New Minecraft ‘Warmth Dragon’ Quest Has Players Combat Local weather Villain

New Minecraft ‘Warmth Dragon’ Quest Has Players Combat Local weather Villain

By Daniel Cusick & E&E Information

CLIMATEWIRE | The usually buttoned-down Atlantic Council is diving into the net gaming universe with hopes of elevating local weather catastrophe consciousness amongst one of many world’s fastest-growing demographic teams: avid gamers.

A brand new interactive sport known as “Warmth Wave Survival” was rolled out final week by the council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Basis Resilience Heart. The group is making an attempt to faucet into the 60 million individuals who use the favored on-line gaming platform Minecraft with a brand new model that pits avid gamers in opposition to an animated fire-breathing “warmth dragon.”

Gamers “embark on a quest to guard their digital village from the infamous warmth dragon,” the middle stated in an announcement. “They’re challenged to discover international locations around the globe looking for cooling options that may not solely shield them within the digital world but additionally in actual life.”

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The sport is accessible now by way of the net studying platform Minecraft Schooling, owned by Microsoft Corp., and can be out there to all Minecraft gamers in just a few weeks, officers stated. It’s the newest in a collection of game-based entry factors into the topic of local weather change. Past being enjoyable, creators say such video games promote local weather literacy by immersing gamers in simulated local weather disasters the place they need to adapt or die.

“Video games are actively consumed. They’re not passive,” Shayne Hayes, Arsht-Rock’s affiliate director of Video Recreation Initiatives, stated in an interview. “They’re a robust medium for reinforcing the abilities and data that would assist save lives.”

Helen Zbihlyj, Warmth Wave Survival’s lead narrative author at ReWrite Media, stated the sport took about 9 months to develop and was tailor-made to satisfy classroom wants with out shedding its enjoyable issue.

“Dragons are a fantastical means of exhibiting international local weather change in bodily kind,” Zbihlyj stated. “In a number of the authentic idea artwork, there is a dragon made from flames coming into the window of an aged lady watching a warmth wave climate report on tv. What higher technique to illustrate the extraordinary warmth that individuals are experiencing than with a fire-breathing dragon?”

Players can have entry to 2 variations. One depends on an “journey map” the place gamers journey via a simulated panorama and encounter the warmth dragon, then take actions to repel the beast. “The thought was make warmth very tangible, one thing [players] can have interaction with to see the impression of maximum warmth on their Minecraft villages,” Hayes stated.

The opposite model, tailor-made for classroom use, provides a “construct problem” the place gamers can collect instruments and develop methods “to construct their very own model of a heat-resilient city space.” Options embody cooling facilities, parks, inexperienced house and reflective surfaces. Gamers may even give you the option journey within the sport to 4 “real-world areas” — Brazil, Greece, India and Nigeria — “to see what these international locations are actually doing to deal with excessive warmth,” Hayes added.

The Atlantic Council will not be alone in its gaming efforts. On the 2019 United Nations Local weather Motion Summit in New York, officers launched the Enjoying for the Planet Alliance, a volunteer partnership between the U.N. Setting Programme and greater than 30 sport studios to set “bold, particular and time-based” commitments to satisfy sustainable growth targets.

Reprinted from E&E Information with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E Information offers important information for power and atmosphere professionals.