Board games like Monopoly, Clue and The Game of Life are iconic in many Americans’ lives and in pop culture. Now some designers are exploring a wider range of topics, including how to use games to spark discussion about bigger issues.
One of those games, Daybreak, is set to launch this spring after years of development to tackle one of the most complex topics of all, how to bring the world together to combat climate change.
“The game started from a conversation on what could we do about climate change as game designers,” game designer Matteo Menapace told ABC News. “We felt we can use games to talk about climate change, to model this big problem in a way that is playable, that is understandable by players and in a way that gives people agency over their choices.”
In Daybreak, players take on the role of world powers like the United States, European Union and China and have to negotiate ways to achieve drawdown, which is the point when greenhouse gas emissions are reduced enough to prevent temperatures from continuing to rise. Instead of playing against each other players work together to win against the game, but the whole group will lose if any player has too many communities in crisis from the impacts of climate change.
Designers Menapace and Matt Leacock, who also designed the game Pandemic, said they were overwhelmed by all the problems associated with climate change at first, but wanted to use their skills to help do something about it.
