Doing Our Bit

BONUS EPISODE: In this quick-fire episode, Hugo digests the adventure that was last week's Green Games Summit by UKIE and Playing for the Planet, alongside fellow summitgoers and IGDA Climate SIG members Mélanie Christin and Trevin York. What were our biggest takeaways from the summit, what did it accomplish and where do we go from here? Apologies for the sound quality in the beginning, it gets better after a few minutes!

Ryan Boudinot is an author and technologist who has spent the COVID-19 pandemic diving deep into geospatial data and the ways it can be used to not just improve games, but to make game-playing improve the data, and the world itself. On this episode, he tells us all about this concept which he calls the World Integration Loop or WIL. Ryan's startup website is here: http://machinesanddreamland.com/ As always, join the conversation with IGDA Climate: https://discord.gg/KW5XXWzCHq [https://discord.gg/KW5XXWzCHq]

In this episode we catch up with leading ecocritic Alenda Chang to learn about how game worlds can be just as delightful and important as the action that takes place within them, and how deepening our simulation of worlds and ecosystems can help players reconnect with nature. After years of writing papers and books on how games portray ecology, last summer Alenda published an honest-to-goodness manifesto, and it is, well... rambunctious. LINKS The paper in question, Rambunctious Games: A Manifesto for Environmental Game Design, can be downloaded here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00043249.2020.1765557 [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00043249.2020.1765557] Alenda co-edited this themed issue of Ecozon@ called Green Computer and Video Games which helped kickstart the study of environmental depictions in games. It's free online: https://ecozona.eu/issue/view/124 [https://ecozona.eu/issue/view/124] Read more of Alenda's excellent work in her book Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games or listen to her talk about it in this episode of Super Gamer Podcast: https://supergamerpodcast.com/2020/03/30/new-super-gamer-podcast-6-our-virtual-natural-world-with-alenda-chang/ [https://supergamerpodcast.com/2020/03/30/new-super-gamer-podcast-6-our-virtual-natural-world-with-alenda-chang/] The excellent interview with Frankie Myers of the Yurok Tribe on How to Save a Planet that I mentioned, can be found here: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet/5whko6o/the-tribe-thats-moving-earth-and-water [https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet/5whko6o/the-tribe-thats-moving-earth-and-water] Join the conversation, and help us build the design patterns database and other resources, in the IGDA Climate SIG discord: https://discord.gg/KW5XXWzCHq [https://discord.gg/KW5XXWzCHq] [https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet/5whko6o/the-tribe-thats-moving-earth-and-water]

In this special episode we get all of the spokespeople for the new IGDA Climate SIG workstreams together in a virtual room spanning three continents. Arnaud Fayolle tells us how we can get involved in crafting and promoting the actions that will shape future game design in the Design Patterns workstream, Mark Videon gives us the lowdown on how to monitor you studios' carbon footprints in the Industry Benchmarking workstream, while Paula Escuadra plots how we use all this to take over the games industry in the Climate Councils workstream. Are we ready to get this party started? Actually, it was ending it that turned out to be the problem. LINKS The blog post chronicling the first months of the SIG and the workstreams is now live, along with an awesome video: https://theclimatesig.medium.com/not-game-over-game-developers-tackle-the-climate-crisis-8fb2ae45674d [https://theclimatesig.medium.com/not-game-over-game-developers-tackle-the-climate-crisis-8fb2ae45674d] Confused about the workstreams? This is a neat illustration (followed by all the detail you could ever ask for): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tme06zzQybH9v3lRe-0RjrSsgVovHHqiGc6JLxYpbC0/ [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tme06zzQybH9v3lRe-0RjrSsgVovHHqiGc6JLxYpbC0/] (sorry future listeners, I imagine that link might be a bit stale) Space Ape Games' carbon offsetting guide that Mark mentioned can be found here: https://spaceapegames.com/green [https://spaceapegames.com/green] Join the IGDA Climate SIG! Dive into the discord here: https://discord.gg/KW5XXWzCHq [https://discord.gg/KW5XXWzCHq] Or get in touch here: https://igda.org/sigs/climate/ [https://igda.org/sigs/climate/]

Narrative game designer Inari Bourguenolle has been on an ecological journey ever since she first played Final Fantasy VII. Incidentally, our host Hugo Bille has recently obsessed quite a bit over the climate stories embedded in this classic game and especially its recent remake. Their conversation takes us to toxic masculinity, gender roles, individualism and the monomyth, and begins to grapple with how they all exacerbate the climate and environmental crises. LINKS Hugo's article, Those Who Fight Further: FF7 and the Climate Crisis, can be found on Gamasutra: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/HugoBille/20200917/369001/Those_Who_Fight_Further_FF7_and_the_Climate_Crisis.php [https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/HugoBille/20200917/369001/Those_Who_Fight_Further_FF7_and_the_Climate_Crisis.php] Inari mentioned The Forge which was a community for tabletop RPG design overseen by designer Ron Edwards. It was active from 1999 to 2012 http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php [http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php] Join the conversation in the IGDA Climate SIG. Hop in the discord: https://discord.gg/KW5XXWzCHq [https://discord.gg/KW5XXWzCHq]