What does it take to move people from knowing about climate change to caring enough to act — and to imagine different futures together?

A new STRATEGIES‑supported study, Beyond awareness: Climate games as invitations to care for the future (Moossdorff & Vervoort, 2026), explores this question through the lens of games. Drawing on an analysis of 287 climate‑related games, the research shows how play can become a powerful space for practising care for the future.

This work directly contributes to STRATEGIES’ mission to understand how games and can build  expand our collective imagination and support cultural responses to the climate crisis.

Some time ago, Volha Kapitonava, former Disco Elysium community manager and managing director for ecogame The Regreening, wrote a wonderful blog post titled ‘Joy is the radical tool games need to turn eco-anxiety into agency’. She wrote about the importance of joy in games that try to engage with the problems of ecological destruction. She mentioned our game All Will Rise, a role playing game about taking billionaires to court for destroying the planet, as an example.

I wholeheartedly agreed with this perspective, and it prompted me to try and write down my own thoughts about the importance of joy in games and in life, and how this informs our thinking about All Will Rise.

New global framework empowers games companies to measure and reduce carbon emissions, driving widespread industry sustainability.

The Finnish Game Industry has taken a step forward when it comes to climate change and has mapped its greenhouse gas emissions for the first time. The mapping happened as part of the biannual industry data collection and companies providing data of their emissions with their own calculations or by using simplified calculator on Pelimetsä website.  

Based on the data collection, it is estimated that the greenhouse gas emissions of the Finnish Game Industry, including the emissions from the global player base playing Finnish games, was 190 000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) in 2024. Majority, over 91 %, are estimated to be indirect Scope 3 emissions, and only less than 9 % from Scope 1 and 2. Emissions from use of sold products, meaning people playing the games, is under Scope 3.  

Over the past year, the STRATEGIES project has published a series of reports examining how Europe's game industries can transition toward sustainable practices. These reports offer evidence-based insights into the environmental challenges facing the sector and propose pathways for change.

Four reports are now available on our reports page.

In this article, recently published in the Behavioral Sciences journal, Paul Wake and Chloé Germaine establish the affordances of game making, hacking, and jamming as critical practices in teaching and research. They explain the origins of this approach in specific teaching and research projects and consider their impact on scholarly practice.