Games Help Humans Enable Change

Environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, and climate change are impacting billions of people worldwide, costing lives and trillions of dollars in damage. Scientists identify what measures can be taken to stop and reverse these trends. Yet humans are proving to be unwilling, unprepared, or unable to change. As governments around the world struggle to reach critical environmental targets, a new theory of action demonstrates how role-playing games lead to transformative change.

Games offer more accurate models of human behavior to facilitate environmental policy-making

Games are models, and game rules represent system processes.  This paper in Nature Sustainability proposes using strategy games as an effective way to find novel solutions to complex socio-environmental issues. Strategy games allow players to experience how a system works from the perspective of different stakeholders. These games offer opportunities for strategy formulation, conflict resolution, and the construction of new agreements, helping players break free from established norms in the policy-making processes.

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