SciComm Conversations: “Climate education through online narrative games”
Listen to “Climate education through online narrative games. Guest: Dr Lynda Dunlop” on Spreaker.
Transcript
Achintya Rao [00:20]: Welcome to SciComm Conversations, my name is Achintya Rao. In the third episode of our second season, we hear from Dr Lynda Dunlop of the University of York, where she is a senior lecturer and Director of Education for Environmental Sustainability at York. She was interviewed at the PCST conference in Aberdeen last year by my colleague Laura Busato from SISSA Media Lab. Here, Linda tells us about Game Changers, an interactive live show about climate activism that was part of Megaverse and was funded by UK Research and Innovation. You can find out more about Game Changers via links in this episode’s description.
Lynda Dunlop [01:07]: I’m Lynda Dunlop, I’m a social scientist based in the Department of Education at the University of York. And the research that I’m involved in is really in climate change and environmental sustainability education, and young people’s participation in environmental decision making.
Laura Busato [01:24]: So we are here at PCST in Aberdeen and you attended because you presented Game Changers. What is Game Changers?
LD [01:34]: Game Changers is a live online narrative game that was created to explore ideas around climate justice and it’s kind of at the convergence between game and theatre. It followed the story of three climate activists and their robot friend ECO, so that ECO is Ecological Collaborative Oracle, and it was set during the times of a flood to explore different types of action that are possible. I think this is perhaps one of the many unique things about it is that it uses a choose-our-own-adventure mechanics. So the audience determined the direction of the story through choices in the plot and they could also interact with the characters through ECO.
LB [02:15]: What does the idea of game changes come from? So how did you come up with this idea?
LD [02:20]: It was produced and directed by Megaverse, so that’s John Ingel, Ben Carlin and Toki Allison. They kind of came up with the idea for the project. The script was written by Emma Nuttall who is a writer, and the wider team included Zoyander Street, who’s a games expert, and Hetty Hodgson, who’s a theatre director. We kind of came together around the idea of creating a game to explore aspects of climate change but the game itself then was co-created not just with that project team but also with climate activists, with actors and with the audience. So it was a process of co-creation. A key area of consensus that I think the whole team wanted to achieve through the game was to bring in ideas of justice and the critique of corporate and political power, and really focus on the human experience and impacts of climate change.
LB [03:22]: Along with this social part, I would say there is also a lot of research within Game Changers. So how did you bring research into the game?
LD [03:32]: There were probably about four main ways that we brought research into the game. So the first was before we started looking at the research literature on how climate change had been explored through games, and what had been done at that point was – or what had been reported at that point – was mainly the use of games to educate about climate change. So very much focused on knowledge acquisition. But we know that there’s this gap between knowledge and action. So that was kind of an area that we decided to avoid.
The other aspect of research that we brought in was the IPCC reports as kind of a reference point for the plot, the characters and kind of future scenarios planning. So that was another way we brought in research. Then we did some empirical research with climate activists. So we had interviews and focus groups with people who self-defined as climate actors and they were doing a range of things. So some of it was kind of lobbying from within economic organisations. Others were organising fossil-fuel protest movements. So we did that to understand what the experience of being an activist is and the many ways of being an activist. And that was used to inform, yeah, the plot, the story, the choices. And then the final way that we used research was to understand what was drawing people’s attention to climate change during the live streaming of Game Changers.
LB [04:59]: I think it’s quite difficult to bring together this type of research and also all the societal aspects that are within Game Changers. Is this why you chose this format for this game or are there other background ideas that brought you into this direction?
LD [05:17]: We were really interested in the idea of collective action, how the idea of the collective could be represented through the story. So I think that was quite important in the choice of the choose-our-own-adventure mechanic. But then Megaverse, they specialise in immersive tech and the convergence of theatre and technology, and have worked with you theatre organisations. So they had that kind of experience and expertise in the technological side of things.
