Green Video Games
Video games seem to have infected everything in society with their contagious delivery of interactive instant-gratification. In many ways, the interactive nature of video games makes them powerful tools for training people to react to stimuli. All other forms of media before video games were purely consumptive forms of communication. People who read books, watch televisions or look at a paintings can follow their imagination and react to the information they are observing, but they are not allowed to write the final chapter of the book, record their own director’s cut or paint more detail into the foreground of a painting.
Once the power of interactive graphic entertainment to train people is acknowledged, one must wonder if video games are training people to do good, moral or societally sustainable acts in the world? In order to shine a spotlight on one morally conscious game theme, let us think about one video game that is related to environmental issues. Games like this are created firstly to entertain, and therefore, the learning process is often a great way to have some laughs.
One of these games comes from the biggest video game publishing company in the world, EA (Electronic Arts). SimCity Societies allows players to build a digital city part by part. Choices between coal plants, nuclear plants, wind plants and solar plants in a player’s city will create major differences in the digital city. Coal plants will require the player to invest in more healthcare as people become sick. The pollution from the plant will also make any residential area or commercial area placed near the plant be less valuable, thereby lowering the tax revenues collected for the city’s virtual budget management.
People who play strategy games like SimCity Societies learn many true facts about environmentalism and economics through balancing and testing various functions of the game software. Check out the official website [simcitysocieties.ea.com] for the game and see if you can’t have some fun while you learn more about cities and nature.
Please write in comments if you have any knowledge of a video game that is related to environmentalism, we would be very curious to hear from you.