Abstract
In search of innovative approaches capable of connecting climate change issues with teenagers, scholars and practitioners have become interested in harnessing the potential of gaming for advancing climate change communication. This article aims to propose a set of criteria, validated by experts through the Delphi method, by which to analyze communicative features of online climate change games. The use of the criteria is illustrated with an evaluation of a sample of Spanish games to which we apply qualitative content analysis, narratology, and ludology techniques. Our findings reveal some positive communicative trends in terms of narratives, contents, and gameplay.
Introduction
Climate change is an inevitable and pressing global challenge with long-term implications for the sustainable development of all countries. In the fight against climate change, young people are potentially well positioned to trigger an ambitious and long-term societal change, adopting sustainable attitudes and behaviors in energy use from early ages and influencing their parents’ decisions. However, research has shown that awareness and commitment are still limited (Bofferding & Kloser, 2015): Youth is even less concerned about the environment than older age-groups and less likely to engage in environmentally responsible actions (Fielding & Head, 2012; Partridge, 2008).
Science communication has for a long time pointed to the “information deficit model” (little amount of information available), which holds that people lack knowledge and interest to make decisions, as the main problem (Nisbet & Scheufele, 2009). Recently, however, several studies have confirmed that many climate communications efforts have failed, and not necessarily because of little information being available (Cooper, 2011; Moser & Dilling, 2011; Reckien & Eisenack, 2013). Concerns are related with the way climate change information is conveyed: Scholars acknowledge the limitations of conventional media in delivering information, such as the one-way transmission of messages, which transforms the audience into passive consumers of information; the lack of contextualization, which provokes confusion with other environmental issues; and the negative and alarmist tone of the content, which instead of motivating people to take action often evokes paralysis or apathy (Aparici & Silva, 2012; Díaz-Nosty, 2013; León, 2014; Moser, 2010; Reig, 2010). Their studies have called for new communication strategies to be found, capable of connecting with targeted audiences such as the so-called interactive generation (Aguaded-Gómez, 2011) or digital natives (Prensky, 2001). Online games might offer these possibilities.
Scholars and practitioners have become interested in harnessing the potential of gaming for advancing communication and education (Gee, 2004; Mendler de Suarez, Suarez, & Bachofen, 2012): They can offer experiential learning, transforming passive consumers of information into active players who absorb new information more readily and simulate unfamiliar circumstances that are not possible in real life. Climate change games are considered serious games because their purpose exceeds pure entertainment. Their goals can be summarized in (a) making players aware of the challenges associated with global warming, (b) providing knowledge and understanding with the issue of climate change, and (c) encouraging players to take actions and develop solutions (Reckien & Eisenack, 2013; Wu & Lee, 2015).
The first climate change game was designed more than 30 years ago, as a board game that modeled increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere (Wu & Lee, 2015), and since then climate change games have increased and diversified: card games such as Keep Cool, where players represent groups of countries that negotiate economic growth and climate change mitigation; simulations based on peer-reviewed scientific data that allow for the manipulation of variables such as energy consumption and population growth to model the effects on world climate, like those collected on the website Climate Interactive; or mobile games like Climate Mission 3D, where players learn how to reduce their carbon footprint as they play a series of minigames. In the past 10 years, climate change games have experienced most progress (Reckien & Eisenack, 2013), especially in an online format, with examples like Clim’Way (2010), BBC Climate Challenge (2010), EnerCities (2011), and CityOne (2011).
Discussions have begun on the analysis of serious games in general (Liarakou, Sakka, Gavrilakis, & Tsolakidis, 2012; Liu & Ding, 2009; Martí-Parreño, Méndez-Ibáñez, Giménez-Fita, & Queiro-Ameijeiras, 2015; Mitgutsch & Alvarado, 2012), and on the analysis of sustainability and climate change games in particular: The research by Katsaliaki and Mustafee (2014) proposes a review of games on sustainability produced in English, analyzing underlying characteristics such as game availability; number of players, their roles, and their target age; game validation; graphics; or stakeholder involvement in game development. Reckien and Eisenack (2013) analyze climate change games on board and screen developed in English or German, using indicators such as year of appearance, format of game, actors involved, temporal development, or scale of issues. Wu and Lee (2015) provide a general overview of climate change games in English, comparing different formats and features but without proposing a systematic analysis. These studies are calling to expand the research in climate change gaming.
As we can see, previous research in this field mostly focuses on general characteristics that can help identify the game without further going into details. Also, these studies mostly focus on English-speaking games; however, there is a need to pay more attention to games produced in non-English countries and languages. Spain for instance is currently experiencing its video game development “golden age”; it ranks fourth in Europe and ninth in the world (DEV, 2015). A growing number of multinationals are founding studios in Spain, and creativity of Spanish young professionals is being supported by universities, which have established training programs in the sector in recent years (DEV, 2015).