And I think the other thing in terms of the format relates to the narrative. So I think the narrative format is really important not just to tell stories of science but like the human stories of how climate change is playing out. And you know, as a way of questioning and drawing attention to the structures that drive climate change.
LB [06:06]: Okay and who is, who was, the target you had in mind when you developed Game Changers?
LD [06:12]: It was funded in response to a call by UK Research and Innovation: the Climate Play Makers call. And in that call it was specifically about engaging game players with climate change. But I think probably the audience we reached was more general, but I think the audience included people with an interest in games, technology, theatre and kind of experimental arts. I think that’s probably where it was situated.
LB [06:38]: Since we are talking about games, let’s have a broader perspective. How can games help science communication or, better, can they help science communication?
LD [06:50]: Well I think they can help science communication but I guess it’s much broader than that. They can critique science, they can question science and its norms and assumptions. And I think what they can really do is explore or allow us to explore how science and technology are embedded in social and political structures. In the case of Game Changers, so where you’ve got a live narrative game, they can really show rather than tell about the impacts of something like climate change. But they also allow us to play with different ways of living and being and being with each other.
So if we take like board games that many people love to play, Daybreak is a wonderful example of a collaborative board game, where players co-operate to model technological and scientific responses to climate change. And then there are also kind of experimental games that are currently being developed, like Anukriti Gupta’s Navaroud, which brings history to life and allows players to critique economic models and question kind of how history has permeated the present.
LB [07:56]: When it comes to complicated topics like climate change, many difficulties may arise, like, for instance not oversimplifying or choosing the right words to describe the topic. Which difficulty, or which challenge maybe, was the most unexpected when developing Game Changers?
LD [08:15]: In terms of things like language and how to communicate climate change, we did a lot of that work through this script development, so Emma working with us and with the research kind of, yeah, use that to inform the script. And maybe this isn’t so much an unexpected challenge but an unexpected benefit of a challenge… so it was designed so that if anything crashed or if there was a lag in the live stream coverage would switch to ECO and ECO was voiced by an improvisation artist. So at those points ECO spoke to the audience, asked questions, sang, told jokes and I think developed a bit of a like following over the streaming of the episodes. So the challenge was anticipated but I think the kind of the way that that had an emotional resonance with the audience was a really unexpected kind of benefit of that challenge.
And I think maybe this is more in terms of retrospective evaluation than a challenge but the choose-our-own-adventure, so the decision points in the story, the action moved on quite quickly and I think if others were creating a game that was live and use that sort of mechanic, I think creating more space before and after those decision points to explore reasoning would really help bring more attention to some of those, like, challenging questions related to climate change.
LB [09:45]: Since you mentioned ECO, which is an AI bot, which is an important part of the game, I have a question related to the interaction between AI and climate change, because it’s a huge topic at the moment, because it brings a lot of advantages but at the same time a lot of challenges as well. Like for instance the use of huge amounts of energy for the servers. Or the quantity of water that is needed to cool down the servers and so on. So did this topic ever come up during the development or maybe during the game with the audience?
LD [10:24]: Absolutely. I share those concerns about AI and I think I’d probably describe ECO rather than AI as a kind of collective-intelligence bot. The way ECO worked was that the data came from the audience, so the audience were like the data points, so they were powered by the audience, so a very like human collective intelligence. And I think that’s a really interesting response to the idea of artificial intelligence. I mean I guess that’s a human product as well. But I think there’s not enough discussion about the environmental impacts you know energy, water, mineral extraction, when talking about the risks of AI. And in fact I think a game like Game Changers or a story like Game Changers that focused on kind of those challenges in relation to AI would be really important.
We also did talk about like the environmental impacts of doing a technological production. And I think… so there is work going on in the games industry and in the arts more generally like the Albert scheme to think about the sustainability of production. But again I think that there’s more work to be done in that area, but I think it is a really live discussion.
