Keynote: Turning Games Green: How the Industry is Signing up to Play for the Planet PGCD #2

so kick that off we've got Sam Barrett from the UN environmental agency and also Deborah from space-age game so we're gonna come and talk to us I was lucky enough to be in a room oh not the GC a year ago in person while we had I think was 22 people or something like that in the room and between them we worked out they were effectively a hundred no about quarter of a billion daily active users represented by the companies in that room and it was that that that dinner with play mode versum and it was fantastic hearings I'm talking about what they were trying to do with them you know encouraging game teams to get involved in environmental issues and great to have Deborah here I know it's done there's a lot of a lot of

great work I will shut up now and let you guys talk all about it you're on mute so hi everybody hey Darren I think that's good really nice to see you again hey everyone so Devon I gonna talk you through a few things about where we are with the plank the planet alliance and the work we do the past year and hopefully give you some ideas about how you can play a role in this domain and to give you a bit of a background about where we are and where we try to get to and I think we're gonna we've got a few slides I'm going to power through quite quickly just to try and give some time at the end for a conversation and I'm gonna share my screen so I can show you some of the slides at Devon I've been working on and I'm afraid you've got me at the beginning but then you get dev at the end and then we have a chat as we go forward so I'm gonna click some buttons

and try and not screw this up which I don't have a good track record of this but bear with me so here we go I'm just gonna slam slam share my screen [Music] good if it's not in presentation no but it looks good Oscar is that looking around with you yep that's looking perfect okey Koki um so I think it was about 18 months ago we had an idea at the UN that was looking at the horizon I work on youth and education and advocacy and we were thinking quite deeply about if we've got a decade to really deal with the climate challenges that lie ahead of us what could we do to make the greatest difference and the gaming industry kind of jumped up and landed as an idea on

our laps given the reach and the impact we think the industry can have and so we produced a report which I'm just going to outline here about just why we think it's so important and here the number of gamers is just off the charts so this finds a little bit fuzzy but 2.6 billion people play and it's everywhere as China is India it's also Mexico Indonesia Philippines and so the global spread of gaming we think makes it not just the North American Northern Europe opportunity but put a read global one so that we thought about it from two different perspectives one is bound from its carbon footprint and then the other one is about what is the way within which activation can be placed in games that can really kind of change conversations and so we then came up with an idea called playing for planet and we wrote a report which has got a ton of good stuff in there about how we

see the possibility for this industry and so at the UN I don't know how well you know the global Development Goals or the SDGs but what's really important is that if we're gonna have any social or economic outcomes we really need a healthy planet we've seen him covet 19 right now but this is the disease that came from nature and if we get too close to it we don't respect and invest in it but then there are consequences it's not just a zoonotic diseases its words are all to come from the climate challenges that are going to come ever stronger and a whole range of different issues so we really feel that having a healthy environment is critical for having a healthy planet and helping people and so really those different pies you have there it's like if we want to see a better economy we need a healthier planet and we can't keep drawing down on nature and so when it comes to gaming there are legacies to be

very mindful of the first picture is a bunch of handsets this isn't purely the responsibility to get me interested per se but only 20% of e-waste is recycled and so we're not doing very well there and we need to really up our game there but then also when you look at the pocket gaming and mobile gaming future it's is going to jump above every other form of data traffic on the web in the next couple of years and so we need to think about how do we play green and really think about how we decarbonize the industry and so I think there's a lot of great stuff already happening to be honest with you so it's not as if it's like we're turning up and there's already great initiatives within the industry but I think the idea of the Alliance is to get a like-minded group of companies and individuals think about what difference they can make collectively and selling a shared

conversation and you and environment will play a backup role to bring experts when required and to give suggestions and so I think there is a different story already being told I think Romeo did a good job with both decarbonizing the platform using red as an ambassador on different issues here it's on their quality I think it's interesting with Minecraft about how they've evolved that game to think about how those education outcomes for that and Sony we all saw the new console last night and they're trying to rinse all the wattage out of that device and doing a lot of really good stuff on on both the technology but then also about how they can play cleaner as well so there's a lot of great stuff that's already happening is slowly fragmented and so what we wanted to do is create like a space for the industry to come and have a discussion about what difference it can make so I've got a little film here so that

