Two N-visualisation tools: game versus reality

2019

Climate change education is fundamental in the present society, which is characterized as complex and full of uncertainties. The use of games can help in this task. The prototype of an educational game called “Apicum Game”, which addresses climate change and its effects on marine and coastal ecosystems, was assessed in the present study. Thirty-three students in the sixth grade of a private school played the game and answered questionnaires before and after it. The students who participated in the research generally play video games for fun. Also, they have already heard about climate change, mainly in television and school. It was possible to notice that the majority of students understood the concept of coastal ecosystems, which was addressed in the game. In addition, the game contributed to broadening the conceptual profile of students in relation to the complex concept of climate change. Finally, the game contributed to an increase in the number of actions cited by the students ...

Narratives Crossing Boundaries

Due to the life-threatening impacts of climate change, the generation and communication of knowledge associated with it is given high priority. In recent years, environmentally changing behavioral knowledge can also be found in popular culture in a generally understandable form (= inter-discourse). Accordingly, the authors examine the games ANNO 2070, URBAN EMPIRE, and FATE OF THE WORLD with regard to their respective environmental discourse. For this purpose, the authors designed an analytical framework, which addresses current scientific discourses and investigates games for completeness, topicality, and validity of knowledge and mechanics and their aesthetic implementation. Overall, the authors identified three types of games: agenda, realistic and mixed-type games covering criteria of both other types. Despite the fact that games like URBAN EMPIRE or ANNO 2070 do not adequately reflect the complexity of real-world environmental problems (such as FATE OF THE WORLD), they effectively simulate intervention logic, understanding, and systemic representation. The authors contribute to the discourse on the environment and Serious Games' design by providing an analytical framework that practically identifies environmental discourses and has been tested successfully on three games. The analytical framework and consecutive systematization of games into realistic and agenda games can be of importance for didactics and guidelines when using digital games for school teaching: School teachers could specifically select games to portray certain aspects of environmental discourses.

Proceedings of SBGames 2013, 2013

The scientific concept of "Global Climate Changes" is very difficult for most of the population, who tend to understand it as an abstract problem, distant in time and dislodged in space. Therefore, it is important to promote education based on the deepening of knowledge on the subject. The present study describes the idea and development of a digital educational interdisciplinary and systemic game on the influences of climate changes on marine and coastal environments. The game is aimed at students in junior high school and high school. The script, game design and level design documents are already finished. The scenario of the game is a coastal fictitious city called Apicum and the main character will have to understand the causes and effects of climate changes on the coastal and marine environments of the city. Throughout the levels, he/she will gain points of "Environment", "Society" and "Economy", the three pillars of sustainability.

2011

Mounting evidence suggests that current trends in global energy usage are leading to global warming, which will likely change our climate irreparably. Yet, as noted in IPCC reports, most people do not take this danger seriously enough to change their behaviors. Computer games, which are increasingly being used for educational purposes, have the potential to change people's understanding and attitudes toward critical issues such as energy use and global climate change. Yet it remains unclear how well serious games achieve these ends, and what, exactly, it is that makes them effective. We propose that by looking at data collected by these games, and correlating it with instruments that measure changes in attitudes, we can determine what game scenarios and activities are actually changing people's minds. This will help us to design more effective games for educating the public in a way that yields tangible results. In this paper we describe a novel strategy for classifying and ...

Do you think playing video games help children in understanding the scientific phenomenon of climate change? According to recent research activities, we do understand the fact that mediated communications have an increased role to play in creating awareness and addressing the global issue of climate change. Hence, there is a larger collaboration happening between scientists and game developers could mean the climate change educating games of the future, take realism to a whole new level dedicated for children. As children are the most vulnerable groups to video games, such gamifications will help to spread easily the climate sustainable behaviors among this targeted group. It is also evident that game developers, scientists, educators, and activists who believe that games are an underutilized resource in the fight against climate change. As adopted the systematic literature review methodology, this research paper has reviewed 10 studies pertaining to climate change video games from around seven different nations using systematic search on electronic databases. Electronic data bases were used to identify the literature relating to climate change video games. Relevant literature on the topic was obtained from e-journal repository of the CHMK library, University of Calicut. The studies were mainly retrieved from the Sage Journals and Taylor and Francis Online (between 2000 and 2018) using the main combination of keywords; climate change and games. Systematic review analysis was based on the three research objectives including; to understand the role of climate change games to ensure children understanding on climate change, to understand the prospects and effectiveness of climate change games among children & to examine how the research area of gaming on climate change develop in global scenario. The major finding of research paper was reiterated that climate games have the potential to educate and enlighten the public towards the real solutions of climate change.

Proceedings of LCE …, 2006

International Journal of Applied Engineering & Technology, 2023

Climate change is one of the most significant global challenges that require collective efforts to mitigate its adverse impacts on the environment and human lives. One way to increase public awareness and promote environmental education is through gamification. This study aims to examine the effectiveness of climate change awareness games in promoting environmental education and behavior. The study employed a systematic review of literature to analyze the current state of research on climate change awareness games. The findings suggest that climate change awareness games are effective tools in promoting environmental education and behavior, as they enhance the players' knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors towards climate change. Additionally, the study identifies the key features of effective climate change awareness games, including immersive gameplay, interactive features, and accurate scientific information. Therefore, the study recommends the development of more climate change awareness games that incorporate these features to promote environmental education and behavior effectively.

Online games have been proposed as a promising tool for communication and education. Taking into account the new communicative paradigm of young people and the fact that climate change is one of the main threats to their future, this paper presents a checklist of indicators validated using the Delphi method to analyze the communicative elements of online climate change games targeting young people, and illustrates their use and usefulness with a qualitative analysis of a sample of games produced in Spain. This exploratory study maintains that online climate change games are shaping up to be innovative strategies, thanks to their immersive narrative and interactivity, among other features, which are used to meet the communicative and educational challenges regarding climate change: causes are made visible, actions are portrayed as local, uncertainty is avoided, contextualized information is provided in a positive and proactive tone, and a critical thinking approach is encouraged through decision-making.

Scientists, educators and policymakers continue to face challenges when it comes to finding effective strategies to engage the public on climate change. We argue that games on the subject of climate change are well-suited to address these challenges because they can serve as effective tools for education and engagement. Recently, there has been a dramatic increase in the development of such games, many featuring innovative designs that blur traditional boundaries (for example, those that involve social media, alternative reality games, or those that involve direct action upon the real world). Here, we present an overview of the types of climate change game currently available, the benefits and trade-offs of their use, and reasons why they hold such promise for education and engagement regarding climate change.

Social norms affect people"s attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. Thus, creating green awareness, in particular conveying the concept of environmental impacts to young generations through educational programs, is crucial to the success of the ultimate sustainable development. As sustainability is an abstract concept describing human interactions with complex ecological and climate systems, it is important to let our next generations appraise the consequences of environmental impacts and to nurture them to behave in a way with minimal environmental impacts. This paper presents some of the "green" initiatives that are implemented in Hong Kong. The aim of these initiatives is to provide simple models of complex systems, deployed in digital media making use of cloud technologies, online interactive games, and competition to raise green awareness among high school students. The results indicate that, with enough support and freedom, students can come up with their own green ideas rather than passively rely on what they have learned from textbooks.