Introduction
ustwo games initiated a design challenge in D&AD New Blood Awards 2022, who value that games, gamers, and customers have the competency to make a difference in our worlds. Since they started to build games influencing players’ awareness, they have been trying to impact how people think or behave, especially in tackling climate change (D&AD New Blood Awards 2022, n.d.).
Nevertheless, climate change is a wide-ranging topic not able to be handled within a single project unless a subdivided area is touched. Meanwhile, gamers are distributed in different dimensions, so picking a segmented audience helps solve the issue. Who can be educated effectively, care about environmental issues, be practitioners, and have easy accessibility to the game? Ultimately, I found the youth (15 to 24 years old) who had been intimately involved in climate action (United Nations, n.d.).
Problem Statement
Climate change has a high correlation with individual behaviours, and luxury emissions came to me, which refer to greenhouse gases generated from overconsumption (Peeters, 2015). In fact, the supply chain of food industry is a major polluter (Goodall, 2007), whose emissions could easily be reduced by behavioural change.
No matter whether people know or do not know the impact of their food-buying habits, there are not enough engaging ways to educate or empower them for real-world contributions to preventing climate change.
Behavioural Goals
Climate Renaissance will be a brand-new game that players are wished to play for a long time, which is defined as a GreenPath behaviour in Fogg’s methodology. Built on Goodall’s advice (Figure 1), Fogg Behaviour Model (Figure 2), GreenPath suggestions (Figure 3 & 4), and a criterion of building connections between the real and virtual worlds, I learned of making the behaviours simple enough to do and finding ways to trigger it (The Behavior Wizard, n.d.).
Aligned with the food industry problem, a simple tactic is introducing new behaviours into frequently existing habits, like grocery shopping, such as following buying habits: switching to organic food, purchasing local food, less meat and dairy, and minimally packaged foods, and avoiding processed food. Then, how can I change their shopping habits through phones? How could their behaviours be measurable? Scanning and uploading data? Will it be feasible?
Figure 1. Ways of reducing target emissions (Goodall, 2007)
Figure 2. Behaviour Model (Fogg Behavior Model, n.d.)
Figure 3. Green Behaviours Overview (The Behavior Wizard, n.d.)
Figure 4. Creating GreenPath behaviours (yin yin wu, n.d.)
Octalysis & Game Design
In terms of gameplay, Yu Kai’s Octalysis framework is applicable to categorize, analyze and enhance players’ motivations, and to match gaming mechanics with target behaviours. Specifically, before breaking down features into categories, I retained these that would matter to user retention. In a detailed layer, Nudging techniques are practical and executable, partly shown in Figure 5. Afterwards, I re-adjusted the rubric on the left side to couple with core drives below.
Figure 5. Graph of Octalysis Analysis of Climate Renaissance
Regarding the theme, a post-apocalypse setting is my favourite by showing the worst to stimulate people to reverse it, seen as an epic journey to explore. Planting trees is a valid method to prevent climate change. However, so as to associate with the food-buying habits, players could grow fruits and vegetables to survive on the 2222 earth. Plus, different types of characters will be expected to bring diversity to the gameplay and strength the implications of collaborations rather than conflicts.
Back to simplicity of abilities (B=MAP), I plan to encourage users to spend less time in-game and more time buying groceries in actual stores. Consequently, waiting becomes an essential resource in the gaming loop. Moreover, harvesting resources through both real and virtual worlds is the last key to a holistic experience. At this point, real-world buying results in a positive impact on the virtual world. To achieve game balance, I chose a weekly magnitude to constrain target behaviours, and measurable data could be recognized from physical or digital receipts. Besides, monetization strategies and cognitive biases are applied in the concept as well.
Look & Feel
Sensory Appeal is employed to engage players with flowing audio and visuals to show their positive influence on the wasteland. Furthermore, Storytelling Effect will cross from beginning to end to allow them to remember, think and change proactively with emotions. To make it happen, I got visual inspiration online (457 Post Apocalypse City Illustrations & Clip Art - IStock, n.d.) and found a cohesive comic style in-between characters and environments. Consistently, three skillsets are designated to three main classes of avatars – scavengers, engineers and farmers. Lastly, they need communities to bond with one another and stick to their behaviour changing goals.
Hopefully, if the game goes viral globally, I cannot imagine what a positive difference it would be in our world.
References
457 Post Apocalypse City Illustrations & Clip Art—IStock. (n.d.). Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://www.istockphoto.com/illustrations/post-apocalypse-city
D&AD New Blood Awards 2022. (n.d.). D&AD. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https://www.dandad.org/en/d-ad-new-blood-awards/
Fogg Behavior Model. (n.d.). Behaviormodel. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https://behaviormodel.org/
Goodall, C. (2007). How to live a low-carbon life: The individual’s guide to stopping climate change. Earthscan.
Peeters, W. (2015). Climate change and individual responsibility: Agency, moral disengagement and the motivational gap. Palgrave McMillan.
The Behavior Wizard. (n.d.). Retrieved April 3, 2022, from http://www.behaviorwizard.org/wp/
United Nations. (n.d.). Youth in Action. United Nations; United Nations. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/youth-in-action
yin yin wu. (n.d.). Blippy as a habit. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https://www.slideshare.net/yinyinwu/blippy-as-a-habit
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