Volha Kapitonava – the managing director of Positive Impact Games, developer of The Regreening – lays out the case for the way video games can turn round attitudes in direction of local weather change.
In the previous 5 years, we have seen elevated trade consideration to local weather and biodiversity themes, with titles like Terra Nil, Alba: A Wildlife Adventure, Beyond Blue, the upcoming All Will Rise, and our personal sport, The Regreening. European funds now encourage eco-topics and more and more help climate-related works; studio founders are pushing these themes due to worth alignment; and gamers themselves are signalling a rising urge for food for tales that do not deal with nature as a commodity. What used to be a distinct segment subject begins to seem like a development.
A part of the motive these games resonate is timing.
We dwell in an age when eco-anxiety is not only a concern, however a mainstream emotional actuality. A global study published by The Lancet revealed that 45% of younger individuals say local weather change impacts their each day functioning, and greater than half imagine humanity is “doomed” if nothing adjustments. That is a fairly gloomy image: being caught between a planetary-scale disaster and establishments that clearly do not do sufficient to stop it.
Most local weather communication compounds the drawback. It leans closely on disaster and presents a rolling sequence of losses, tipping factors, and irreversibilities. Correct, sure – however the fixed drumbeat of “the world is ending” pushes individuals to really feel powerless, main in turn in direction of paralysis and withdrawal. They mute notifications, keep away from articles, and scroll previous something with a photograph of a burning panorama. That response is usually misinterpret as apathy; nevertheless, the reverse is true. Half or more of gamers say they really feel unhappy, afraid, disgusted, offended, or outraged when enthusiastic about world warming. Folks aren’t overwhelmed as a result of they do not care; they’re overwhelmed as a result of they care an excessive amount of.
That is the psychological panorama we’re working with. However how can video games – an trade not precisely recognized for carbon neutrality – assist the scenario?
Joy as a radical counterforce
Clearly, games can not substitute political motion, institutional accountability, or the structural change the planet urgently wants. Their affect is oblique: they form notion, motivation, and the willingness to act. Games do not ship options themselves, however provide one thing the local weather dialog is chronically in need of: experiences the place actions have seen penalties, and the chance of enchancment nonetheless exists.
Games as a medium are good at participating as a result of they permit gamers to make significant selections, not simply watch their screens passively. If you take an motion in a sport, the world responds: a metropolis survives, a system stabilises, a villain will get punished. That cause-and-effect loop helps individuals really feel succesful and curious: even when the stakes are excessive, you’ll be able to at all times reload in case you fail.
A recent scientific report reveals that individuals who play environmental games report greater self‑efficacy and a higher chance of participating in actual‑world professional‑environmental behaviours. Which means by giving gamers agency in a digital ecosystem (letting them restore forests, clear polluted waters, or reinstate ecological stability), games can empower the perception that folks could make a distinction.
The important thing ingredient that makes this potential, in my view, is pleasure. Particularly the structured, feedback-driven, and rewarding pleasure present in games that provide gamers the alternative to take a much-needed psychological break, offering a manner to confront the dread of actuality in a secure, managed setting.
In a tradition that income from worry, exhaustion, and hopelessness, pleasure is radical. It is not escapism, however a refusal to be numbed or defeated in the face of local weather paralysis. Folks know the disaster is actual. They simply do not imagine they will affect it. And when a sport asks a participant to replant a forest as a substitute of conquering a kingdom, or to clear an oil spill as a substitute of defeating a villain, it affords a imaginative and prescient of the world that is potential with out rewarding pace, extraction, and competitors.
This is the place healthful games are sometimes misunderstood. The label makes individuals consider gentleness, softness, and pastel colors – and sure, some have that aesthetic. However the design philosophy behind them is not “cute,” however moderately “hope.” These games centre on cooperation, empathy, endurance, and regeneration. And crucially, this type of regenerative play converts nervousness into agency. Folks do not unlock motivation via worry; they unlock it after they really feel supported sufficient to strive. That emotional shift is the first step in direction of real-world motion.
What games can and can’t do
Games can not clear up the local weather disaster. They aren’t replacements for activism, laws change, or systemic reform. Their energy lies elsewhere: in how they form notion, emotion, and motivation.
They will:
- Normalize hope and regeneration as cultural narratives;
- Present emotional reduction from the “we’re doomed” cycle;
- Supply secure experimentation;
- Make environmental motion really feel achievable via simulation and suggestions;
- Encourage long-term curiosity;
- Strengthen a way of collective accountability and chance;
- Have interaction individuals in real-life eco tasks (with organisational assist from the builders).
This is a very good time to point out that in 2020, Space Ape Games raised over $120,000 in donations for wildlife and humanitarian charities combating the Australian wildfires. Equally, in 2022, Fortnite raised $144 million for humanitarian reduction efforts for individuals affected by the warfare in Ukraine. Initiatives that drive participant eco-action, akin to funding tree-planting, defending wildlife habitats, cleansing up native environments, and extra, are yearly recognised by Enjoying for the Planet Awards (extra inspirational tasks are talked about in the Enjoying for the Planet 2025 winners listing.) Such initiatives can be found to any developer, large or small.
Nevertheless, games even have clear limitations. Not everybody performs them, and entry is formed by socio-economic, geographic, and technological limitations. They can’t implement systemic change, shift company behaviour, or stop species loss. Even when gamers expertise agency in a sport, that feeling does not robotically translate into real-world motion: significant change requires alternatives, steering, and constructions that permit motivation to carry past the display screen.
The purpose is not that games substitute real-world motion – it is that they ship pleasure and create the circumstances for motion to emerge. By turning nervousness into engagement, by rewarding persistence and displaying the affect of care, games supply a rehearsal house for hope.
This is the work Positive Impact Games is doing: we make healthful and cosy games that uplift, join, and encourage change. This is the mission that drives our upcoming undertaking, The Regreening, the place you develop crops to create residing ecosystems, turn out to be buddies with historic spirits, and make your personal upcycling hub. We aren’t attempting to supply an escape from actuality, however to construct a bridge again to it, fortified with hope. Our aim is for gamers to really feel impressed to proceed regreening, contributing, and appearing on the core perception that their decisions can, and do, make a distinction.