Eco-Play: Designing Nature Games with Kiwi Conservation Club

This research by Tanya Marriott examines how eco-play, a form of imaginative, location-based nature play, can be designed into tangible games that engage children aged 5 to 12 in conservation. The work forms part of a six-year collaboration between honours-year design students at Massey University in Aotearoa New Zealand and the Kiwi Conservation Club, the junior division of Forest and Bird. Student teams develop conservation-themed games, refine them through playtesting days with club children, and release finished designs as open-source projects that chapters across the country can build and play. Forty games have been produced to date.

The paper is motivated by evidence of declining childhood outdoor play, including a UK finding that children could identify Pokémon characters more readily than local flora and fauna, and by the broader concept of "Nature Deficit Disorder." It argues that nature connection supports children's physical and mental wellbeing, social development, empathy, and sense of responsibility toward natural spaces. Drawing on Sobel's modes of nature play, the author analyses three student games, "Be a Bird," "Heli Habitat Helpers," and "Critters in Crisis," alongside "Pollution Revolution," assessing them for nature awareness, ease of engagement, gamefulness, and playability.

Methodologically, the work is practice-based and qualitative, using design case studies, a halfway design proposal with core play pillars, iterative playtesting in a local park with accessible bush, and Huizinga's magic circle as a theoretical lens. The author concludes that imaginative, anthropomorphic, and small-world play can foster environmental awareness, though the evidence presented is drawn from a limited set of case studies rather than a large sample.