What is it about?
If you've ever played games, you may know that playing can also help us build new knowledge and skills, or even achieve goals outside of the game, in a fun way. This is what gamification is about. Now what if we could use games to, step by step, make the world a better place? In this project, I created a simple mobile game called CO2rdinates, which helps people to track their carbon footprint and take action against climate change. I then tested this game with 10 people from 3 different countries to see if they found it fun and useful. Most of them liked it but also felt that I could improve it in a few ways. They also felt that games like CO2rdinates could help people make cities more sustainable.
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Photo by Appolinary Kalashnikova on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Sustainability is one the greatest challenges the world is facing right now. Many people may want to take action but either don't know how to or feel that they alone might not make a difference. If there are ways to help people take action together in an enjoyable way, we should explore them, and see if they can create change even on a big scale.
Perspectives
I had a lot of fun working on this project, and I'm very thankful to the people who tested the CO2rdinates game; they provided me with really useful comments. I learnt more about sustainability and the ways we can work towards a more sustainable world. I hope that my project can help others who are interested in sustainability and games to learn more about these topics.
Ying Xuan Chian
University of Sheffield
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Sustainable, inclusive city-making through smart, playable environments: developing and testing the CO2rdinates pervasive mobile game, October 2023, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3616961.3617803.
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