Climate Connected: An Immersive VR and PC Game for Climate Change Engagement

Abstract

Climate change poses a serious threat to human well-being and life on Earth. To avoid global warming's worst consequences every effort is needed, which requires cognitively, affectively and behaviorally engaging of as many of us as possible. However, climate change engagement is far from easy or simple, with manifold personal and contextual variables affecting our connection with the issue. Because of this, games and gamification have been proposed as visual, interactive, and motivating methods to support people in their engagement journey. Despite dozens of climate change-relevant digital games existing, some configurations are under-explored, including messaging frames such as health, engagement dimensions beyond knowledge, technologies such as immersive virtual reality (VR), and controlled experimental research methods. In this article, we present Climate Connected: Outbreak, a story-based single-player game for immersive VR and traditional computer screens that approaches climate change as a planetary health and well-being issue and supports players in their affective and behavioral connection to it. The game takes place in 2050 and connects day-to-day objects with systemic issues. Two versions can be played, one featuring an unnamed distant place and the other located in Tampere, Finland. The game has been used in research and has led to nuanced understandings of the players' experience, as well as learning, attitude, and self-efficacy gains.