gives you a flavor of what we're trying to do and I think in the industry we've got now 24 companies with a combined monthly player reach of a billion and what's interesting is they're all coming at it from slightly different perspectives we've got stadia from Google thinking quite equally about what is the transference of online play into offline choices and how do they work together there Green Man gaming are doing a lot of work in investing in forestry I've mentioned PlayStation world works doing some phenomenal stuff in Animal Jam about how they're getting their community to think about both energy and play I think on supercell we've all seen what they've done on decarbonizing not just their footprint but also their gamers footprints as well and and I think it's a really lovely group of individuals that are all thinking

quite deeply about what they're trying to do and the whole idea is UN is playing a stewardship role in helping this industry think of it more deeply about how it can make a difference so so what are we doing so I think what we're trying to do is three things I'm gonna talk about and talk about one of them and dad's going to talk about the two others and so what we're looking at is about how do we help the industry to decarbonize and there's two charts here that are fascinating they've been provided by by Sony and they've got a great research they're called Joshua who's looking quite deeply about what are the differences between playing on disk downloading and streaming and if you look at the charts they're actually the honest answer is it really depends where you're playing as to what is the greenest way to play I think the countries have different energy mixes how long you play makes a difference and the file size also makes a difference so if you look at the the

chart on the right what's interesting in this is that streaming is the cleanest if you can play for four to five hours but then if you do have a disc or you've downloaded the game then it beats that over time and so what Sony are looking to do is to build out this research and come up with some new guidance that they can share across the industry about what can use is do to play smart and also how can you industry make a difference on this as well so with that in mind this is going to get built out with some feedback from Microsoft and some other big platforms just to work out some guidance for both industry and for gamers and we're gonna support them on that journey as well it's also worth bearing in mind largely gaming when compared to other leisure activities does do pretty well whereas if you go to the cinema you drive there and you may do other things while you're

in the cinema so that actually beats out gaming by some measure so we're also looking to do some so comparators how does gaming play up against other opportunities but people in terms of their leisure time so with that I'm going to move into a clicking role I think and hand over to Deb from space 8 and I'm just gonna go on mute and Deb I will take you three more slides great thanks Sam I'll just preface this quickly by saying that I am supposed to get a delivery at some point so if I have to hop out for a second to answer the door you know what's happening I will be back so yeah I work for space ape we are a mobile dev and publisher based in central London we've got about 120 employees now and for life titles but another six ish or so in development so for us last year we decided that we were going to go green or go carbon-neutral slash carbon-

and I'll just go through through that quickly and tell you how we did that next slide Sam and I stole this slide from my colleague Nick who is wonderful and also works in our self designated or self-appointed Green Team as we like to call it in the studio and we say cheat mode because we didn't really have to convince anybody in our studio that this was a good idea some time last year our CEO John actually stood up and said this is really important we're not going to do our part and so that's what happened so many of you may not be in that sort of luxurious position you might actually have to try to convince some people that this is a good idea a couple of ways to do that one is customers actually prefer dealing with companies and products that are sustainable and your staff as well they'll be more motivated if they're

working for a company that they feel cares about the planet and as well if you are engaging them in that process and if that doesn't work if you could also try FOMO so something like you know our competitors are doing this already or don't you want to be a leader in this space so potentially that could work for you another thing that I think is really useful that I've seen pop up a lots I've had a lot of conversations with people in different studios about how can we get this stuff going is find allies within your own company doesn't matter what level of the organization you're at but if you get a few people to care about this thing you'll have a much better shot at making it happen within your own studio so for us and of course we're not the first to try to go carbon neutral or carbon negative there's a lot of documentation out there a lot of people who are doing it probably better than us but I'll just share our process with you I go the next slides them so for us it's four parts define measure offset and mitigate the

