Terra Nile and Ixion: Gamers should think about climate change through video games

For many people, climate change is still a very abstract danger. Even if the consequences are becoming more and more noticeable and visible. Sandy beaches and coasts are falling victim to rising sea levels. Fires destroy areas as large as entire federal states. And what was once green and fertile soil has turned into desolate wasteland on which nothing can grow or thrive.

Many film and series makers have discovered the explosive topic for themselves and are trying to explore individual aspects in productions such as The Day After Tomorrow, Don't Look Up, Tides and The Silent Sea in their own way. But in another popular medium, the Climate change has hardly arrived so far: in video games, they are the perfect vehicle to address the dynamics and dangers of global warming.

In many video games, the task of the player is to take possession of a world spread out before them and to make it usable. In Sim City from 1989 and its direct and spiritual successors such as Cities: Skylines or the Anno saga, living space is appropriated in order to create living space, raise a society and, above all, promote growth and the economy.