assembly has passed balcony solar and it awaits the signature of Abigail Spamberger, our Democratic governor. So she is expected to sign it. It was passed in both houses, the House of Delegates. It was passed unanimously, which was very interesting and wonderful. and only eight state senators in Virginia State Senate voted against it. Thanks for covering that and for all you do. Bye-bye. — Hey Sarah, thank you so much for one listening, but even more so for taking the time to share your experience with us through this lovely message. — Yes, and you can leave us a message, too. We want to hear from you. Go to climate. org/hello. — And that's our show. Thanks for listening. Hey, talking about climate can be hard. I know, but it could also be exciting and interesting. And more than anything, it's critical to address the transitions we need to make in our society. So, please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or a review. You can do it right now on your device, or consider joining us on Patreon and supporting the show that way. Climate 1 is a production of the Commonwealth Club. Our team includes our final boss, Greg Dalton, Brad Marshland, Jenny Park, Austin Cologne, Megan Basilia, Kushian Avdar, and Rachel Lacy. Our theme music is by George Young. I'm Ariana Brochious.