In the video game “Build As Nature,” players manage the water supply for a major city and learn a great deal about sustainability and climate change resilience in the process. It was developed in collaboration with the bilingual study program “Serious Games & Digital Knowledge” and four European partners.
How can a city be reliably supplied with water when climate catastrophe is leading to an increase in droughts, floods, and food shortages? By relying on tried-and-true engineering solutions from the era of fossil fuels—solutions that, however, offer little defense against extreme weather events? Or with new, nature-based methods that are more expensive but promise long-term stability? Players grapple with these questions in “Build As Nature,” a strategic deck-building card game for students and lecturers.
Tools for Lecturers
The game was developed as part of a European collaboration aimed at providing lecturers at participating universities and institutions with digital tools free of charge. These tools introduce students, in a playful way, to the functions and mechanisms of nature-based solutions to societal problems.
Prof. Dr. Jennifer Tiede and Prof. Daniel Heßler from the “Serious Games & Digital Knowledge” study program at the Fachhochschule Dortmund and Arts, along with their partners, developed the game, tested it together with game design students, and also added a separate level for lecturers. For example, educators can adapt the game’s standard scenario in great detail to specific questions, develop new scenarios themselves, and use analysis tools to monitor and document players’ learning progress. Comprehensive teaching materials and training scenarios round out a complete package for use in secondary schools and colleges.
The partner institutions are Haskolinn Reykjavik University in Iceland, the University of Thessaly in Greece, Tallinn University in Estonia, and the Virtual Campus Porto in Portugal.
Insights into the Game
Background: Experiencing Instead of Cramming
Serious games take the approach of integrating knowledge into entertaining game content. Every game requires players to learn its mechanics—or, in other words, the laws of the game world: A racing game requires players to gradually master the game’s driving physics, while an open-world survival game requires players to explore the game world as well as to understand and develop the character’s needs and abilities. Unlike a game world that is solely self-contained, the game mechanics of a serious game also convey specific learning content.