Do you remember when, earlier this year, Horizon: Forbidden West came out and Sony said it would plant trees in the real world for everyone who earned the Daunt trophy in the game? Actually, did anyone earn that trophy? Well done if you did. Anyway, that was made especially by Sony for something called the Green Game Jam.
You’ve probably never heard of it. That’s because it’s a fairly new thing run by the fairly new Playing for the Planet Alliance, which was formed in 2019 by people from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to get the games industry working together to tackle the climate emergency. Part of this involves companies committing to improving their business operations, environmentally speaking; and part of it comes from using the many games they make, which reach many millions of people, to enact real, positive change. This is where the Green Game Jam comes in.
Again, the whole thing is fairly new and still establishing itself so we’re not talking about entire games designed around climate change, though Tencent is making one called Carbon Island – an island-based city-building game. Mostly, what we’re talking about is “green activations” in games: a term used to describe bespoke elements placed in games either temporarily, or permanently, and focused around an environmental theme.
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