The Multiplier Effect: Partnering to Accelerate Climate Solutions
The Sun Valley Forum Multiplier Effect Sessions
The Sun Valley Forum is hosted annually by Christensen Global as a climate solutions accelerator. The Forum's Multiplier Effect sessions provide a collaborative platform for driving climate solutions forward. The sessions aim to accelerate specific initiatives by leveraging the deep knowledge, powerful reach, and resources within the Forum community, onsite and throughout the year.
The Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center brought together gaming executives and developers, storytellers, and philanthropists to advance gaming as a tool to reach billions of gamers with climate solutions.
Our Engagement Challenge
With an escalating urgency to address climate change impacts, we need innovative solutions to reach as many people as soon as possible to equip them with the tools to build resilient communities.
The largest global survey of public opinion on climate change conducted by the People's Climate Vote, a project of UNDP and Oxford University, found that 59% of those surveyed believe climate change is a global emergency and want an all-out effort to do everything possible and urgently in response. The remaining 41% believe that action isn't urgently needed. This finding suggests that more education and better modes of engagement could help gain support for rapidly deploying scaled solutions.
Gaming Technology is an Effective Channel to Increase Engagement in Climate Resilience
Enlisting a targeted outreach effort to hundreds of millions of people with a high propensity for action and presenting resonating solutions in places where people are already engaged can effectively increase the number of people who can adopt solutions. The Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (Arsht-Rock) is doing just that by working with the gaming community and technology to build climate resilience among individuals and communities through Arsht Rock's One Billion Resilient initiative.
To advance the organization’s goal of engaging 300 million players in climate resilience solutions, industry veterans Chance Glasco and Grant Shonkwiler—developers of two of the most successful games, Call of Duty and Fortnite, game design experts, developers from some of the world's biggest gaming companies, and educational institutions focus on three strategies. These strategies include partnering with AAA game companies, providing support for indie developers, and creating Arsht-Rock’s Gaming Center of Excellence.
Our Engagement Opportunity: By leveraging the Sun Valley Forum community, from climate scientists to writers to media professionals, in learning about Arsht-Rock's strategic gaming strategy and providing input in four focus areas.
Kathy Baughman McLeod, the Director of Arsht-Rock, convened and facilitated this Multiplier Effect session on how gaming technologies can help build community resilience to the impacts of climate change by achieving its goal to reach 1 billion people with actionable and measurable climate resilience solutions by 2030. Arsht-Rock's gaming experts Chance Glasco, Creative Director of Good Dog Studios, and Shayne Hayes, Associate Director of Arsht-Rock's Video Game Initiative, presented several transformational game design case studies.
Presentations focused on five areas:
The broad reach and transformational nature of games. Over 3.2 billion people play video games worldwide, and half of those players are female. Game designers are experts at making complex concepts fun, a superpower applicable to increasing action to the climate crisis. Play can foster engagement with otherwise overwhelming topics to learn about and can spark changes in attitude and perceived self-efficacy, moving beyond education into action.
Working across the industry. Participants learned how Arsht-Rock works with AAA game development studios, such as Minecraft, Fortnite, and Ubisoft, that produce some of the world's largest gaming franchises and smaller independent (indie) developers. Arsht-Rock hosts workshops and learning resources for the wider industry to amplify and accelerate the climate resilience impact of promising new titles.
Reaching policymakers through Virtual Reality (VR). Workshop participants saw a live demo of a Virtual Reality experience designed to help policymakers globally visualize the impacts of climate change and the efficacy of resilient building solutions they can deploy locally. The demo simulates a hurricane in 2040 in Miami, Florida, where policymakers are immersed in knee-deep water. After experiencing the storm's impact, policymakers can travel back in time to see how different policy interventions can help shape the future and mitigate climate catastrophes. Eight in ten policymakers reported feeling inspired to act after their VR experience.
Heatwave naming and categorization in Martial Arts Tycoon: Brazil. Call of Duty co-creator and Arsht-Rock Senior Fellow Chance Glasco presented his new game IP, Martial Arts Tycoon: Brazil which was inspired by his time living in Rio and practicing Jiu-Jitsu. The game places you in charge of a Jiu-Jitsu gym in a Brazilian favela where the well-being of your fighters is in your hands. Heat waves present a hazard in the game, featuring a naming and categorization system Arsht-Rock is piloting in the real world. Players learn how to respond to extreme heat simply by playing the game.
Climate mitigation and resilience in Minecraft: Power Grid Hero. Shayne Hayes, co-creator of the most downloaded Minecraft world of all time and Associate Director of Arsht-Rock's Video Game Initiative, unveiled a new city-building Minecraft game mode that puts you in charge of the power grid of a growing community. As you travel through time from the Industrial Revolution to the modern day, it's up to you to decide which types of power to deploy and which policies to enact to build toward a sustainable, resilient future. Players engage with climate change and resilience on a systems level, creating a more profound understanding through experiential play.
Session participants provided feedback in four areas:
What are the most applicable best practices in participants' industries that could enhance the effectiveness of Arsht-Rock's Gaming Initiative?
What key advice can be transferred to Arsht-Rock's Video Game Initiative to appeal to people who want to leave a legacy of impact in pioneering ways?
What strategies and tactics can amplify Arsht-Rock's work through influencers, media outlets, and other mediums to maximize impact?
What observations from the field of evaluation and measurement are useful in informing efforts to scale societal change?
The feedback received from this Multiplier Effect session continues to be incredibly valuable as Arsht-Rock's Video Game Initiative expands its global presence. Already, Arsht-Rock has an exciting new opportunity for game developers called the Climate Games Launchpad. Through this new accelerator program, game developers will learn how to design impact campaigns and measure behavior change in their games, equipping them for ongoing success in releasing transformational games.