first one of course is yeah you want to try to figure out what do you want to be in scope for the thing that you're trying to to measure to offset to reduce etc so they usually fall into three different buckets the first of which is your direct emissions so the stuff that you burn is so for example if you've got a fleet of cars or you know just your gas bill the second one of those is indirect emissions so things like your electricity bill and that's a third which is maybe the most difficult and nebulous huh is emissions from everything else so your supply chain flights things you buys a company your employee commutes the waste that you produce as a company and once you have sort of decided all the things that will fall into your scope then you have to try to to measure all of that and if you're trying to figure out what should go in there what shouldn't especially in that sort of scope three bucket one

little another cheat I guess is maybe don't sweat the small stuff so much so things that are like less than 1% of your total scope 3 don't worry so much about that stuff try to tackle the stuff that actually makes the biggest difference and one thing that we also decided to add on the same way that supercell did was our player footprint so we added up the player hours the players were playing our games worked out the energy usage of the devices that they might be using to play those games and we added that to our footprint as well so next is measure next slides in thanks so for measuring you really have to start to get comfortable with estimates there's a lot of estimation here and you just it's just sort of part and parcel something you're gonna have to deal with it's gonna be really hard to be completely accurate so the best way to overcome that is by making really pessimistic estimate so if you're not sure if something is one tons or two tons just make it three times you know

overestimate to make sure you're actually covering your footprint that's the way that that we tackled it there is luckily in the UK there is something called it's got a really sexy named greenhouse gas reporting conversion factors 2019 and that is a document that will help you sort of translate you know your kilometers flow and a near kilowatt hours consume the laptops that you purchased all those things it'll help you convert that into tons of co2 which is the standard measuring system when you are trying to measure your footprint and next slide so the next step after that is to offset and I will say offsetting there is a big caveat there because in a way and there's you know a lot of thought around this is that by offsetting you're sort of just trying to buy a clean conscience so it means you conclude as much as you want and then the other sort of pay money somewhere and then that'll be the end of it so offsetting is really just a part the

biggest thing that you really need to focus on as well as mitigating so we're actually reducing your footprint rather than just offsetting this stuff that you do actually produce but I will go through offsetting as well because it is a part or a way to sort of try to balance the emissions that I guess you sort of have to produce just by by running your business so there are a couple of bodies that try to verify offsets so they're different basically projects that you can buy to try to offset your carbon emissions so they'll do things like plant trees or they have community projects which might reduce the carbon emissions in a certain area and then you're helping to sponsor those projects for example here's something called VCS and the gold standard which do verifies these projects you could also go through a third party something like South Pole which do some of that work for you but nevertheless you still should do your

due diligence so I know that myself and you know the rest of our green team we spent like hours poring over a documentation of trying to find projects that were well spelled out well documented you know had interviews with the locals had interviews with all the different parties involved to really try to see like is this a legit project that we should be investing in does it have a long-term goal what's happened so far because there really are a lot of shysters out there and you have to be careful so what we did end up doing is investing in two different projects you can go the next slide there's Sam thank you yeah one is a forest conservation project in the DRC and the other one is water filtration system in Cambodia and what we liked about these projects is that they also had a lot of secondary benefits so for example this Cambodia

water filters one it was mainly women and young people who were in in their homes and they would have to boil the water to try to make it safe to drink which would then cause a lot of pollution in their homes by the way that they were boiling the water and burning etc that caused a lot of health problems and also took a lot of time so that was a really nice secondary benefit was that it actually helped the health and the just that like the time consumption that it would take to boil the water in that area so these are the ones that we chose but we're always reevaluating what we might want to use to offset and next slide ah so here you can see sort of our breakdown of our footprint and the biggest thing like I said is actually to try to to reduce that footprint which is yeah looking to to for example

