Requirements for Designing Effective Climate Change Game
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International Conferences Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction 2020; and Game and Entertainment Technologies 2020 REQUIREMENTS FOR DESIGNING EFFECTIVE CLIMATE CHANGE GAME Nurlieda Ellyanna Munirrah Razali1, Nor Azan Mat Zin1, Mohamad Pauzi Zakaria2, Tengku Siti Meriam Tengku Wook1, Norizan Mat Diah3 and Fadhilah Rosdi1 1Faculty of Technology and Information Science, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 43600 UKM BANGI, Selangor, Malaysia 2Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences(IOES), University of Malaya, Malaysia 3Faculty of Computer Science and Mathematics, Mara University of Technology, Malaysia ABSTRACT Climate continues to change as a result of global warming but awareness and positive behavior are still low despite efforts to educate and engage the public through campaigns and education. Therefore, interactive games which provide simulated experience can be effective to promote engagement, especially among youth who are less concerned about the environment and less likely to engage in environmentally responsible actions. This paper presented a study on the requirements gathering for a serious game design on climate change (CC) that contextualize the processes in carbon cycle as the main story. Further literature analysis on CC issues and existing CC games that have the element of climate change were carried out to identify gaps and propose a design solution for a new CC game. The findings show that the requirements for CC game include correct information (content), aesthetic pleasure, quizzes, rewarding mechanisms, rules, goals leaderboard, performance graph and badges. KEYWORDS Serious Game, Climate Change, Carbon Cycle, Requirements, Game Design 1. INTRODUCTION Global climate continues to change over the past 50 years as a result of global warming. Climate system data show that human activities rapidly change many aspects of the global climate and that the Earth is warming (Walsh et al. 2014). Nevertheless, awareness of climate change issues among Malaysians is still low, therefore there is a need to enhance awareness which should start at an early age (Shahiddan 2014; Aqilah 2018, Shahino 2018). Some society leaders suggested education at primary school level to change citizens’ attitude and empower importance of green technology among the people (Aqilah 2018). Global warming, energy issues and greenhouse effect are interdependent environmental issues that lead to climate change thus need to be addressed for sustainability. Locally, here have been increasing efforts by the government, private sectors and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to educate and engage the public on environmental issues through various campaigns and formal education approach, such as the Annual program for 3R -waste to Art competition sustainable green campus convention, setting-up an annual National level recycle day on 11th November, School recycling competition (PerKiSS) and community driven programs like recycling bank in community (3R@com). The ministry of Science and Innovation (MESTECC) together with Education ministry, Department of Society Progress (Kemas) and the National Department for Integration (JPNIN) developed a Teaching and learning module for 3R practices and solid waste management for preschool which is used in 5,228 preschools across the nation starting 2018. For the primary and secondary schools, SWCorp has introduced a training module for recycling since 2014. However, awareness and behavior change regarding positive responses to climate change is still low among the population. 109 ISBN: 978-989-8704-20-7 © 2020 Recent studies also confirmed that many climate communications efforts have failed due to uni directional transmission of information that made audience passive consumers of information, lack of contextualization which cause confusion with other environmental issues and the negative and alarmist tone of the content, which often evokes paralysis or apathy instead of motivating people to take action (Ouariachi, Olvera-Lobo, & Gutiérrez-Pérez 2017). Serious Games are digital games that providing the purpose to create awareness of a certain issue, to change behavior or to teach simultaneously with entertainment (Alonso-fernandez et al. 2017). In addition, gaming increases the sense of personal responsibility, the confidence in politics for climate change mitigation, and makes players more optimistic about international cooperation in climate politics (Meya, & Eisenack 2018). It is important to start teaching young people to bring change regarding the CC issues using the current technology such as games to engage them. Furthermore, quantitative evidence on the effectiveness of a simulation game for communicating and teaching international climate politics showed that the game facilitates experiential learning about the difficulties of international climate politics. Young people have the potential to trigger an ambitious and long-term societal change, adopting sustainable attitudes and behaviors in energy use from early ages and influencing their parents’ decisions (Ouariachi, Olvera-Lobo, & Gutiérrez-Pérez 2017). However, Bofferding and Kloser (2015) opined that awareness and commitment are still limited with ‘Youth’ who is even less concerned about the environment than older age-groups and less likely to engage in environmentally responsible actions. ‘Youth’ belongs to digital generation, hence interactive games which can provide immersive, real time simulated experience, should be employed for climate change engagement, complementing factual persuasion - presenting climate change facts through conventional methods such as school curriculum, campaigns using printed materials or mass media which fail to change many people’s actions due to ideological and other intractable resistances. Available games have content issues in the way games model the human-environment relationship, either environment as backdrop, resource, antagonist or text are only frameworks for players action and aesthetic pleasure (Abraham & Jeyamanne 2017). Most games focus on practices such as recycling or reducing waste but very few focuses on mechanisms and processes that cause anthropogenic climate change although some games discuss long-term climate effects. However, only recently there have been a few games employing carbon cycle as the content for CC games Hence our research aims to gather requirements for effective CC game, focusing on game elements that contextualize the process of carbon cycle disruptions as the main story of the game. 2. CARBON CYCLE Climate change occurs due to the release of excess greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide and methane as a result of industrial and agricultural waste. The effect of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere captures heat, which in turn causes an increase in the temperature of the earth. Consequently, extreme weather and global warming are due to excessive greenhouse gas emissions (Sau, Weng, & Ahamad 2016). Global CO2 emissions from human activities have increased by 400% since 1950 [https://www.theccc.org.uk/tackling-climate-change/the-science-of-climate-change/climate-variations- natural-and-human -factors /] and more than 40% compared to pre-industrial levels (Galloway et al.2014). Furthermore, rapid urbanization in pursuit of a better quality of life has led Malaysia to shift towards environmental degradation as a result of some challenges from environmental issues (Sau, Weng, & Ahamad 2016). Extreme climates can affect the structure, composition and function of inland ecosystems and can therefore affect regional carbon cycles, potentially leading to the transition from carbon sequestration to carbon sources (Frank 2015). One of the main causes of global climate change has been identified as increasing carbon emissions and our daily actions are among the contributors to the greenhouse gas collection process in the atmosphere (Zou, Mustafa, & Eid 2015). CO2 remains the major anthropogenic greenhouse gas that accounted for 76% of total gas emissions in 2010 (Rolle 2018). In addition, the ocean absorbs about 30% of the anthropogenic CO2 released into the atmosphere to help mitigate the effects of climate change. However, CO2 hydrolysis in seawater results in an increase in the concentration of hydrogen ions and this would result in the progressive acidification of the oceans (Rolle 2018). The global action to address the issue of climate change (known as the Paris Agreement) aims to ensure that global warming in this century is below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and will continue efforts to limit temperatures to as low as 1.5 degrees Celsius (Wyrwa 2018). 110 International Conferences Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction 2020; and Game and Entertainment Technologies 2020 The challenge of designing a carbon cycle CC game is to understand and then contextualize the fundamental processes of carbon cycle that contribute to the CC. As further game requirements, previous and available games were also analysed. 3. GAME ANALYSIS None of the ‘environmental games’ apply the whole carbon cycle as the main context of the game, as indicated in Table 1. Among the 11 games, Carbon Command represented one process in the carbon cycle but only focused on CO2 and photosynthesis of plants. While neglecting other elements in carbon cycle such as respiration and decomposition which are necessary to understand the causes of CC. Carbon on our planet is stored in the major sinks which are atmosphere, soil organic matter, ocean, marine sediments and sedimentary rocks,