English summary
Our mission
Our mission is to make it possible to use games for improving sustainability.
How can we become more sustainable in everyday life?
GameForGreen is an innovation and research project, funded by Innovation Fund Denmark. We are working towards developing digital Serious Games that can help us with just that; getting better at being green and sustainable.
But sustainability is not just saving on water, sorting the waste and choosing the bike over the car; it is also doing it in such a way that it becomes manageable to make it a habit in our complex daily lives.
Thus, our goal is to develop a game platform, and design a method for building the games, so they can be tailored to exactly the area where you want to become more sustainable, at home and at work.
Data
The overall question we need to answer through data in the GameForGreen project, is whether behaviour in a game affects behaviour in reality. For example, if a household chooses a particular behaviour in a game about saving water, will this behaviour then be visible in their actual water consumption?
Generally, we are collecting data about and experiences with seven areas of sustainability:
- Saving water
- Saving electricity
- Saving on heat
- Less waste and better waste sorting in households
- Handling of waste and sewage on a municipal level
- Local transport for households in municipalities
- Household shopping and consumption.
Throughout the project, the three partners will, in collaboration with the five project contributors, build games aimed at making households and companies more sustainable and reducing CO2 emissions. Data about what is effective will be integrated into these games.
Methodology
We have a mission, and we have access to data. But how are we going to build the games? In co-creation with you, the potential players, and our project contributors. Co-creation is the act of working together to identify what is valuable and anchoring it in the product.
Our goal is to develop a design method for building the games on our platform, that can make a difference for the players. But to achieve this, we need to know the players and involve them in our work. Because of this, we use interviews, observations and design workshops to create a foundation for our games and ensure that the games reflect the true daily life as accurately as possible.
Prototype
Our first prototype is about water. Through 6 chapters, the player is presented with different dilemmas about how to save water, on the water bill and on the environmental impact. For example, do you know what is more sustainable, when your toilet is leaky and you have to decide between repairing or replacing? Or whether you need to rinse the dirty dishes, before you put them in the dishwasher on the ECO-cycle?
The purpose of the first prototype, among other things, is to help us figure out how a game should look and play out. Are the scenarios realistic? Is the story told in an entertaining way? Does the game keep the right balance between learning and fun?
Our first prototype was tested and evaluated in February 2024.