Taking into account the increased development of online climate change games and their potential to connect with young people—less concerned and engaged than older age-groups—we need to better understand the communicative nature of these types of games: how these games are transmitting climate change issues through their narratives and contents, the meanings hidden behind the design, and the preferred techniques chosen by producers. Having said that, the objectives of this research are the following:
To develop and propose a set of validated criteria by which to analyze communicative features of online climate change games, integrating a narratological (understands the game as a medium to generate stories and transmit contents) and a ludological view (pays attention to the meanings hidden behind the design)
To illustrate the use of the criteria by analyzing a sample of online climate change games, using Spain as a case study
To demonstrate usefulness of the criteria in examining communication trends and techniques within this class of games
The development of validated criteria could help teachers select appropriate games as pedagogical resources, game developers design new games, and researchers advance thinking in the area of games and science communication. An illustration and demonstration of the criteria through the analysis of available climate changes games on the web would be valuable and of interest in order to examine communication trends and techniques within this class of games.
This article introduces the field of online games that focus on climate change, offering a conceptual, theoretical, and methodological framework for analysis. We will outline our findings, and the implications for this field.
Conceptual and Theoretical Approaches
Online games are video games that use computer technology, allowing players to interact with the machine in real time and action to take place in a visual format, with a unique feature in that they are accessible via a Web browser and available on the Internet (Tejeiro & Pelegrina, 2003). When talking about online climate change games, we are therefore focusing on games available on the Internet specifically themed around climate change and/or topics related to this phenomenon, with communicative and educational purposes, which does not exclude that they can involve some degree of fun and entertainment. These types of games are then considered as serious games, understood as games intended to fulfill a purpose and to convey ideas and values (Frasca, 2007).
The field of game studies took around 30 years to develop after the first successful video game appeared, and in 2011, Espen Aarseth from IT University of Copenhagen founded the first academic journal to study video games, Game Studies. Since then, several models to analyze games have been proposed from several scientific disciplines. These are some of them:
Sociocultural dimension and video game reception studies: education and online games studies (Gee, 2004), cultural and reception studies (Taylor, 2006), or psychosocial effects (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith, & Pajares-Tosca, 2008)
Design, formal dimension, and significance studies: game design theory (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004), narratology (Murray, 1999), ludology (Juul, 2005), or procedural content generation (Shaker, Togelius, & Nelson, 2016)
Rodríguez-Hoyos and João Gomes (2013) found out in a literature review of academic studies on serious games that the majority of the research of these types of games falls into the first category, concretely studies that analyze its use to improve learning or social competences. The second category has as the main antecedent literature or cinema studies, in which analyses are focused on the work itself, independently of the reception context. Our study is positioned within this second group of studies. In this domain, scholars have disagreed over time on how to approach video game analysis; the spectrum ranges from the affirmation of the new possibilities of storytelling to the denial of the narrative quality of video games; the disagreement has been called “narratology versus ludology debate” (Frasca, 2007).
Narratology refers to the branch of knowledge that deals with the structures and function of narrative (Murray, 1999); narratologists believe that games should be understood as a storytelling medium or a novel form of narrative and therefore should be analyzed using theories of narrative. They see video games as a broad form of narrative expression such as novels or movies. After Janet Murray (1999) published Hamlet on the Holodeck, in which she discusses the technical possibilities and the new ways of storytelling in the cyber age, several researchers started taking the same approach by studying online games as a narrative form. Other important works in the field of narratology and games are Narrative as Virtual Reality (Ryan, 2001) and More Than a Game: The Computer Game as Fictional Form (Atkins, 2003).
Ludology defends the study of structures and features of games on their own terms, not as a form of narrative expression such as novels. Ludologists believe in studying “games as games,” focusing on the rules, game world, and gameplay; they emphasize the importance of game design in both the formal composition and the transmission of meaning. For instance, in an analysis of The Sims, Pérez-Latorre (2010) suggests the use of rewards such as virtual money in game design can communicate implicit meanings such as consumerism and capitalism values. A representative work in this field is Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (Juul, 2005), which examines how rules provide challenges, learning, and enjoyment for players and how a game cues the player into imagining its fictional world.
