Managing Resources and Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Through Game-Based Learning to Achieve Zero Emission Farms

This paper presents two digital game concepts designed to help agriculture students understand greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and manage farm resources toward zero-emission farming. Agriculture accounts for roughly 11% of global GHG emissions, and the authors argue that real-world farming measures produce consequences only over long time horizons, which makes them difficult for students to grasp. The games are built on a climate calculator used by a Norwegian agriculture school and aim to make the trade-offs of farm decisions visible and immediate through a card-based, round-by-round structure.

The first game focuses on learning the effects of individual and combined actions, such as precision fertilisation or changes in livestock management. Players choose from action cards over up to ten rounds, and the emissions and productivity effects are calculated and displayed instantly. The second game asks players to balance farm production against emissions over a ten-year span, using a points-based economy that represents monetary budgets, subsidies and grants. Player progress is shown through farm status pages and emissions graphs, with the example scenario reporting a 10.88% reduction in CO2e over ten rounds.

The work is a proof-of-concept rather than an empirical study. Design followed an exploratory, iterative process guided by the LEAGUÊ framework and three meetings with a single domain expert, who also evaluated both prototypes through a discussion-based review. The evaluation concluded that the content aligned with learning goals and the climate calculator was applied correctly, and it produced a list of recommendations covering interface clarity, feedback, scoring, and engagement. The paper does not test learning outcomes with students, and the games currently model only a limited set of measures and emissions reduction without a finalised scoring system.