Online Games

Climate Crisis

Dealing with adaptation needs in biodiversity hotspots isn't as simple as planting trees. Those on the front lines need to deal with a range of challenges, from violent attacks and corruption, through to serious budgetary constraints and painstaking stakeholder engagement. Climate Crisis seeks to provide players with insights on the realities of enacting such programmes, by asking them to address the security threats posed by climate change in a fictional rural province. They must do so with limited budgets and resources, facing challenging events along the way. Everything in the game is based on challenges found in real-life operations.

This game has been adapted from the original game Conservation Crisis developed by Tunza Games, as part of a grant from the King’s College London COP26 Engagement Fund.

Business As Usual (beta version)

Most climate action takes place via an email inbox. This daily job of 'back office' development, advocacy and coordination of mitigation and adaptation initiatives is often overlooked and generally thankless. Yet learning how to be effective in this area is critical for global peace and security. Business As Usual seeks to support this learning, by tasking players with driving a sustainability initiative through government whilst dealing with competing stakeholder, financial and professional demands. The game is currently in a 'beta testing' phase, with options for development including AI-integration and alternative scenario development (depending on funding).

This game has been developed by Owen Hanley based on interviews with stakeholders across government, academia and NGOs, and designed and coded by Michael Bibby, with funding from the GAMEngage Project.

In-Person Games

(Facilitator Instruction Handbooks)

Giants in the Greenhouse

This game provides insights into the challenges of multi-national climate negotiations. The scenario places players within a fictional event at which climate negotiations are taking place, akin to the UN’s Conferences of the Parties (COP).

Players are divided into teams that represent a different nation or ‘group’ of nations. These teams must try to negotiate international agreements that will lead to reductions in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, whilst simultaneously protecting their national interests. These agreements are fed into the En-Roads calculator, to provide a forecast of GHG emissions reductions. As in the real world, facilitators can choose to introduce external ‘crises’ and ‘events’ that will shape the negotiations. These events provide players with an experiential ‘snapshot’ of the challenges involved in negotiating with multi-national stakeholders (including issues of power dynamics, competing interests and personalities).

The scenario is adapted from the original ‘Giants in the Greenhouse’ game, created by Evan D’Alessandro © 2022. It has been altered to account for recent political, economic and security shifts. In addition to this, external ‘narratives’ and ‘crises’ are provided, which can be inserted into the game by the facilitator to create a sense of pressure and shifting priorities.

A Climate of Instability

This roleplaying game provides experiential insights into the challenges of achieving stabilization within climate-exacerbated scenarios. The scenario places players within a fictional province at risk of environmental disaster and conflict as a result of stresses from climate change. Players must make strategic decisions regarding what activities they will implement to mitigate and adapt to the climate risks they face over the course of 25 years.

This game is based on a stabilization scenario created by Dr. Richard Milburn (2022). It was developed from a mixture of scholarly research and practitioner lessons derived from ‘Operation Corded’, a British military anti-poaching operation in Malawi and Zambia designed to help tackle illegal wildlife trade. The development process involved contributions from a range of UK governmental and non-governmental advisors (including UK MoD, FCDO, Defra, and King’s College London).

The game was created as part of a wider project of collaboration between Tunza Games Ltd. and the Environmental Security Research Group (ESRG) of King’s College London. This project was funded initially by the King’s COP26 Engagement Grant. Further development of the game was supported by seed funding from the Circle U. European University Alliance, as part of a new research project entitled “GAMEngage: Gamification for stakeholder engagement”.

Ahead for Business (beta version)

This game tasks players with creating a sustainability vision and strategy for an organisation, that meets the needs of their external stakeholders. Players are tasked with representing either ‘company employees’ within a fictional organisation or ‘external stakeholders’ that influence the goals of that organisation. They are given 45 minutes to create a 3-5 minute presentation, in which they will outline their vision and strategy. In order to develop a successful vision and strategy, players will need to negotate with their colleagues and external stakeholders, as well as responding and adapting to external ‘events’ and ‘crises’ may happen during their development period.

This roleplaying scenario is current in 'beta version' form. It is being developed by Dr Duraid Jalili and Dr Fatima Wang of King’s College London, as part of the “GAMEngage: Gamification for stakeholder engagement” project, supported by seed funding from the Circle U. European University Alliance.