The theoretical perspective of this study supports an intersection between narratology and ludology, a positioning shared by other authors such as Pérez-Latorre (2010) and his “Social Discourse of Video Games Analysis Model,” which also integrates both perspectives for game analysis (Figure 1). We cannot treat video games only as a narrative form ignoring its peculiarities, but at the same time, the fact that video games are games by no means excludes them from having narrative qualities. Every video game has a message to transmit and a certain perspective on the world, on what is victory, and on how to achieve it. From narratology, we take into consideration techniques such as observing the role of the player in its environment or the story lines with the unfolding of plots and, from ludology, the analysis of micro structures in relation to the overall design, the game dynamics, and mechanics. By combining a narratological and a ludological perspective, we can develop appropriated criteria capable of analyzing the communicative features of online climate change games in a holistic and integrating manner.
Study’s theoretical positioning: Representation of theoretical perspectives for game analysis integrated into communication sciences study delimitation around five variables: production, reception, formal dimension, contextual dimension, and message.
Online games can therefore be studied as (audiovisual and digital) communicative media; in the past they were mostly addressed as technological objects, commercial products, or educative tools. Gombrich (2004) maintains that there is no such thing as an innocent game, while Huizinga (1988) says that every game means something.
Methodology
The research presented in this article is characterized as interdisciplinary, exploratory, and evaluative. Our qualitative study makes use of different methods to reach our objectives. In order to develop criteria that reach consensus among experts to analyze communicative features of online climate change games, we make use of the Delphi method; in order to illustrate the use and usefulness of the criteria, we apply those criteria through an analysis of a sample of games in Spain, using three approaches to enrich the analysis: content analysis, which provides more quantitative information, as well as narratology and ludology, focusing on the relationships between game narrative and design. This compensates for the logistical challenges of using traditional content analysis strategies as a single method for analyzing video games, which are technologically more sophisticated than other communication media, making it more difficult for human coders to analyze them (Dudo, Cicchirillo, Atkinson, & Marx, 2014, p. 225; Schmierbach, 2009).
Developing the Criteria for Analysis
To achieve the first objective, we use the Delphi method, a structured and interactive process to collect opinions that establish consensus, based on the experiences and judgments of experts (Scapolo & Miles, 2006). This method is usually chosen among others methods when we are dealing with a novel field with not enough data to interpret the study object and there is a need to clarify analysis categories or criteria. Another reason is that the Delphi method aims at maximizing the advantages of methods based on expert groups and reduces its disadvantages by deleting negative interactions with the goal of achieving agreement among experts (Linstone & Turoff, 1975). Previous studies have successfully used the method to develop a set of criteria for different purposes: to define quality in regulated and nonformal sociocultural animation and free time education (Pozo-Llorente, Gutiérrez-Pérez, & Rodríguez-Sabiote, 2007), to evaluate media literacy among teachers (Gozálvez-Pérez, González-Fernández, & Caldeiro-Pedreira, 2014), or to inquire into potential applications for massively multiplayer online role-playing games as constructivist learning environments in formal K-12 education (Wagner, 2008). To our knowledge, this is the first time that the Delphi method is used to develop a set of criteria in the field of online climate change games.
First of all, we designed the following protocol:
We defined the objective: to develop criteria that reach consensus among experts to analyze communicative features of online climate change games, from a narratological and ludological point of view. 1
We established the characteristics and profiles of the experts: The experts were chosen based on their theoretical and/or practical knowledge of communication, education, games, and climate change. In our case, 13 experts were contacted by e-mail to participate and all of them agreed to be part of the panel. According to Rand Corporation, a minimum of 7 experts and a maximum of 30 are considered as valid (Astigarraga, 2008). They included professors and researchers at universities, communication specialists at scientific institutions, educators and teachers at high schools who employ games and gamification, and game designers. They came from Spain, the United States, and the Netherlands.
We identified a first list of dimensions (categories of analysis, which serve as guidelines to organize the criteria) and criteria (indicators of analysis, elements to consider when analyzing games) that integrate both narratology and ludology perspectives to share with the experts, identified through a literature review of previous studies in the field (Bloom, 1956; European SchoolNet, 2009; Katsaliaki & Mustafee, 2014; Kim, 2012; Lacasa 2011; León, 2014; Liarakou et al., 2012; Liu & Ding, 2009; Martí-Parreño et al., 2015; Meira-Cartea, 2008; Mitgutsch & Alvarado, 2012; Moser & Dilling, 2011; Pérez-Latorre, 2010; Piñuel-Raigada & Teso-Alonso, 2012; Reckien & Eisenack, 2013; Werbach & Hunter, 2012).
We set up a calendar, a communication strategy, and the validation process: Communication was maintained via e-mail and the process and exchange of opinions were interactive and anonymous—their names were not revealed. Experts emitted their opinions and were able to reconsider their position when getting feedback about the results from the other experts. Consensus was taken into consideration as a guiding principle during the entire process; therefore, once consensus and stability of results were achieved the process was concluded. In our study, three consulting rounds were sufficient to conclude the process (Figure 2).
