MGC and STRATEGIES play Catan: New Energies

As part of the Manchester Game Centre’s research on games and the environment, we hosted a game night on September 19th in the Manchester Poetry Library. The game night welcomed researchers from the STRATEGIES project - a Horizon-UKRI-funded research project supporting the game industries to make a sustainable transition - and students and members of the public to play the new game, Catan: New Energies.

CATAN – New Energies is a brand new standalone game that is rooted in classic CATAN mechanics of harvesting, trading, and building. New gameplay elements including power plants, energy tokens, and environmental events add new strategies and stories to a familiar foundation. — https://www.catan.com/catan-new-energies

Game set-up was a little more involved than a typical game of *Catan…*

This isn’t the first ‘eco’ version of Catan to be developed. Catan: Oil Springs! is an expansion/add-on for the original game, designed by Erik Assadourian and Ty Hansen. In this version, Oil is scarce and its use does not come without cost. Using oil produces pollution as well as climate changing emissions, which bring with bring with them the threat of coastal flooding. In Catan: Oil Springs, players must decide whether the common good is worth limiting oil usage or whether the pursuit of victory is worth the risk of ruin. There is also Catan: Global Warming (2020), a free p+p expansion for Catan, developed by MGC researcher Paul Wake, and Sam Illingworth. Catan: Global Warming shows players how their decisions and choices regarding agriculture, mining, and urban development are related to global climate change. As settlers of a new land, players see how developing the land and expanding population creates more greenhouse gas. It uses information from the IPCC 5th assessment report.

Catan: New Energies differs from its ecological predecessors in providing a new, standalone play experience, available commercially. Our play session sought to understand how the game represented climate change and the challenges of global heating, to evaluate its mechanics and dynamics, and reflect on lessons for game designers going forward.

Researchers on the STRATEGIES project are also playing commercial games to better understand how game playing might teach carbon literacy. Carbon literacy training is a key pillar of the STRATEGIES project.

Play groups get stuck into strategies for Catan: New Energies!

Reactions to the game were mixed within our play groups. Some considered the addition of a carbon tracker and the ability to shift this in positive and negative directions was a really good way to reflect on how necessary building and development might be mitigated by green energy infrastructure. Others felt the carbon tracker was too optimistic in its progression, never delivering the level of disaster resulting from repeated efforts to expand and grow industry. There were interesting reflections on the climate justice angle of the game, too, and players commented on the dynamics whereby the impacts of climate change might be felt a-symmetrically depending on who had the worst ‘local footprint’. As the carbon literacy training shows, however, in reality, those countries with the lowest emissions tend to suffer the effects of climate change the most. The game adds many mechanics and layers of interaction to the original, increasing its complexity and necessity for strategic decision making. However, as one player noted, the base tactics remain the same: be the first to build the longest road, build all your cities, or buy development cards: the road to victory is growth by any means.

We really enjoyed the play session and will be looking at ways to use the game in our work on the STRATEGIES project. We look forward to synthesizing the comments of all the players for a future update to our ecogame ludography, too. Keep an eye on our events listings for future eco-themed game nights, and contribute to our growing knowledge and understanding of how eco-themed games are engaging players with climate action.