How gaming can save our planet
Playing video games is often referred to as a ‘waste of time’. These claims are now outdated and if you still believe them it’s time to wake up, welcome the 21th century. Playing videogames, gaming for short, is getting more popular every day. Not only the new generation of kids and teens are into it, also adults and sometimes even the elderly like to play video games from time to time. Because gaming reaches a variety of people, it offers some promising opportunities. One of them has to do with sustainability. In this blog you will find out how gaming can save our planet.
Increasing awareness of sustainability
It seems that a lot of people do not realize what the negative effects of climate change are. This is where video games come in handy. Video games can help to visualize the consequences of poor handling, for example pollution, of the world. Many video games are designed in a futuristic and post-apocalyptic way. The players of these games are living in this fantasy worlds, experience the surroundings and see how the world is destroyed. Of course, not everyone associates playing certain video games with the consequences of unsustainable behaviour, but an extensive amount of people will. Especially when the storyline of a videogame contains information about what happened to the planet. For example, Fallout 4 is a game that takes place in the year 2287. There has been a nuclear war and the whole world is in a post-apocalyptic state. The player is one of few survivors and has to survive in a deadly environment. More than 12 million people played this game (Henry, 2015).
Acquiring decision-making and problem-solving skills
Strategy games contain a lot of decisions to be made by the player. Every decision has positive or negative consequences. Players learn to deal with negative consequences and how to prevent them from happening. This can reflect on the real world. How can we prevent certain problems? How can we stop the greenhouse effect? What are the consequences of nuclear power? A great example is Sim City. Sim City is a game in which you build your own city. All the choices are up to the player! This is a hefty responsibility to have. The city has to include job opportunities, establishments to facilitate amusement and sports, enough housing and sufficient power supplies. However, this can be very dangerous. One bad decision and the whole town can be annihilated. The player learns a lot about the risks of nuclear power and also how to solve problems on this topic.
Decision making and problem solving are indispensable in the advance of sustainability. Wherever people end up working, everything has something to do with sustainability. Every company can contribute to sustainable activities, such as recycling and separating waste. But not only in employment situations, also home situations. People at home can do the same. Every little contribution helps the rescue of the world.
Social interaction and teamwork
Last but not least, video games provide players with social interaction and teamwork situations. There are endless multiplayer and co-op games, which means that players have to work together to reach a certain goal. Sometimes it’s players versus players and sometimes players versus computers (artificial intelligence). Every player has his own task in the team. Together you want to be victorious. In most cases, the player doesn’t know his teammates. You will get placed in a team with complete strangers from all over the world. For example: a Russian kid, a Canadian girl and two French adult brothers have to set up a strategy to stop the enemy team from reaching a certain point. One player sets up bear traps, the other one lays down landmines, someone else hangs cameras on the walls and the last player blocks the road. The players communicate through in-game voice chat. Because of this they learn how to work in teams, while having social interaction with strangers.
Teamwork is incredibly important if we want to improve sustainability. We can’t save the planet on our own. We need to stick together if we want to make changes happen.
Conclusion
I hope you have learned something today. I hope you have learned that gaming isn’t a waste of time. Gaming can be a solution, not only for sustainability, but for many social issues. I will not jump into all of it, but please keep it in mind. That besides being a solution for global issues, gaming is also really FUN! If you haven’t played video games yet, you should try it out sometime. There is a videogame for everyone, no matter what you like! Now, let’s save our planet.