Delphi process in our study.
In the first round, we shared with the experts the objective stated above and the list with the first group of dimensions and criteria identified by the authors. We asked them to modify or propose new dimensions and/or criteria if necessary. From the beginning, opinions were quite favorable. Nevertheless, they also proposed some appreciated changes. For instance, next to “narratology” and “ludology” dimensions, “identification” was also suggested; “narratology” dimension was divided into two different ones: “narrative” and “contents”; “ludology” dimension was recommended to be called “gameplay”; and some new criteria were added (Figure 3).
Dimensions restructure after first consulting round.
The criteria were then divided into these dimensions:
Identification: features that help identify and locate the game
Narrative: analysis of the narrative and fictional context elements
Contents: analysis of the information and messages transmitted about climate change
Gameplay: analysis of the game design and formal structures
The second consulting round consisted of a questionnaire in which experts assessed in ordinal terms (1 = low, 2 = medium, 3 = high) the relevance and usefulness of the criteria to analyze communicative features of online climate change games, aiming at identifying common and conflicting viewpoints and achieving a first consensus in the selection. The criteria that got a consensus of 90% (high + medium) were selected. This percentage represents a robust value for the selection of criteria, while it differentiates with a tolerance margin of 10% the possibilities of discrepancies among experts. In this round, 13 of the initial 49 criteria proposed to study the communicative elements of games did not get the established consensus.
In the third and last round, we requested a final assessment of the 13 criteria that did not pass the second phase, in which they had to confirm whether or not they should remain outside of the final set of criteria. Experts agreed that 8 of the 13 criteria should remain outside. Therefore, a total of 41 criteria were part of the final set (Table 1). At this stage, consensus and stability of results were achieved, and the process was therefore concluded. Variability in opinions disappeared, but also participation of experts was reduced and only 9 out of 13 took part in this round—3 from the area of communication and climate change, 3 from education, and 3 from video games and gamification. We present in Table 1 the proposed 41 criteria, categorized into four dimensions. In addition, we add a column with definitions and categories (when applicable) of each criterion to enable the reader to apply the criteria themselves.
Analysis Dimensions and Criteria.
Analysis of the Games
The analysis of the games was carried out by two researchers who played the games and used a form that contained all the Delphi criteria presented above. They applied three different but complementary approaches: qualitative content analysis, narratology, and ludology. From a narratological perspective, we observed the relevance of narrative and existence of narrators (Criteria 11 and 12), the story lines with the unfolding of plots (Criterion 13), character depiction (Criterion 14), the role of the player in its environment (Criterion 15), and the spatial and temporal dimensions (Criteria 16, 17, and 18). From a ludological point of view, we focused on the analysis of microstructures in relation to the overall design, describing game dynamics and mechanics (Criterion 37), the feedback system (Criterion 38), use of rewards (Criterion 39), and other important features (Criteria 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 40, and 41). In addition, the qualitative content analysis was used for those Delphi criteria that could be quantified (Criteria 4, 9, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 34, and 37). Qualitative content analysis focuses on manifest and latent features—unobserved concepts that cannot be measured directly but can be represented (Merkl-Davies & Koller, 2012)—and it entails quantification by coding frequencies to detect patterns in the data, in our case, preferred techniques among game producers and trends in online climate change game development.
Levels, missions, or episodes were used as analysis units, similar to scenes in movies or strip frames in comics. Coding followed a deductive approach—categories were developed a priori by drawing on relevant prior research (Table 1). In qualitative content analysis, the emphasis is on achieving consistency of interpretation by using at least two researchers for coding (Neuendorf, 2002). In our study, two researchers with experience in gaming and climate change communication participated in the coding and analysis of games. Both researchers played the complete sample of games on separate computers. In complex games, the researchers had to play the game several times to register data in a proper manner. They shared a protocol with guidelines and definitions to fill in an analysis form that contains the criteria vetted through the Delphi method for each game. They marked their responses and observations in different files, which later where combined into a single one after discussions.
The intercoder reliability shows to what extent different coders agree on the coding of the same material. The analysis of the games demanded the interpretation by the researchers. Keeping in mind that, among other factors, the messages experienced by the player depend on skills and time committed (Ivory, 2006), this interpretation must always cling to the formal properties of the game. In our case, despite the subjectivity of some of the criteria and the interpretative implications, both researchers agreed on all game features and there was no need to solve discrepancies. Some of the data that are considered more subjective, such as target audience (Criterion 8) or communicative purpose (Criterion 9), were obtained through the information provided by the producers on the description of the game on the website. Trustworthiness has been proposed in qualitative content analysis as a means of ensuring quality and methodological soundness and consists of four factors: (a) credibility—the extent to which findings are congruent with reality; (b) transferability—the extent to which findings can be applied to other contexts; (c) dependability—the ability of other researchers to repeat the work, if not necessarily to gain the same results; and (d) confirmability—the extent to which the results can be confirmed or corroborated by the reader (Hardy, Harley, & Phillips, 2004).
