Climate Change Gaming: Please, good people, we'd like some more!

Corporate social responsibility is big these days. As important as it is for companies to act responsibly, they also need to respond to the needs of our society. This is one of the key concepts behind social entrepreneurship-- those who are responding to the surging moral undercurrent in our society that’s tired of governments stalling (or outright failing, ahem, Iceland, Greece) and corporate insincerity (spinning a product as good for you, instead of making a product that actually IS good for you).

The new climate change game from Red Redemption is a product that responds to social needs of a society and will do good at the same time.

From the Guardian:

“Climate Change 2010 is a turn-based affair that gives you control of the earth. The downside is that all the consequences of your actions are accurately modelled over the 200 virtual years of game time.”




Commentators in the US and UK have often marveled about a public’s willingness to sign up to social movements like 350 degrees, 10:10, 38 degrees, Avaaz, memberships that result in declarative support but lack change substance. People more often say they are willing to change their behavior but lack the follow through.

Cultural behavior is something that results from the pervasiveness of ideas, concepts, and values that pervade a society and in order to carry through a true paradigm shift, something modern Western society is only flirting with at the moment, it needs use cultural tools to subversively spread ideas more than it needs overt support for such ideas. A climate change game like this and the earlier Sim City style game from the UK’s DECC myabodo.com, do just that: they subversively support and instill values in a way that no amount of lecturing from Frannie Armstrong and an army of 10:10 volunteers can achieve. These games and more like them can be even more effective if used in conjunction with school curriculums, especially in elementary schools during time allotted to earth sciences and biology, for example.

Please, society needs more of these! Awake game developers of the world! Please, we'd like some more!