📅 6 March 2026
🕗 20:00-21:00
📍 Chill-Out Stage, Button Festival for Gaming Culture, Messeplatz 1, Graz, Austria.
In this panel, we explore how gaming is connected to climate and the environment, and examine how sustainable the games industry actually is. How are game developers addressing these challenges, and what concrete actions can studios, gamers, and communities take to make a difference?
Between Apocalyptic Scenarios and Energy Consumption: Can Games Be Part of the Solution — or Are They Part of the Problem?
With Ruth Dorothea Eggel, STRATEGIES researcher, Jan Steinhauser, Game Developer at Terragami Interactive, Julian Neuhauser, Game Developer at Octo5 Studios, Harald Koberg, Panel Moderation,
Workshop: Eco and Climate Games: A Game Club
📅 6 March 2026
🕗 21:00 – 22:30
📍 Workshop Area, Button Festival for Gaming Culture, Messeplatz 1, Graz, Austria.
In a relaxed setting, we will try out two Austrian game demos and use them as a starting point for discussion. Together, we will play Hotspot Earth (Terragami Interactive) and Pollucean (Octo5 Studios) and explore how story, design, gameplay mechanics, graphics, and worldbuilding directly and indirectly communicate and make the climate crisis and its impacts tangible.
An interactive format for everyone interested in open exchange and playing together.
https://www.buttonfestival.at/events/workshop-oeko-klima-games-ein-gemuetlicher-spielkreis/
Participants:
Panel Moderation: Harald Koberg, Button-Festival Founder & Organiser
Panel & Workshop Organiser: Ruth Dorothea Eggel is a digital anthropologist and game researcher at the Cologne Game Lab at TH Köln. She researches sustainable game development as part of the EU research project STRATEGIES (https://www.strategieshorizon.eu/).
Game Developer & STRATEGIES Research partner: Jan Steinhauser conducts research at BOKU University (boku.ac.at) and at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) (iiasa.ac.at) on sustainable future pathways and tests innovative methods for climate communication. To put research into practice, he co-founded Terragami (terragami.net) with Doris Vollgruber – a video game studio with an impact focus.
Game Developer & STRATEGIES Research partner: Octo5 Studios is a young development studio whose debut title Pollucean addresses marine and environmental pollution and their ecological and social consequences. With this concept, they have already won several Austrian student competitions in 2025.