Study Sample
Spanish language online games are used in order to test the criteria and to demonstrate their usefulness in examining communication trends and techniques. For that purpose, we conducted an analysis of 15 online climate change games. Here are the steps taken to compile and select the games:
Compiling games: A rigorous web search was carried out in the period May to July 2015 through the main search engines, using the following search request: (“video game” OR “online game” OR “educational game” OR “eco-game”) AND (“climate change” OR “global warming” OR “sustainability” or “environment”), in Spanish.
Selecting games: There was a preselection stage and a final selection stage, where researchers interacted with the games to confirm that the required selection criteria were present. In order to identify our sample of online climate change games produced in Spain, the following requirements were taken into account:
That they are produced in Spain (country chosen as a case study)
That they are hosted on a Web platform, played over the Internet (our study focuses on online games, for their distinct features as a digital tool, popularity and generalized use among youth, and possibility to be used by teachers at computer laboratories at their schools)
That they are free of charge (which increases the possibilities that they will be used and accessed by teachers and teenagers with lower economical resources for these purposes)
That they have communicative and educational objectives and a focus on climate change–related issues
That they seem aimed at an adolescent audience of 12+ (our study focuses on strategies toward youth, who have different and more developed cognitive processes than children, allowing us also to target a specific segment of the population as suggested by social marketing for the design of environmental communication efforts)
Games that were excluded from the study were therefore commercial games, those that are only available through a software download or mobile applications (7 games), those whose website links were broken or not available by the time this research was initiated (10 games), those in Spanish produced by a foreign institution (17 games), and those aimed at children or primary education (11 games). Attending to the criteria described above, we have identified a total of 15 games, including online ability/puzzle games, quizzes, online board games, arcade games, action/adventure games, and simulations (Table 2). These games also appear on Spanish Government websites (e.g., National Center for Environmental Education) and on blogs from docents and educational institutions as recommended games.
Spanish Online Climate Change Games That Were Analyzed.
Findings From the Analysis
In this section, we present the findings from the analysis of Spanish games categorized into the four dimensions—identification, narrative, contents, gameplay—and following the same order of the criteria given in Table 1.
Identification
Our case study focuses on free of charge games targeting youth (12+) that are available online and have been produced in Spain. In order to take a communicative approach to analyzing the features of a game, it is important to look at the transmitter of the message. NGOs occupy the first place in the ranking (33.3%), followed by the private sector (26.7%), and finally public bodies. Therefore, a third of the games in our sample are produced by NGOs. Examples of NGOs include international and well-known organizations, such as Greenpeace, Red Cross, and WWF; as for examples of the private sector, we find electrical and insurance companies. Results also reveal partnerships between different types of actors in producing the game. For example, the game Island 100% is produced by a research center in cooperation with a local government agency.
Other important feature of the analyzed games is language: Three of the producers have decided to have the game also available in English, while two of them have the games in Galician and Catalan, languages that have official regional status in Spain.
Because the lines between one communicative purpose and another can be blurred, and they are usually combined, the researchers decided to count the percentage of cases rather than categorizing one game into only one purpose. Table 3 reports that most of the cases aim at providing some basic knowledge on climate change and related issues, developing familiarity with the topic (86.7%). Raising awareness of causes and consequences can be seen in 53.3% of the games analyzed. This purpose is revealed for instance through the type of questions posed to the player in a quiz format (e.g., CO2 Alert) or the type of challenges presented in a skill/puzzle game, such as relating the images of causes/consequences (e.g., Mission Possible, Save the Planet). A large number of games (73.3% of the cases) focus on promoting a change in attitude and behavior (e.g., The Home Sorting Game), and to a lesser extent, we find that 26.7% of the cases stimulate the development of solutions and ideas through creativity (e.g., Act on Your Consumption).
Types of Communicative Purposes.
Narrative
In this section, we look at the narrative and fictional context elements, including story lines, story structure, character depiction, representation of the environment, and spatial and temporal dimensions. First of all, the results of our study show that the relevance of narrative in the analyzed games is mostly high (40%) and medium (40%). This happens especially in arcade games, adventure/action games, and simulations. In simulations, it is shown how narratives offer the player a range of possibilities at the same time, and it is the players themselves who decide in what order to establish them. Storytelling has been suggested as a key strategy for enhancing attention and engagement: It makes climate impacts and solutions more real, it influences people’s beliefs because they shift the frames of reference for emotional and cognitive processes, and it increases people’s capacity for empathy because it can connect with values and social identities (Mar & Oatley, 2008; Strange, 2002).
