In Hot Water

         For our class project, we decided to create a text-based video game to educate a wide audience about water pollution. This includes why it’s harmful, how it connects to climate change, and how individuals can prevent or further contribute to water runoff and pollution. Our goal was to educate 50 parents about water runoff and have them sign a petition, utilizing the parents of students attending Eckerd College. We decided to use both education (through the video game) and social change (signing the petition) as they can be used effectively as complementary tools to maximize the amount of change being made. We linked a website through the video game, which provided more information about water runoff and pollution, as well as provided a link to the petition.

        We chose a video game style because we wanted to make the game accessible for individuals to understand specifically about how their lives might change from a kitchen table out approach. This approach shows individuals how their lives may look different – better, specifically – as a way to reduce fear rather than perpetuate it. Klein had specifically used this tactic to romanticize changes that could be made through the Green New Deal as an aid to the solution of the climate crisis (Klein 2019). 

            Communication regarding the climate crisis is a terrifying and, quite frankly, unnecessarily political topic, and individuals are often told that they have to make tough decisions and give up intrinsic aspects of their life, such as diet and transportation methods. Klein instead shows that daily life, while being more sustainable, won’t be overall all that different. You can make your morning coffee via an induction range stove which can be electronically programmed to make your coffee by the time you wake up – and allergy season won’t include as much coffee because air quality will be better resulting from decreasing greenhouse gas emissions (Klein 2019). In the same way, we aimed to show individuals that even though the smell of your body wash may change, life will overall remain the same, but just a little bit healthier. 

We also wanted to make it easy to spread a communication tool. Individuals may get ideas as to what they can do to take individual action and communicate that with their family and friends in an easy and justifiable way. Instead of having annoying arguments over Thanksgiving dinner about why you chose to take the public transportation system instead of your personal car, for example, your family and friends can not only understand, but support your decisions by choosing to engage in them as well. Individual action can be important – however, it is most importantly used as a communication tool. One book that we read during class showed the perils of relying on individual action to change the world – you can get into either a defeatist or heroic point of view, which both can be problematic (Stoknes 2015). In fact, one podcast showed us just how little impact our individual actions can have on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, by not taking action, this podcast also shows, we may not see any change, because people aren’t going to be motivated to change without feeling the support of a community behind them. Therefore, individual action is best used as a communication tool (How to Save a Planet, 2021). 


The video game had three different perspectives – that of a college student, an elementary school teacher, and a senator. We chose these perspectives in order for individuals to find what may fit closest to their lifestyle, but also to get in the mindset of other lifestyles. People can see that one’s ability to take individual action may be inhibited by uncontrollable economic status; however, individual actions are still possible.


 Our method showed to be effective, as we reached our goal. We surpassed our goal of the number of people to play the game, and 71% of the people who played the game visited the website to get more information and sign the petition. However, there are still some ways of improving. For one, we had accidentally closed off the demographics form, so we didn’t get many responses. Additionally, we had received feedback that there were quite a few spelling errors, so fixing those before launching the game would’ve been more professional. Lastly, I believe that with more resources, adding a visual aspect to the game would’ve been handy. Personally, I know that I don’t comprehend well from large blocks of text without any images, so I think that could be a nice addition.


Visit our site:

https://sites.google.com/eckerd.edu/clean-water/sources


Sources:

Klein, E. (2019, December 16). How to solve climate change and make life more awesome. Vox. https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2019/12/16/21024323/ezra-klein-show-saul-griffith-solve-climate-change

Planet, H. T. S. A. (2021, April 13). Is Your Carbon Footprint BS? Gimlet. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet/xjh53gn/is-your-carbon-footprint-bs

Stoknes, P. E. (2015). The Psychological Climate Paradox. In What we think about when we try not to think about global warming (pp. 13–17). essay, Chelsea Green Publishing CO. 

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