There is a vast amount of knowledge about the climate crisis, its impacts as well as the growing number of mitigation and adaptation options. The challenge, however, is to get people to engage and absorb this knowledge, so that they can then act accordingly. Video games are one exciting way to talk about sustainability issues and involve people who may otherwise not be reachable by such topics. Games are also a great tool to depict the interconnections between Earth’s systems and demonstrate how changes in one system can alter another.
In this 3-hour workshop, we introduce participants to climate impacts, mitigation and adaptation options as well as various ways to communicate them in playful ways. The goal is to engage the students more deeply with climate and systems knowledge by involving popular media and having them come up with games concepts and designs, then help them to turn them into reality.
The Workshop will be led by IIASA climate researcher Jan Steinhauser from the Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability research group (NODES) who is one of the developers of a soon to be released computer game “Climate Survivors” (more information about the game and the trailer).