The findings on narrative reveal that global story lines are very diverse; however, it is noticeable that in the majority of the cases (9 out of 15 cases), the players take on the role of ordinary citizens who has to take sustainable decisions in their daily lives, such as saving energy and water, recycling, buying ecological food, and so on (e.g., Bioenergy Goose Game, Recycling First, Forestry Multigames). In other cases, the player is a mayor who has to create a sustainable territory, reducing CO2 emissions and keeping the population happy (e.g., Climántica) or a superhero who has to save the world from greenhouse emissions, reducing their impact on the Earth (e.g., Mission Possible, Save the Planet). Story structures of our sample of games are both lineal (a single endpoint) and multilinear (several endpoints); there is not a game that provides the players with unclearly defined aims, as is the case with The Sims. Some of the games make use of narrators in their stories, usually animals (e.g., a monkey in Eneragen) or fantasy creatures (e.g., an elf in Forestry Multigames), and basically all of them tend to provide a better description of the environments than of the characters.
In addition, 73.3% of the scenarios are fictitious, while 26.7% are real. Examples of real scenarios mentioned in the stories of the games include Spanish islands, Andes, the Caribbean Sea, or the desert in Africa. The stories can also be set on different scales. The local scale refers to decisions taken by private households at their own homes or in the context of a virtual city. The majority of games that were analyzed focus mainly on this local scale (73.3%). They mostly consider individual or community decisions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, aiming to draw connections between climate change and everyday individual experience and decision making. A smaller proportion of games (13.3%) are set on a national scale, followed by global (6.7%) and a combination of different scales (6.7%). Using a local perspective is therefore one of the tendencies observed, involving a general preference toward portraying an ordinary citizen and focusing on the local scale.
If we look at the “time” dimension of the stories, the results show that the majority of the games are focused on the present (66.6%), followed by the combination of present and future (26.7%), and a minority focus only on the future (6.7%); however, these findings must be taken with caution since the in-game time lines are blurred. A combination of present and future settings is particularly common in simulation games. For instance, the game Climántica is set in the year 2015 at the beginning of the game and time passes until the year 2034.
Contents
Since language is never neutral, the first step to start analyzing the messages transmitted through texts, audio, and images in the games is to consider the creators’ preferred terms: climate change or global warming? The majority of the games use the term climate change (60%), while the minority chose global warming (6.7%). Another 33.3% of the games do not mention any of these terms, mostly because their main topic is not the phenomenon of climate change itself but crossover issues such as energy efficiency, waste management, or consumption. This case study shows therefore a preference among game creators for the term climate change over global warming. In fact, the term climate change is predominant in the scientific discourse, and it is ever more visible in traditional media (Boykoff, 2007). Based on British journalist Steven Poole’s (2006) book Unspeak, which investigates the manipulative power of language, climate change is a “less threatening” way of saying global warming and “less obviously” related to the oil industry.
A majority of games (66.7%) have chosen to explicitly define certain scientific or other concepts related to climate change to facilitate the player’s understanding, such as greenhouse effect, renewable energy, and so on. The findings also reveal that only 26.7% took advantage of their online format to converge with social networks. For example, in Act on Your Consumption there are links to documentaries like The Age of Stupidity, extracts from the press, and Facebook and Twitter accounts of Greenpeace and other environmentalist organizations. It is important to note that erroneous beliefs in relation to the concept of climate change (e.g., ozone depletion or acid rain) have not been found, although some of the games integrate different environmental problems and concepts in their contents that can lead to misunderstanding and wrong relations among players. For instance, in the game Mission Possible, Save the Planet the player is introduced to the concept of global warming in a word search puzzle mission and then asked to find a hidden word in relation to water pollution, without further receiving contextual information to distinguish both environmental problems.
Mitigation and adaptation are considered the main responses to climate change. According to our analysis, the main focus in games is mitigation of greenhouse gases: 60% of the games address only this aspect, while 40% of the games address both mitigation and adaptation measures in their messages. We have not found any Spanish game that focuses only on adaptation. We also investigated content-related aspects by looking at the four themes that appear the most in each game. The primary focus in the games is mitigation of greenhouse gases, as outlined above. More specifically, the themes that are used the most are energy (66.7% of cases), followed by waste management (55.3% of cases), and mobility (53.3% of cases). The use of carbon sinks through replanting trees (e.g., Forestry Multigames), water saving (e.g., Fluvi and the Water Cycle), and protecting biodiversity (e.g., Mission Possible, Save the Planet) are other recurring themes. In the games analyzed, we have found only few references that promote actions such as eating less meat and no references to the politics of climate change decision making on an international scale have been found.