fly less etc go through some of those things and also that's just like seeking sustainable partners so when you're looking at that cloud section for example one of the things we've been doing is looking at cloud providers and trying to find sustainable partners in that next one so yeah so mitigation so yeah it is the big things like looking at your cloud footprint flying West so for example we decided to cluster travel and also use things like trains for for trips into the EU obviously given the current circumstances I think our footprint is naturally being reduced a ton we committed to reducing it by 10% I don't think we'll have a problem reaching that this year I don't think anybody would but nevertheless we're always looking at you know how can we reduce more and that also goes into the little things and one we also lobbied our building management to switch to

agree in tariffs which they've done but also it's about trying to get that conversation going within our own studio and adjusting those individual behaviors among employees so we tried to make recycling easier in our studio where we viewed our weekly grocery shop to find products that are more sustainable and easier to recycle we got keep cups into the office just a whole whack of them that way people aren't going on their coffee runs every day and throwing out their cups yeah and I guess the last thing that we committed to you was trying to help other Studios do the same because it can be daunting to go into this kind of thing you don't really know where to start and none of us really are experts so helping other Studios to do the same is what we've also committed to so yeah that's sort of the one side the helping CDs and then also trying to educate our players through our games if we can and that's where one of the projects from playing for the planet was born near the next

slide so yeah we held a green mobile game jam and we managed to do it within the madness of Corona which is supposed to show that like people really do care about the stuff and they're willing to put the time against it the time and effort which is really encouraging to be honest and we will share more about this jab later I'll just give you a little preview and so for the jam into the next slide we had eleven different companies participate in the jam originally it was meant to run over two days and you know like a normal game jam does sort of concentrated time but of course due to the pandemic the way that we worked was a bit different I can go the next slide and we had four objectives within that Jam the first one was around those individual behaviors so things like you know powering down or maybe going meat-free

on a monday or looking at the way that you take transport reducing consumption of fast fashion things like that so individual behaviors that players could take on and how could you encourage those the second one is around reforestation and restoring nature through game play so could you add challenges into your game design that would sort of lead to Pro environmental outcomes and then the third is around renewable energy how can we educate players around that and create more of a normalizing around things like you know solar solar panels on roofs or you know maybe now all of your cars in the game are electric vehicles instead so it's sort of trying to normalize that transition and the fourth one is sandbox because we realized that you know some teams everyone is really creative everyone knows their games their audience is the best they might come up with something that we haven't thought of and we don't want to restrict people so for example if somebody has a great idea around oceans we don't want to

limit them so yeah we've just completed that Jam recently and some really early takeaways he can go the next slide Sam is kind of what I mentioned in the beginning even around trying to get your studio to go you know carbon neutral decarbonizing etc is you need some people to care so what I found is that you need to people to care at least it's great if it's somebody very senior and then somebody who's responsible for a game or leading a game team that will make it a lot easier to actually get something get something across the line another thing that we did was we had before we even started the jam had a couple of weeks of workshops and webinars with experts so experts in renewable energy and reforestation and climate change in general and behavior and how you can get people to care about things that you're asking them to do and that was really

useful because you know we are in games and were really good with trying to reach players or engage them etc but we're probably not experts in climate change or reforestation or renewable energy so pairing pairing that knowledge of the experts with the people who are experts in games was super valuable and that also makes it a lot more likely that the things that you're building within your games actually make a difference third know your audience of course you know everybody who makes games knows their community the best so don't try to you know screw what is it square square peg round hole type of thing make sure that the thing that you're trying to design actually matches with with the theme of your game with your audience is something that your audience could actually buy into be realistic so of course when you're going to a game jam soon as you can have these magnificent wild ideas but actually what's important here is that you're able to execute it

at the end of the day so it's better to be realistic and find something that you think you can actually manage to implement rather than just having a bunch of great ideas and the last one I think actually is the biggest one is better together our industry the more that we collaborate the more that we knowledge share learn from each other the better this stuff is and that's what we really found during this job as well like people really came together people who often might be competitors we're actually helping each other and and yeah finding out the best ways to do things and that made every single pitch stronger in the end and I think that's it from me Sam Sam is muted no I think that's that's great they're just two things just build on what you said is for alliance members