LB [11:39]: You already had the chance to play Game Changers. What happened? Which were the results that you get and did it go as expected or something interesting or unexpected happened?
LD [11:53]: So I think something that I found interesting, and maybe this is because my research is in climate-change education, but I was quite surprised that so little of the online chat was about climate change. So there was a lot of chat about climate change but it was really there was a lot of social chat. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing but I thought it was quite interesting that maybe only about 20% of the content of online chat was about climate change.
I was surprised that the idea of greenwashing was new to so many people. So that was something that generated some discussion. So that’s the idea about misleading advertising or actions or use of fallacies that are used to make a product, a company or a service more environmentally friendly than it is. So there was a lot of kind of that… that was a new term and through the plot we showed different ways that greenwashing happened. So I think it was a small point but actually there was a lot of learning that happened from that.
The other thing that I think that we found was, you know, when we were interested in those conversations that were about climate change… What were the things, what were the design features that enabled that? And there were four main ways. So there was integration of climate change into the plot and into the character and into the environment. There was interaction between players, and between players and ECO. Then there was intervention points, where the audience could intervene and determine the direction of the plot. And then the tech innovation that also stimulated conversations about climate change.
And I think the other surprising thing was that I felt quite heartened by the amount of support there was for climate action and particularly climate action that tackled structural inequalities and that was like taking a kind of… the systems that need to change to enable a just transition.
LB [13:49]: The format of Game Changers helps you tackling a complex topic as climate change, which is intertwined with many social issues. Do you think that this format can be used also for other controversial topics in science communication?
LD [14:06]: Yeah I think it could work really well and I think paying attention to those… so the ways in which people’s attention was drawn to climate change conversations, I’m sure that those are quite relatable to other contexts. So if you integrate the controversial issue into the plot, if you provide ways for people to interact on it, to intervene in the plot, I’m sure that games could be used to explore many other controversial issues.
LB [14:33]: Can our listeners get more information about the game or can they play Game Changers in the future?
LD [14:42]: So the team that produced Game Changers would really like to work together in the future. We haven’t got a solid way of doing that yet but all of the recordings of Game Changers are available, and the replays are available along with resources that are linked to the themes in the game, so that they can have a look at areas rather action or exploring further information. And I think some of the questions that were made live in the game, people can still discuss those, like what sort of action on climate change should be prioritised? How can corporate power be challenged? And how do we work together to create a just transition? So I think those questions are very much still live so I think anybody interested could have a look, watch the replays and maybe discuss those with friends.
LB [15:31]: And is there a future for Game Changers? I mean are you developing it more or maybe are you developing other games on other topics related to climate change or to other topics?
LD [15:43]: So at the moment I supervise a PhD student, Prasad Sambhor, who is a game designer. He’s produced some live role-playing games on climate action and some on birds in the city and trees in the city. So that’s where I’m involved in some game work at the moment. As I said we’d really like to develop the ideas from Game Changers, and I think like ECO in particular has the potential to be like a social-media influencer. And it’d be really interesting to explore that sort of idea but these are ideas that need to be developed.
LB [16:19]: And how long did it take you to develop Game Changers?
LD [16:23]: So if we leave aside the time to develop the application, probably about nine months to a year, yeah nine months of pretty intense work.
LB [16:36]: Okay, great! Thank you Dr Dunlop, for being with us today on SciComm Conversations. It was a pleasure to have you with us.
LD [16:44]: Thank you very much for having me, for listening, for speaking. It was lovely to meet you.
This episode was edited by Sneha Uplekar. Find out more about Sneha’s work on her website, microdragons.co.uk.
Music for SciComm Conversations is by Brodie Goodall. Follow Brodie on Instagram at “therealchangeling” or find them on LinkedIn.
SciComm Conversations, with the exception of the music from Game Changers, is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.
The COALESCE project is funded by the European Union to establish the European Competence Centre for Science Communication.
Views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the guests only and do not necessarily reflect those of COALESCE or of the European Union.