The games make it clear that human action is the main cause of climate change (60%). Few of them also make reference to natural causes but always in combination with human activity (6.7%). The rest of the games (33.3%) do not explicitly mention causes, mainly because these games focus on crossover issues and not on the phenomenon of climate change itself. The consequences of climate change appear in Table 4.
Cases Relating to Climate Change Consequences.
The tone of what is communicated or the author’s attitude toward the audience can be as important as the message, and they can be revealed through words and sentence styles. We have analyzed the four tones that appear the most in each game by carefully observing the values and emotions given to messages. According to our research, the most used are proaction (93.3% of the cases), informative (66.7%), and directness (53.3%). To a lesser extent, games use the following tones: alarmist, encouraging, caring, protest, and humorous.
Here are some examples that represent the common message tones:
Proaction: “Act quickly, your decisions can reduce CO2.” (CO2 Alert)
Informative: “The key to save energy is control.” (Eneragen)
Directness: “Hi, I’m Eva, a young consumer like you.” (Act on Your Consumption)
The findings reveal the use of a positive tone in the games, focusing on providing information on solutions, encouraging action, and implying empathy with the player. The games seem to avoid uncertainty and overall sensationalism in their messages. Another aspect to highlight is the occasional use of humor. Appealing to humor (as some of the games do) can be a potential strategy to target young people, while always taking care not to simplify messages too much or give wrong ideas. For instance, one game states, “Game accuracy is low, perfect if you’re a beginner or chicken!” (Control).
Gameplay
Finally, we look at the gameplay dimension and some of the meanings that arise from the game design and its formal structures. First of all, the concept of interactivity implies, among other aspects, intervention in the content on the part of the user (Aparici & Silva, 2012; Grifeu, 2010); 86.3% of the games are characterized as having a medium/high degree of interactivity, providing players power to intervene in the content. In interactive media, the output comes from the input of the users, so they are not passive consumers of information anymore, and instead, they feel a sense of agency.
When looking at the game dynamics, challenge is the most common, followed by ability, discovery, and progression. Game dynamics can be further interpreted into mechanics. Our research reveals that 12 out of 15 games clearly involved decision-making mechanisms, and 10 out of 15 games are under time pressure. Therefore challenge, through decision making and time pressure, is the most common design strategy. In fact, decision making under time pressure is considered a key skill to cope with climate change effects (Kennel, Briggs, & Victor, 2016). Players must take various parameters into account in real time, planning resources in a strategic way, by analyzing and evaluating information received on such important considerations as urban planning and energy or water management.
On the other hand, we observe that a higher number of games opt for competition (33.3% of the cases) rather than cooperation in their design (6.7% of the cases). This can be observed for instance in how winning conditions are being achieved. This can be interpreted as a lack of transmitting a feeling of alliance, collective action, and unity in the fight against climate change. Cooperation and collaboration are considered important values to fight climate change, for instance, in the international system where nations must give their consent to be bound by meaningful commitments (Dinar, Katz, De Stefano, & Blankespoor, 2015).
In relation to game dynamics and mechanics, we can differentiate among different types of player profiles (Kim, 2012): creator, competitor, explorer, and collaborator. According to our analysis, we have found that the most popular player profile is the explorer (46.7%), followed very closely by the competitor (40%). Fewer cases are characteristic of the creator type of player (13.3%), and none of the games seem to fit primarily the collaborator type of player.
Feedback is critical in games to maintain engagement (De By & Hooper, 2013). Results show that most of the games use a mix of positive and negative messages in their feedback system (66.7%). Similarly, our study shows that the majority of games analyzed use an intangible reward system (60%) to reward individual actions. Intangible rewards (e.g., extra points, virtual coins) are awarded by answering a quiz question correctly, making sustainable decisions under time pressure or doing well in the skill games, whether it is by turning the street lights off quickly or by matching up cause and consequence images of climate change. Rewards are considered to act as motivators to take actions, when the right type and magnitude of incentive for a given behavior are provided (Handgraaf, Van Lidth de Jeude, & Appelt, 2013); therefore, this game attribute could be valuable to achieve one of the communicative goals of climate change games.
It is also worth mentioning that the lengths of most of the games are less than 1 hour and that game instructions are available, which makes it easier for them to be implemented by teachers in class. Only two of the games offer the possibility to save the game session to continue their progress in future.