what we're going to do is do a how-to guide to rethink about how to deal with your carbon footprint we've got some really good tools that are coming together to assess where you are but then also to think about what investments you can make to deal with that and so we're looking to aggregate that all out and also just to say my thing I mention is that the UN is facilitating this and it's really about the more leadership that we get from partners like space 8 with their band John and Nick they're just been phenomenal the more impact we can have so I think we are looking to bring more people on board but we're doing that quite carefully people need to send a commitment letter to us about what they would do I taught that through with you and then we want people to really kind of step up and make a difference but it's only a nine-month-old initiative and already I feel I feel like there's lots of great stuff that's happening and we're also thinking about some different

thematic areas and so there's already a cluster of game makers who do things around car racing games so a hill racer to by finger soft and also creative mode I'll do others as well and so they're thinking about what are the opportunities within racing games do you think things around the thematic and then also on restoration a lot of people are keen to climb trees and so we're exploring are there some good ideas and insights that could apply to many and are there any kind of other opportunities that could scale up the restoration landscapes through that framework as well yeah I think what we wanted to do Deb is just to have at least a bit of time Oscar if that's okay just for Q&A yeah I have so much I want to talk about I mean the reason is I mean since the Diploma guys and yourself had me at that session I've just been inundated with a whole bunch of people so for example we did a workshop for Greenpeace I've just done one for the

children Society and about to do one for whisky a UK charity that's focused around disability I also got asked to speak at an event for a group called prospectus which had most of the fundraisers of the UK charities in the room there are over 300 people Oh 250 people in the room wanting to find out what they could do with games I think there's a massive appetite for people to understand what they can do with games like you said this yourself so when in that session one-third of the population of Planet play games and if we don't use that and I know Deborah you've said similar things it's like you know how how do we best as a games industry engage with you know charitable causes like yourselves oh we want what do you think is the kind of the first step that indie or a bigger company needs to take to actually sort do something really productive I can start I think you're right Oscar and I I

do get a lot of increase like that as well you know saying I work from I work with X charity we'd love to get into games how do we do that and I think what are the first steps does have to do with doing your research a little bit of course they're like you know a gazillion different game companies out there why have you chosen this one that you want to partner with is it just you want to partner with anyone or is it because you you know you really like the games that they make you like the ethos the company stands for you know some people who are in leadership and you think they would buy it I think or you think that the games that they make with Len lend themselves really well to to whatever your charity is also trying to do right so I think sometimes the sort of spray-and-pray approach is not the right one I think you have the joke I always get is that everyone says to me can you introduce me to the guys at FIFA I just every single one godness I spent hours

telling them how they need to think about what they want to do what they want to achieve and yet they still come up with can you introduce me to FIFA yeah now I think that's I think that's one of the the biggest blockers if you're a charity and you're interested try to understand you know why it might be interesting for that game company to work with you rather than asking them to solve it for you and I think there have been some really good examples of charities that have done it well I think I think it was the the Breast Cancer Foundation amazing overwatch yeah exactly Australia I'm not entirely sure they raced twelve point seven million dollars from but I some I forgot who was I was talking to about it the other day but as they said that one of the key things about that was that this was a charity that was very aligned with the values of that particular character a character that is specifically a medical doctor in

the context of the deceit of the world in narrative of the world and the outfit look kick-ass if you happen to like that character so getting a combination of you know celebrity endorsement of game player endorsement of influence endorsement of character fit and a a broad spread audience interest no wonder there was a lot of value in interest there yeah and there's a case study there to be had right so if I was a charity the very first thing I would do is reach out to that foundation and say how did you do this ya know what were the questions you asked what were the steps you took what were some of the big hurdles or challenges that you had to overcome just so I would be in a better position to to try to adapt it to to my own cause and then see you know which companies might best fit that again one of the things I think is interesting to try and get across particularly the charities but I think also the games companies is that it's not just make a game it's not just do a an outfit it's not just do a 24-hour marathon there are

