A new version of the popular board game Catan, hitting shelves this summer, introduces energy production and pollution into the gameplay.
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Catan GmbH
A new version of the popular board game Catan, hitting shelves this summer, introduces energy production and pollution into the gameplay.
Catan GmbH
In the original version of the popular board game Settlers of Catan, players start on an undeveloped island and are encouraged to “fulfill your manifest destiny.” To win you must collect and develop resources, claiming land by building settlements, cities and roads.
A new version of the board game, Catan: New energies, introduces a 21st century twist: pollution. Expand responsibly or lose. In the new version, modern Catan needs energy. To get that energy, players must build power plants, and those plants can run on renewable energy or fossil fuels. Power plants that run on fossil fuels allow you to build faster, but also cause more pollution. Too much pollution causes catastrophes.
Building renewable energy-based power plants has benefits in the new game, including minimizing pollution for everyone, but it also makes you grow more slowly.
Catan GmbH
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Catan GmbH
Building renewable energy-based power plants has benefits in the new game, including minimizing pollution for everyone, but it also makes you grow more slowly.
Catan GmbH
“In general, it is difficult to represent reality in a game. Reality is always so much more complex,” says Benjamin Teuber, director of Catan's production company and co-developer of the new game. Games, he adds, should be fun.
Catan: New Energies lets players choose between renewable energy or fossil fuel-based power plants. The latter ensures that you can grow faster, but causes more pollution.
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Catan: New Energies lets players choose between renewable energy or fossil fuel-based power plants. The latter ensures that you can grow faster, but causes more pollution.
Catan GmbH
The latest version of Catan will hit shelves this summer. And it aims to reflect reality in a few clear ways: energy from fossil fuels creates even more planet-changing pollution then renewable energy sources; too much pollution leads to bad things; those bad things are felt unevenly.
'Sometimes a flood affects everyone, as we see [in the real world]', said Teuber. 'It doesn't matter who caused the pollution. It affects everyone.”
Teuber, who developed New Energies with his late father, Klaus Teuber, said the game was an old idea they dusted off during the Covid-19 pandemic. It's one that's becoming increasingly relevant as the real world grapples with the consequences of real-world pollution: a rapidly warming planet that worsens wildfires, floods and heatwaves.
The developers of the game are aware of the relevance. “It's a very interesting topic in every culture we publish in,” Teuber said.
Polls show that climate change is being opposed a major concern across many parts of the world. But adapting to the changes and addressing their roots has proven difficult. Teuber said he thinks board games can move the conversation forward. Board games generally require people to sit around a shared table, read each other, negotiate and take risks, “without serious and bad consequences,” he said. “Unless divorce is the result.”
Experiencing climate change through board games
Catan: New Energies isn't the only new board game that focuses on climate change. The break of daythe latest game from the maker of Pandemic, a popular cooperative board game, tasks players with working together to reduce carbon emissions and limit global warming.
In a blog post on Daybreak's website, the game's co-creator Matteo Menapace wrote that he and co-creator Matt Leacock were inspired to create the game because they were both concerned about climate change and weren't sure what to do about it .
“The problem with asking 'what can I do about climate change' is how it implies that climate action is like a single-player game, where you alone are fighting this huge invisible enemy,” Menapace wrote. They believe that tackling climate change and its causes will require a collective effort. That's why Daybreak requires “total collaboration,” Menapace wrote. “It's a big leap from the current state of climate action, but not unreasonable… and we aim for this game to play a role in accelerating this shift.”
Catan Studio, the developer and publisher of Catan games, isn't so explicit in its intentions for its new game. The phrase “climate change” does not appear in any Catan: New Energies promotional materials, packaging, or rulebook. 'Pollution' is the collective name for the problem.
Teuber said they talked about adding the term, but decided to focus on energy and give players the choice of fossil fuels or renewable fuels. “We assume that players will draw their own conclusions as they engage with the game,” he said.
The game studio notes in its press materials that according to “evidence-based research and expert sources”, [the] new game elements get players thinking and talking about important issues.”
A 2019 review of published research into board games and behavior of a team of Japanese researchers showed that “as a tool, board games can be expected to improve understanding of knowledge, improve interpersonal interactions between participants, and increase participants' motivation.” However, it noted that the number of published studies on this topic is limited.
Dialogue from gameplay
“What games are really powerful at is starting dialogues,” says Sam Illingworth, associate professor of science communication at Edinburgh Napier University in Britain.
In the gaming world, there is a concept called the Magic Circle – a theory attributed to Johann Huizinga, a Dutch cultural historian, who in the thirties stated that play creates a separate world with separate rules.
“It's the idea that we suspend disbelief at the gaming table,” Illingworth said. “Just like in the game of Monopoly, it's perfectly fine – strictly advisable – that I want to bankrupt you, which is morally repugnant off the gaming table, but it means that those social hierarchies can break down and we can have conversations that normally would we can't have that.”
In 2019, Illingworth co-designed a playable expansion to the original Catan that added climate change and sustainability to the gameplay. They called it Catan: Global warming and posted the rules and instructions on how to customize a regular Catan game online.
If players add too many greenhouse gases in the add-on, the entire island will be destroyed and no one wins. “So that creates a game state where psychologically there is clear causality between actions and what happens, right?” said Illingworth. “So instead of just having a conversation about what might happen, you actually experience it.”
In Catan: New Energies, when pollution reaches too high a level to continue, victory goes to the person who built the most renewable energy plants.
While working with colleagues on the new game, Teuber said they often played too aggressively, with the goal of “growing, growing, growing,” and building fossil fuel power plants, he said. “We always manage to pollute too much.”
Test groups did the same. But after those games, the players would often come back and say, “We had some tough discussions afterward,” Teuber said. “We all felt a little bad, we learned a few things, and the next game we played differently.”
