Essays by Eric Worrall
Approach houses and mess with people’s minds, Guardian style.
Can video games change people’s minds about the climate crisis?
A new wave of game makers are trying to influence a generation of environmentally conscious players. Will it work, and is it enough?
Lewis Gordon Thursday, January 26, 2023 20.30 AEDT
It’s so scrary. It makes you realize that, despite all the complexity of modern society, we still depend on water that falls from the sky.” Sam Alfred, lead designer at Cape Town-based video game studio Free life, remembering very well that his city was almost running out of water. In 2018, the area around South Africa’s second-largest city suffered from falling rainfall for several months. Dams cannot replenish themselves at the rate that their inhabitants demand. Water has been rationed. Business closed. The situation even calls for a grim version of the Doomsday Clock: hour by hour, the city ticks closer and closer to day nomarked the end of its fresh water supply.
Land of Nil, the video game Alfred has been developing since 2019, is a response to these horrific events. Dubbed the “reverse city builder,” it bypasses consumption and expands on classics like Civilization and SimCity to paint a picture of environmental restoration. Starting with the arid desert, the player can rebuild the landscape using a variety of technologies – such as a toxin purifier or a beehive. At the speed of light, and with splashes of emerald green and blue that cool the eye, the environment transforms into lush vegetation. Terra Nil’s simplicity is just as beautiful as its pictures, providing the satisfaction of a coloring book while offering a clear critique of environmentally destructive mining behavior.
…
Regardless of whether it changes minds or behaviors, game makers as well as players want to participate in the ongoing threat of global warming. Games like ABZÛ and Alba: Wild Animal Adventure – ecological fables set in the ocean and on land – are among the many fables that show us how to see the world without the reticle.
Going back to the real world, even “The Conversation” acknowledges Cape Town’s 2017-18 water crisis was largely due to corruption and incompetence, not climate change, like most. other South African affairs.
…
Causes of the crisis
civil society group, Caucus of South Africarevealed that the reluctance of the national government to release the drought relief fund stemmed from the spiral debt, mismanagement and corruption at the National Water and Sanitation Department.
This statement is supported by the Inspector General, which attributes “irregular and fruitless and wasteful spending” to the department in excess of its 2016-2017 budget by R110.8 million.
The ministry has no allocated funds for drought relief in Western Cape next year. Once again, the provincial government will have to pay the bill.
Had the systems in the national government been running smoothly, Cape Town’s water crisis could have been mitigated. Proper water allocation will create more water for Cape Town. And with prompt responses to disaster declarations, replenishment infrastructure could be ready to go.
Cape Town teaches us that water crises are rarely a matter of rainfall. Understanding disasters like drought involves looking at problems from many different perspectives, including politics.
Read more: https://theconversation.com/cape-towns-water-crisis-drive-by-politics-more-than-drough-88191
As for the Guardian advocating for the use of computer games to raise concerns about climate, it’s hard to imagine something more reprehensible.
A lot of computer game players are young people. Young people are so scared of climate change, they are destroying themselves with strong drugs, because they cannot face their fear.
Here is the testimony from Dr. Alex Wodaka prominent Australian specialist in drug addiction, for an investigation into NSW drug addiction in
…
First, the threshold step is to redefine drugs as primarily a health and social issue rather than primarily a law enforcement issue. Second, drug treatment must be expanded and improved until it reaches parity with other health services. Third, all penalties for personal drug use and possession must be abolished.
Fourth, as much of the drug market as possible must be regulated while recognizing that a portion of the drug market is regulated, such as methadone treatment, needle and syringe programs, injection centers. medically supervised injection. Of course, it will never be possible to regulate the entire drug market. We have regulated parts of the drug market before. Edible opium was taxed and regulated in Australia until 1906 and in the United States, Coca-Cola contained cocaine until 1903.
Fifth, efforts to reduce demand for potent psychoactive drugs in Australia have yielded limited benefit and require a new focus. unless and Until young Australians feel optimistic about their future, demand for drugs will remain strong. It is understandable that young people want more certainty about their future prospects, including climate, education, employment and housing affordability. Change will be slow and incremental, like all social policy reforms.
As Herb Stein, an adviser to President Nixon, put it:
Things that can’t go on forever don’t.Prohibition of drugs cannot go on forever and will be replaced by liberal paternalism. Thank you.
…
The source: Reverse camera
I am not an advocate of censorship of computer games, but in my opinion there is nothing laudable about actions designed to raise concerns about climate. I believe that games that focus on climate change can push even more people, especially vulnerable young people, into a crisis from which they may not be able to recover. In particular, young people’s climate concerns have grown so strongly that some children are breaking.
Related