so many ways of thinking that Games offers and one of the things that really struck me was actually some work I did with the Internet of elephants guys who I know Sam knows and we were doing this location-based game which was focused around following an orangutan called fee a real-world orangutan real and there's also a given called chilli in the gay and there are two other animals whose names I forget that I should know and the idea is you're following the life of the research and now the reason for that is that if you want to grip behavior change we found out by talking to the psychologists who help them work out how to fundraise for environmental issues is you can't you shouldn't blame people you shouldn't make people feel guilty you need to put them in the context where they feel empowered by the process so by putting people in gameplay which meant they felt like they understood why somebody was sitting in the Borneo following an orangutan and

they could see the life story of that person if at the narrative is based around a real researcher who is in Borneo what was at the time that we were making the game that to me is it was empowering it put you in in touch with reality but at the same time it took you on an escape story journey lots of other issues we had obviously the launch the game happened in the middle of the Kobe crisis which not ideal so the Atlanta zoo and Chester Zoo teams were a little bit limited in what they could do for that particular game but I think the ambition was vital are you seeing people going to that level of thinking for how they're working with game Sam or is it it's still quite light touch at the moment I think the ambition was seen in the mobile green game jam there has been off the chance like people with very successful commercially profitable games

are really thinking quite deeply about how they had purpose to their offer and what it would take to make some adjustments in live games to to really give something has to be authentic and it has to not be something that is too jarring with the gaming experience but I think there's a lot of ambition and also think people realize that there isn't an either/or in this it can be yes and to both but it's just thinking about small intuitive ways to build it into the design process at the beginning and I also would say like in terms of narrative I - there's an axis what you can do one is like awareness which is putting up some solar panels whatever it might be that just shows that the energy transition is coming the other end is about putting into the story from the beginning so it's an organic experience that would take you on that journey and the others are incentives so what could

you add to a certain layer in the game that would force you to go through certain experiences that would give you different learning outcomes and I think the green game jam I think what deb presenters has some very practical outcomes about how to do it but there's a lot of really interesting learning outcomes about what are the opportunities to think about this but what it is is still from the game jam I think making quite practical and easy and also not intimidating whatever I think we've seen from Scifo they've tried a bunch of stuff and they won't be net negative but its net neutral but they've got very light touch I think it can be net positive in other games and so I think there's a huge scope for people to try things and I think the world wants it I think we're seeing a lot of Colin from young people that they're searching for purpose and they're searching for things that resonate with who they are as individuals there are other people that

may not be like that but I think that majority is growing no I think I totally agree I think it's interesting that we've also seen such a variety of ways that games companies have worked with various organizations one of my favorite examples is C Hero Quest Sierra Quest is a game that was I think initially kicked off by Deutsche Telekom and it's essentially a mapping game you kind of follow through a journey in your mind and it's absolutely designed to help with diagnosing Alzheimer's and dementia and what it does is apparently mapping the kernel mobility the range of a map is one of the first things that diminishes and what they needed is a large supply of statistically significant data of what normal was and so the outside my research UK team were with this game developer and Deutsche Telekom and have produced an amazing game that's had millions of downloads so they've now managed to get from games a

huge amount of real valuable data and there they were working with a really crazy couple of Indians who just brilliant designers anyway and and so it is possible for an indie company to work with the team as long as that team knows what they're trying to achieve and I think to my mind the half of the battle is understanding what you want only you kind of cover this anyway but I understand what you want to achieve when you've got people like John and and Co space ape who have a kind of very clear positive vision it's it seems to me you guys have really nailed this is what we want to achieve where are the charities I think for a lot of indie developers they still haven't really worked out what they can do and maybe sometimes feel disempowered how can we help them feel empowered do you have any thoughts on that [Music] [Laughter] yeah they can say cuz I think there's

