CNN
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For many people, games are an escape into a fun, fantasy world.
So it may come as a surprise that the new edition of a popular board game directly addresses a hot-button issue that’s not so fun: the climate crisis.
Catan, a game about collecting and using resources such as bricks and wood to build and expand settlements in a fictional world, will celebrate its 30th anniversary next year. While the company has since released numerous versions and expansions – and sold over 45 million copies worldwide – its latest edition, Catan: New Energies, is one of the biggest new releases in gaming yet.
Instead of gameplay set in pre-industrial times, New Energies takes place in the 21st century, with real-life elements such as power plants and pollution playing a major role.
In many ways, it makes sense that a game about humanity’s rapid expansion would explore the effects of the climate crisis. After all, industrialization is the cause.
You might not expect a game about the climate crisis to be fun – or to be backed by in-depth research into the intricacies of the subject. But the developers at New Energies worked hard to find a balance between joyful gameplay and environmental science. And they are not the first.
In fact, climate change – or elements often related to it – are appearing in more and more games as the topic becomes more present in news stories and cultural conversations.
The popular empire-building video game “Civilization 6” released an expansion called Gathering Storm in 2019, which focused almost entirely on climate.
In Gathering Storm, player actions, such as burning coal, have major repercussions – rising sea levels and more frequent natural disasters such as tornadoes – that affect gameplay.
“Terra Nil,” a popular world-building strategy game released in 2023, sees players transform a barren wasteland into an inviting paradise through the use of technologies such as wind turbines and “toxin scrubbers.” It was the same year that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report saying we had a very small window to “ensure a livable and sustainable future for all.”
“Climate change is an ever-growing problem… it makes sense that the world’s most popular media outlets also reflect these growing challenges,” Rachel Kowert, a research psychologist specializing in games, told CNN.
According to Kowert, this is because “games reflect culture.”
Adding climate crisis elements to games can also make the subject more accessible, Kowert says.
“It adds that playful, fun element. This makes it a social activity,” she says. “Not many people will sit down and read about climate change, but people love Catan. »
In New Energies, the basic gameplay of gathering resources to build settlements is the same as in the traditional version of Catan. But in this version there are additional cards, rooms and mechanics that introduce climate crisis elements.
Instead of just building roads and towns, players must build fossil fuel or renewable power plants to collect energy. But their choices have consequences.
If a player builds a fossil fuel power plant, for example, the level of greenhouse gases in the game increases – indicated on the board itself by a small marker. When this happens, the risk of in-game climate-related events, such as flooding or air pollution, also increases.
These climatic events can block the production of resources for players and therefore their ability to expand their colonies and win the game. This can also trigger the game to end early, in which case the player with the most renewable power plants wins.
Players can add green discs to the bag – which can give players using renewable energy bonuses – by building renewable power plants. This also reduces the overall carbon footprint of the tracker, so fewer discs need to be removed from the bag each spin.
The addition of weather elements in Catan certainly makes the game more complicated. But it also reflects the reality of our world. Even experts struggle to reach consensus on the best solutions to mitigate climate change.
While Catan: New Energies was released on June 14 of this year, the game has actually been in development since 2011.
It all started with a scenario called Oil Springs based on oil resource management, which was presented to the Catan team by Erik Assadourian, a researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, a sustainability think tank. In the Oil Springs scenario, players could use oil to expand faster – with the added risk of causing the world of Catan to flood.
“At its core, Catan is a story of growth,” says Assadourian. “Without recognizing the limits of growth, it’s a problem. »
The Oil Springs scenario, coupled with WWF’s Climate Solutions 2050 report, inspired the idea of a Catan that treats electricity as a resource, says game designer and managing director Benjamin Teuber of Catan GmbH, who created New Energies with his late father, Catan. creator Klaus Teuber, died in April 2023.
When new energy development began in 2011, there were three renewable energy sources: wind, water and solar. This, among other things, made things “very complicated,” says Teuber.
Development of the game was put on hold until the Covid-19 pandemic hit, when Benjamin Teuber and his father had more free time to revisit the idea. Immediately, solutions to the original gameplay problems began to present themselves, Teuber says.
To ensure the game’s climate science stays within the bounds of reality, Assadourian joined us as a consultant for New Energies towards the end of its development in 2022. He also wrote an almanac on the climate at the end of the rulebook to build the thematic context of the game.
“There’s only so much you can do when you’re limited by the simplicity of the game mechanics,” Assadourian told CNN. In real life, “no renewable energy power plant will be within one point of pollution.”
Instead, Assadourian hopes the game will show people how we can move from the current energy and economic system we’re in to one that’s sustainable and regenerative. The first step to achieving this is to reduce energy consumption.
Even the physical materials of New Energies were chosen with climate in mind.
“When you create a physical consumer product, it’s impossible to have no impact, but we focused on how we can reduce the environmental impact,” says Kelli Schmitz, director of brand development at Catan Studio. “The English print of New Energies is printed and assembled in the USA from sustainably sourced cardboard and wood. »
Before the design of New Energies was completed in December 2022, outside testers were invited to give their feedback on the game. After all, it wouldn’t work if the game was too complex or not fun to play.
“People liked it because no one felt like we were imposing our opinion on them,” says Teuber. “They were like, ‘Oh, I can actually farm really well with fossil (fuels).’ Do I like it? I don’t know.’
“We really wanted it to feel like a simulation, if you will, of reality. And that’s why it’s important that you can win with fossil energy (fuel). It would be bad, I think, if we balanced things in such a way that it was impossible, because then you’re sending the wrong message – you’re not sending the message of reality. The more real it seems, the more serious people will talk about it.
Many testers had to question their morality and make decisions based on it, Teuber says.
“They said, ‘It’s fascinating, because I really didn’t know what to do.’ I had this moral thing, but I wanted to win the match.
In real life, almost everyone has an opinion on what we could do as a society to reduce the effects of the climate crisis. But few of us are in a position to bring about change on a global scale.
Having the power to improve the health of the planet, even in a board game, can be empowering.
“The fun thing about games is that there’s enough detachment that you can engage with this big, scary concept in this large and varied space,” says Kowert, the research psychologist. “And then maybe in the end you will come to understand better what you can actually do, what power you have.”
If players come away from New Energies discussing our climate philosophically and trying to make small changes in their lives, the game will have done its job, Teuber says.
“The game itself won’t change the world, but it might make you think a little bit, ‘Oh, maybe I have more power to make change.'”