The potential of video games for climate change engagement

What is it about?

This article offers an overview of 150 climate change-related video games and their potential for promoting climate change engagement and education. The review studies what attributes supporting climate change engagement can be found in existing video games, and the differences between serious games and games for entertainment.

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Photo by nicolas perez on Unsplash

Photo by nicolas perez on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Our work reveals that engagement attributes are unequally distributed. Some are very common (the use of feedback connected to climate change action, the concreteness of climate messages, the game being fun, and the presence of challenges about climate change), others are common (learning through experience, the use of rewards connected to climate action, challenges that may enhance the efficacy of real behaviors, the presence of characters, the use of levels, narratives connected to climate change, and simulation aspects), others are uncommon (credibility of sources, achievability of climate-relevant behaviors in the game, and climate change being depicted meaningfully), and one is very uncommon (the use of social features). In addition, a statistical comparison between serious and entertainment games shows that serious games tend to be more achievable, challenging, credible, efficacy-enhancing, experiential learning, and feedback-oriented, while entertainment games tend to feature more narratives than serious games. However, given that both serious and entertainment games can be found displaying either many or few attributes, we advocate for not discriminating games based on variables such as the nature of the developers (a game studio, an NGO, an academic actor…) or their apparent purpose (serious or for entertainment).