New Energies pits fossil fuels against renewable energy

In the classic board game Catan, players take on the role of settlers racing to develop an uninhabited island. They compete to build settlements, roads, and cities as quickly as possible in a universe where building growth and development is good, even necessary.

This week’s new version of the game takes players straight into the 21st century, where the equation has become more complicated. In the world of Catan: New Energies, climate change is a known threat. Players build towns, cities and roads; trading in commodities such as steel and fabrics; and build power plants. The most important decision they face is whether to continue working with fossil fuels and urban development, which could cause disaster, or to invest in renewable energy sources, a slower and more expensive process that prolongs the game and offers other paths to recovery. wins.

“We had fascinating rounds of very, very competitive use of fossil fuels, and we all just wanted to win,” says Benjamin Teuber, gameplay designer at New Energies and son of Catan creator Klaus Teuber. Teuber says that during testing, players tended to start aggressively: “Every time we played, we kind of destroyed the world.”

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New Energies was the last game Teuber worked on with his father, who died last year. During development, the duo wanted to ensure that the game included both positive and negative possible outcomes. It may end prematurely, for example, if players continually choose resource-intensive activities such as building cities and towns. At this point, the player with the highest ratio of renewable energy plants to fossil fuel plants wins. But the remaining players can try to prevent an early end by building more renewable energy and eliminating fossil fuel plants.

Parallel to real life, New Energies often become an exercise on the edge. No one wants to hurt their chances of winning by not building or waiting to build more expensive renewable energy instead of fossil fuels. However, more fossil fuels and more urban development mean that all players are more likely to trigger events such as floods and air pollution. These events hamper development, making cheaper fossil fuels even more attractive. It’s a snowball effect that can quickly get out of control.

When Bloomberg Green put New Energies to the test, players were plagued by indecision. Building a fossil fuel power plant is easy and makes the most sense as a strategy to push the player to victory, but it seems morally wrong. Ultimately, everyone built at least one, although the player who won used a combination of renewable energy and fossil fuels.

Teuber says this balance is reflected in his own experience. The showdown eventually evolved from a race to build as much fossil fuel infrastructure as possible into a group consensus to transition to at least some renewable energy sources. “We said, ‘Why did we do this again?’ Well, because it’s just innate. We want to win,” he says. “It sucks because the game was stopped too early again and, you know, next time maybe we should start earlier with the green (energy).”

New Energies exposes the complexity of solving climate change, says Kelli Schmitz, director of brand development at Catan Studio. “It doesn’t shame you for things you don’t really have control over, which is nice in a way, but it makes you think on a more macro level,” he says. “If I can’t control what kind of power plant gets built in the next city, maybe I should start thinking about the systems that make it happen and who you vote for, who you support, what kinds of conversations you have with your family and friends.”

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Playing a game can be more informative than passive activities such as listening to a lecture or seminar, says Kris De Meyer, neuroscientist and director of the Climate Action Unit at UCL. “Playing games can trigger what is called experiential learning,” he says. This is especially useful when players have the opportunity to analyze what happened during the game.

Catan: New Energies is not the first atmospheric board game. The series has included environmental elements in expansions including Crop Trust and Oil Springs, and other games – including CO2: Second Chance and Tipping Point – also gamify the problem of balancing economic growth and climate impact. In the cooperative game Daybreak, released last year, players take on the role of major countries or coalitions working to transition away from an economy based on fossil fuels. The goal is to achieve “downtake” when the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere begins to fall.

“You only win if you collectively reduce emissions to the point of exhaustion, and you lose completely when one of the players is in a state of crisis that threatens multiple communities,” says Daybreak co-creator Matteo Menapace. “Even though each player has many individual competencies and spends a lot of time solving his own internal problems, the settlement is global.” The game has found application in the real world; Menapace and co-creator Matt Leacock will host sessions with bankers and weather forecasters in the coming weeks.

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Laurie Laybourn, a research fellow at Chatham House’s Center for Environment and Society, says playing Daybreak with climate policymakers highlights the unpredictability of climate impacts. “Games are a great way to help these people and broader society challenge their imaginations with something that has never happened before,” says Laybourn, who advised Leacock and Menapaka on Daybreak. “The things that could happen if we don’t address climate change are literally unimaginable because we haven’t lived through them.”

Solutions can also be difficult to imagine, at least as tangible options. That’s one of the reasons why Catan: New Energies isn’t called something like Catan: Climate Disaster. “We wanted the film to be positive and forward-looking,” Schmitz says, “leaving room for hope.”