some there's still a lot of these charities are obviously playing for the planet is a great start and let's say you first thing I think obviously it's clear we should get really loose but in general I think a lot of Indies do feel and not empower they don't what can I do what value can I add and you know how do we change that mindset I think really simply like everybody can do something and I think it's always good to start with something that's close to your heart that's how I started John said I care about this and he got everybody else to care about it too so I think no matter the size of your company even as an individual you can do something you can affect change in your own sphere of influence right so if there is a cause that's close to your heart why not see if other people you know in your own sphere will also care about it whether it's the people you work with whether it's your players so I think that's that's a good place to start like what do you care about I try to make a difference there yeah and I think that sphere of influence seems really

interesting my favourite example of that is actually an influence that called Harry Brewis also known as h-bomb a guy he got annoyed at gralen and the guy who wrote the it crowd because he was basically trying to get Mumsnet to get the funding from mermaids the charity for trans kids and their family is removed so hairy breas sits there and he basically decides he's gonna play Donkey Kong 64 just because you know that's what I'm to do he spent 57 hours playing it in the stream of him and he sleeps by the way during this stream he managed to get Suzy from maids to charity to turn up on the stream he gets chelsea manning the whistle blower turns out and you know and talks on stream the whole street becomes an incredible trans-friendly environment safe space in the process alexa of tazer cortez turns up there's certainly the the congressperson turns up in the in the middle of the stream they raised three hundred and fifty

thousand pounds and the best thing is they managed to get mermaids to get there their charity funding back and that was one person who got annoyed and it roller coast it's snowball because he'd happened to tap in to something that a lot of people really cared about so i think you know like you say you know having an influence on your you know having a decision to act on your sphere of influence can actually snowball and profoundly go much wider than you'd ever expect yeah i think there's that and then you know when in doubt who do you admire what companies do you think are doing good things get on board with that if you're not sure about what to do personally or for your own studio look at people who are doing thing as well and why you like it and then and then support them and that cause right yeah and i think that i think some you may mention this earlier little off center city behind that are you know making great choices but also doing it from an authentic place and

doing what you can not being expected to do you know to destroy your company in the process actually it's the opposite if you do right you actually net positive this is a there is an audience out there who will respect you for doing what you can and it's about finding the best way to make it fit into your game experience does that make sense that yeah I mean I think that era of fear-based engagement to do good is over and I think we're in a world where by you no longer really have a choice I think purpose is everything it kind of your brand values it's what people expect from you it hires great people Microsoft investing everything they can to offset every piece of carbon they've emitted since 1975 and so in what we're seeing now is a huge shift in the game and I think just from outside I just say we can all play our part and also the UN we're here to help and also not tell you

we're not here to tell you what to do but we're to give you a community where you can learn from and also some suggestions of thematic that could make a difference but then also there's a hierarchy and for me as an individual the three things you could do to make the greatest difference on climate change first of all is what you eat the other one is how you power your house and the other one is how you move around and if you did that that's seventy five percent of your or your annual carbon footprint and so I just feel like people want to do the right thing but they just need some handrails and some support and some encouragement and an arm around the shoulder to say that they've got this and it's that that's what we want in playing for Planet Alliance to be used just to be a place where people can do more good stuff one of the things that I think I left left with me when I saw your talk first time around was there bit about food waste just how much impact reducing food waste can have

in terms of your footprint for a guy who flies around far too until Kobe flew around far too much you know the seeing that was a really kind of you know empowering moment actually I think you know realizing that actually there is something that I feel that I can actually do and and feel like you know I'm doing something valuable and that ability to make personal positive steps and then also apply I think what game is good at you know what we're a media that is amazing at understanding the action that do you know we think about kind of the stark condition the challenge the resolution and the reward and thinking about that as a powerful way to teach people ideas we don't have to be over-the-top we don't have to be kind of like preachy about it but we can show dilemma and consequence and we can do that in a new formed way and I think