Discussion and Conclusions
Our research has shown that it is possible to integrate a narratological and a ludological approach and explained how this combination can be helpful to analyze communication features of available online climate change games in a holistic and integrating manner: focusing on the relationships between game narrative and design and on the transmission of explicit meanings and implicit values. This study proposes a set of criteria that embraces both approaches and reaches the consensus of a panel of experts. By applying them to a sample of games in a specific country, we have been able to provide an interesting overview of online climate change games, giving us an idea as to what types of messengers, messages, and preferred techniques are behind this innovative communication tools.
The findings from the analysis reveal some positive trends, since they have incorporated the recommendations given by scholars like Sheppard (2012) on how to communicate climate change (a) make it local—to avoid psychological distance, (b) make it visual—to make climate change more real and memorable, and (c) make it connected—to provide a sense of agency. First of all, the majority of the games provide a local discourse. There is a general preference toward portraying an ordinary citizen and focusing on local scenarios, in which players must make decisions at home or within their communities to reduce carbon emissions. Second, players are able to see through visual representations the implications of climate change, absorbing information more readily and simulating unfamiliar circumstances that are not possible in real life. Most games allow players to make decisions in the present and then travel into the future, where they can see the consequences of their choices, an advantage that has been corroborated by similar studies (Schroth, Angel, Sheppard, & Dulic, 2014). Third, many games present a positive discourse, not only through stories and messages that focus on solutions but also through the game design. Positive and immediate feedback is critical to maintain engagement, and rewards are seen as incentives to take actions (Handgraaf et al., 2013).
As mentioned in the literature review, the communicative goals of online climate change games are the following: making players aware of the challenges associated with climate change, providing understanding of the issue, and encouraging players to take actions. According to different authors, focusing on visible solutions, as well as localized stories and positivism, can be considered a strategy to achieve these communicative goals (Maibach, Nisbet, Baldwin, Akerlof, & Diao, 2010; Moser & Dilling, 2011; Schroth et al., 2014; Sheppard, 2012).
It is out of the scope of this study to test the effectiveness of the selected games in pursuing their communicative goals; however, we can mention that there is limited empirical evidence currently available to prove effectiveness of serious games. Some studies have found positive changes in awareness and understanding, although there were no statistically significant differences between experimental and control group (Van Pelt et al., 2015). In the review carried out by Soekarjo and van Oostendorp (2015), increased knowledge of players was found in 5 of the 60 games reviewed, change in attitude after playing was also found in 5 games, and change in behavior was found in 3 games.
The findings from our analysis also reveal some areas that could be improved. Games could, for instance, integrate more climate change adaptation contents (just 40% address both mitigation and adaptation measures in our sample). Other studies have revealed similar findings (Reckien & Eisenack, 2013). This is important for countries like Spain, where there is a risk of desertification due to increasing temperatures and a reduction in precipitation, and therefore, a need for adopting adaptation measures (Martínez-Valderrama et al., 2016). In addition to this, we believe that games that address climate change should avoid addressing other environmental concepts such as depletion zone or acid rain in order to avoid misconceptions and confusion among players; incorporating a team of scientists might help achieve this purpose and ensure scientific accuracy.
Taking more advantage of their online format to converge with social networks like Facebook or Twitter could be another strategy to move forward (less than 30% of the analyzed games integrate social media in their platforms). For instance, the use of social media allows gamers to post their gaming scores, enhancing gameplay experience and increasing the likelihood to return to the website (Center for Research on Environmental Decisions and ecoAmerica, 2014). This not only can increase the chance of developing awareness of the issue but also can provide social incentive for action, as people are often highly motivated to follow the behavior of their peers (Ajzen, 2002). Finally, most games in our sample encourage individual skills development, so a greater integration of cooperation mechanisms in their structure and design (portraying the collaborator player profile) would be highly recommended to call for collective action and enhance efficacy. In this sense, the field of online climate change games could have a closer look at massively multiplayer online games, which enable players not only to compete but also to cooperate with each other, and sometimes to interact meaningfully with other players around the world (Wagner, 2008).
This study has some limitations, including the small sample of games, the limited game space as a result of the selection requirements, the decrease in number of experts during the Delphi process, and the difficulty in applying a systematic content analysis. We would like to recommend designers to take into account the points highlighted above and academics to make use of a similar methodology and criteria to those proposed in this article to analyze the communicative elements of online climate change games produced in other countries and in other languages in order to be able to make comparisons and draw conclusions at a global level. A follow-up research effort could also be conducted of English-language games, as they constitute another large component of the game space. Other questions emerging from this study are related to the impacts of these games on youth, including how players receive the messages and if there is any long-term effect in terms of behavior change. Complementary studies on the effectiveness of these games should be carried out in order to confirm the potential of online climate change games to successfully communicate climate change to young people.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.