Workshop: Use Your Game Developer Superpowers to Fight the Climate Crisis

1. Introduction: We cover how games and play matter in the context of the climate crisis. A big picture overview of the goals of the day. 2. Climate actions: A focused selection of concrete climate impacts felt across the world today, paired with the real, on the ground action that is taken to adapt to and mitigate against these impacts. These examples serve as inspiration for the workshop’s teams, as they will select a climate intervention to design a game around throughout the day. 3. Climate game toolkit: Specific examples of how every discipline involved in game development can use their expertise to contribute to green game design. 4. Implicit Imaginaries: “Imaginaries” and “Futures” are important tools used in climate communication, climate policy, and design for change work. This section covers what they are, why they matter, how they appear in practice, and why they are an integral part of game design for climate contexts. 5. Examples from the field: A process breakdown from a recently shipped or upcoming title demonstrating how the team integrated climate themes into their commercial game. (In this case, Meghna Jayanth from Speculative Agency will speak about their game All Will Rise) 6. Transformational Game Design: Stories and lessons from 16 years of transformational game design work, covering how to design for specific framing, context, and trust for players, leading toward effective, engaging, transformational gameplay. 7. Putting it all together: With hands-on activities after every section, and worksheets to guide teams as they progress, teams finish the day with a pitch for a climate-related game. Teams pitch to each other and hear feedback from other teams.