So much for My Little Pony parties
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The ABC story begins with this.
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.
Designers Matt Leacock and Mateo Mennapace describe their inspiration.
They said the game became a way for them, and they hope for players as well, to process their feelings about climate change and better understand the possible solutions.
If you find yourself having to "process your feelings about climate change," maybe you shouldn't be playing a game. Maybe you should be talking to a psychotherapist.
Climate change isn't about "feelings," it's an impossibly complex scientific puzzle that we barely understand. It would be like wanting to come to emotional terms with string theory and Hawking's paradox.
"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.
Picture yourself, a world leader facing imminent global catastrophe, but instead of doing something boring like battling aliens with thermonuclear weapons, the only way to win is to sit around with your fellow players and engage in tedious multinational conferences addressing global cooperation because who hasn't dreamed of that as a small child?
So how do you win?
That's the best part.
You don't!
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.
didn’t you just know the game’s designer would look like this?
