Review of Haptic and Computerized (Simulation) Games on Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change imposes tremendous, complex challenges on humanity. Thoughtfully designed games can support solving them. This article presents a review of climate games and thereby updates the review conducted by Reckien and Eisenack in 2011. It provides an overview of published climate games and reveals the development of the field over the last years. A total of 119 climate games were found whereof 52 were already part of the review of 2011. The broad variety of discovered games indicates a lively community and different settings where such tools are being applied. A substantial number of games addressed topics such as international climate conferences, global impacts of global decisions, and effects of individual decisions on their local environment. Other topics, however, were largely absent. They included - amongst others - the connection between climate change and health, and games that bride local and global levels. Furthermore, the game types “video games” and “alternate reality games” were not applied frequently. Both, the absent topics and the scarcely used game types open up possibilities to develop the field. Forty-six per cent of the games listed by Reckien and Eisenack seem to have disappeared and could not be found for this review, an observation that may need further attention.