Highlight Sustainable Behaviour

Enabling players to experience sustainable lifestyles in fictional worlds can prime them into bringing that mindset into everyday life.

DESCRIPTION
Video games are a great medium for learning. Through their mechanisms and the processes they trigger, they enable players to have new and challenging experiences. They allow experimentation, encourage the search for solutions even for real problems.

WHY IT MATTERS
Allowing players to experiment with the consequences of their actions within a controlled simulation – a mesocosm, to use Alenda Chang’s words – and in total safety, can set an example or inspire them to action in the real world.

DO’S & DON’TS
Highlight consequences. Video games have the potential to show how our actions can impact an ecosystem, even in the long run. Showing the results of sustainable behaviors can encourage even the most skeptical.

Compare behaviors. Showing the differences between good and bad practices greatly emphasizes the result.