Eco – An Educational Game

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about Eco which makes environmental problems caused by a high degree of pollution to a central gameplay element. As a result, players directly experience how their own actions potentially lead to a destruction of a pristine environment.

Rising awareness for global problems that can arise due to too much pollution is an important and critical goal these days. For instance, the ongoing rapid climate change can be contributed to the man-made emission that drastically increased over the period of the last century. However, it often is difficult and easy to overlook how our actions and lifestyles are contributing to this global problem.

Therefore, it is critical to educate people about the global and ecological problems we are facing. In addition, it is very important to connect this education to their very own actions. In this way, the education would be even more effective as it potentially achieves a general understanding that everyone has to take actions. One possible solution to this problem could be to embed this ecological education in a computer game.

Eco

Just today, I bought the computer game Eco that tries to educate players about environmental problems by making them to a core aspect of the gameplay. At the beginning of Eco, each player starts in a pristine environment that faces a fatal fate: a meteor is approaching the player’s planet and will destroy it. Hence, players are challenged to find a way to save the world by researching new technologies that can stop the meteor.

This, however, comes at a high price because they need to gather resources from the world to achieve this goal. For this purpose, players can, amongst other things, chop down trees, farm crops and build advance mining system. At the same time, by interacting with the environment, they leave behind traces and potentially even change the entire environment. By chopping down every tree, habitats of specific animals might get destroyed which ultimately results in their extinction. Advanced mining systems produce polluted water which, when it is dumped into a river, can pollute an entire region. As a result, players are challenged to carefully think about how they will interact with the world to ultimately stop the meteor.

The game even is designed to be collaboratively played by larger groups of people. Hence, the game can be implemented in schools thus allowing for a more immersive discussion and education about ecological problems. The multiplayer aspect is combined with a political system where players can try to negotiate agreements that limit emissions and reduce pollutions.

By connecting the potential pollution of the virtual world to a player’s actions, Eco creates a special educative gameplay. While playing the game, players not only see the effects of polluting a pristine environment, but they also make the experience of being responsible for these problems. As a result of this, Eco helps to rise a global awareness and to start further discussions about our own actions and new technologies that can save our pale blue dot.