Log 2

With this week’s iteration, the Green Condition has taken the time to sit down and dissect the game Magnitude, which, going forward, will be a huge inspiration and foundation for our game!

Magnitude is described as “an amplification and simplification of reality” that is used to best demonstrate the collaborative effort of policy making. It is a physical board game played cooperatively between four players (referred to as ‘ministers’) who are attempting to push their country forward to meet the 8 Millennium Development Goals in order to build towards preparedness for natural disaster.

Magnitude was created as part of a collaboration studio with United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR, formerly known as UNISDR) through the Parsons Humanitarian Design Lab. It can be accessed here.

For our game, we are thinking of a “current day” reskinning of Magnitude using the Sustainable Development Goals proposed by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, to keep the United Nations (and hopefully the rest of the world) on track for making significant progress towards climate change via the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.

Specifically, we have been looking at four SDGs in particular that drive home the message of our game:

• Goal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
• Goal 7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.
• Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
• Goal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.

We envision our game being played in a classroom setting (middle school/high school) to encourage progressive thinking about our environment/world to stress the importance that our decisions now have a major impact of the future of our planet. Time is of the essence and just like in real life, in the game there is a limited amount of time to complete the tasks required in order to ensure a sustainable future.

Our hopes are that if played at an early enough age, children can begin to realize that we are all connected and we all have a part to play in preserving our planet. We feel that one of the major barriers for people with regard to sustainability is they feel powerless or like their decisions don’t matter in the global scale of things. This mentality could not be further from the truth and big changes can come from the smallest actions.

We think our game has come pretty far from its inception stage, but there’s still a long way to go!