if we use the power of games to communicate not only with a single most used digital entertainment form on the planet we're also the one that's most capable at educating and so the more we use evidence-based approaches and more we kind of engage people I think the better yeah so I'm getting preachy now but so last last thoughts really I mean and from the to the last nine eight you know well 12 to nine months of the actual this particular program being active how much impact do you think you think there's been not just in terms of you know there's a practical real water bet but in terms of the mindset on the games industry as a whole have you seen you know a real shift of change in the last you know some no monster so I think it's hard for me to understand if there

has been a mindset shift in other people's minds but my sense is there has been I feel like the ambition that we're seeing in the Alliance is growing and it's strengthening and I feel like just a couple of small stories I like the ones that really jump out at me are people like pixel where who do choices who thought very deeply about how they change the narrative where it is not just a great game for for teenage girls to go and explore different things in the modern world but to really kind of taste activism and find voice and that came off the back of the CEO pixel where you going on a strike on with his kids and really kind of been touched and inspired about the difference they can make so I think that we have to understand that the gaming industry doesn't sit on this kind of desert island is surrounded by different

influences from the rest of the world and I would say that there is a mindset shift that's come a little bit from the work we're doing but a lot from where the world is right now and I think what we've seen with climate events a shift in technology and a shift in kind of energy the consumption that the industry is just moving with the flow of the world and we're just here to try and accelerate that and just help people go as fast as they possibly can cuz I think there's a chance for a new story about what the games industry is and I think there's a chance to show the industry's really capable of and at the UN we're keen to kind of help tell that story as well that's fantastic I've got one thing I forgot to ask the question that was asked because so involved in my own what wondering so Avinash was asking between 6 to 12 years nearly exposure to science environment issues and games with the unique - way to reach them however twins seem to prefer faster games in fast

paced gameplay which potentially reduces learning components what is the best way you would advise to target tweens using cool indie games are you going around my go for it I don't have a good answer to backs I think it's a good question and I think the distractibility of people these days an attention deficit is an issue about how do you retain people's attention on different issues but I think it's still possible Devin you got any good examples of that musing in the jam I'm just trying to think yeah I mean I think mmm sure distractibility but at the same time young people really are spending a lot of their time within games no matter what like the the subject matter that game is or the genre that game like that is the most valuable thing that I think we have as an industry as we get the

time and whether you try to engage with that community in like one session or whether you do it you know over a month's time because every time they log in they have some time with you I don't I don't think that matters to be honest I don't think it matters like what kind of game it is or the type of game play it's such a at the end of the day those young people are giving you their time and you have their like undivided attention so I don't think you have to necessarily like create an educational game about climate change where young people feel like oh that's really dull there is so much to be said for trying to embed things within the games that they love that they're already engaging in I mean you can look at like Pokemon go for example but did that do like a yearly beach cleanup with the communities around the world it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the

game specifically but they've still managed to harness the power of that community because their people are already out and about when they're doing when they're playing pokemon go so it doesn't have to be like the gameplay that you're actually harnessing it could be any element of the game something that resonates with the community yeah yeah for me it's about you know working out where you want to apply that message you don't have to do it in the mechanic it doesn't have to be a media it can be in the context it can even be in the metagame you know kind of the there's a wider connection of the game to the community and for me it's about you know just keeping don't preach just give context and allow that the message to emerge and if you base your thinking your design thinking in evidence-based mindset then it will be inevitable that you'll get people to start thinking about what their choices are you know how they find out more information you know kids are generally very hungry for information then they're not

narrow-minded generally and that you've got to be exposed the opportunity to find out for themselves and that's when it's powerful p-pretty it's gonna be dreadful crazy switched-on like the younger generation is much more switched on then we are so my son who's 20 is completely can have become more militant and I ever was when I was his age so you know right on that note I've run over apologies to everyone else but I love this topic as I think you guys know so really really glad to have you here thank you so much for sharing what you've done so far we pray for the planet