Day: June 5, 2017

The Polar Hub

“The Polar Learning and Responding Climate Change Education Partnership (PoLAR CCEP) seeks to inform public understanding of and response to climate change through the creation of novel educational approaches that utilize fascination with shifting polar environments and are geared towards lifelong learners.” – The Polar Hub

Troubled Lands

“Explore the geopolitics of climate change in Troubled Lands, a 30-min educational game for ages 10 to Adult. Playable as a classroom activity and ideal grades 6 through college, it is a simple to learn yet morally provocative game that requires players to address competing motivations of self-preservation and group loyalty. Many sustainability themes including communal negotiation, governance, inequality, power, and the tragedy of the commons are present in the game. Troubled Lands has been successfully used to support learning in many courses. Troubled Lands is a revised version of a game called The Farmers about which several academic articles have been written.” – Troubled Lands

Integrating Climate Change Mechanics Into a Common Pool Resource Game

“The topic of climate change offers unique challenges to simulation game designers largely because standard game mechanics fail to capture the complexity of this real-world problem. Climate change dynamics are characterized by the second-order delayed effects of carbon emissions on global temperatures and by political actors, who often have unique individual goals and asymmetrical abilities.”

Climate Challenge

“Currently there is a growing consensus amongst climate researchers that Earth’s climate is changing in response to manmade greenhouse gas emissions. The main debate amongst scientists is focussed on the amount of climate change we can expect, not whether it will happen. With the current level of debate in mind, the BBC decided a game might be a good introductory route into climate change and some of the issues this creates for governments around the world.” – BBC

Playing with Sustainability

“In this article, we analyze representative commercial video games in four categories: civilization simulations, post–apocalypse first–person shooters, multiplayer survivor horror games, and historical recreations. We examine the ways their game mechanics and game scenarios represent social, economic and environmental interdependencies. We contrast these representations with future scenarios of gradually increasing scarcity of resources, climate change, and other human–environment interactions which can be influenced by transitioning to sustainable practices.” – Shawna Kelly & Bonnie Nardi