Inspiring Sustainability & Battling Climate Change with Video Games

Free Lives: Inspiring Sustainability & Battling Climate Change with Video Games

Welcome to today's episode. I’m your host Carlos Garcia and today we explore the intersection of gaming, sustainability, and real-world environmental activism. We live in a world where climate change is pushing species to migrate and ecosystems to deteriorate, but as grim as that continues to be there are glimmers of hope, inspiration, and action. One of those beacons is the game Terra Nil and their creator Free Lives, an indie game development company taking action in environmentalism. In today's episode, we'll discuss how this game not only raises awareness of critical global issues through its beautiful/peaceful gameplay but also takes tangible steps toward real-world environmental restoration, plus we'll take a look into how their actions impact our world/society.

Terra Nil: A Game that Simulates Climate Adaptation & Global Warming

Let's begin by discussing what Terra Nil is. Terra Nil is a game that takes the player through a barren and lifeless world with the mission of restoring different biomes. Although the scenarios that Terra Nil simulates are currently “fictitious”, it paints quite the picture of what’s waiting for humanity if sustainable and environmentalist actions are not taken soon. However, that's the setting of the game, a world where nothing was done soon enough and now you must use futuristic technology to recover forests, pastures, oceans and many other different zones and eventually see how the world starts balancing again thanks to your initiatives. But the developers of this game aren't just looking to simulate how to save what's left of the world, they're actually trying to do it now too.

Climate Actions: Free Lives’ Sustainability Initiatives

See Free Lives, the independent developer company and creator of this game, decided to take a couple of initiatives to play a part in saving the world before their incredibly realistic post-apocalyptic game scenario actually happens. One of those initiatives are seen once you open their website, terranil.com, that's t-e-r-r-a-n-i-l.com, or when you open the game in Steam, and what you'll see is that they decided to donate 8% of their Steam Sales to a Non-Profit Organization called Endangered Wildlife Trust, or EWT for short. And the other initiative is that they've also planted almost 49 thousand trees through Tree-Nation.

Supporting Conservation: The Partnership with EWT

Now that we understand these sustainability initiatives, let's explore Free Lives' decision to donate 8% of their Steam Sales to EWT.
EWT is a Non-Profit organization from South Africa, Free Lives' home country, that also has been around since 1973, and is dedicated to creating conservation programs around the world. With presence in 21 countries and 13 different programs dedicated to saving species, conserving habitats and even benefitting people as they show on their website, ewt.org.za. EWT made Free Lives' decision a definite no-brainer, and makes a lot of sense when you get the chance to play their game Terra Nil. Much like EWT's mission of conservation, the game touches on things like restoring animal territories in order to enable their relocation or re-appearance to their old homes.

Rebuilding Our World & Global Climate One Tree at a Time

Additionally to donating some of their profits to an outstanding organization like EWT, the developers of Free Lives have a Tree-Nation account from which they've dedicated to putting even further efforts to rebuilding our world.
With almost 49 thousand trees planted, which put into perspective is about 120 acres of land filled with trees, it would be like filling 90 football fields completely. Leading Free Lives' initiative to help recover that same amount of land with trees and also sequester about 7.3 thousand metric tons of carbon dioxide or CO2 since the day these were planted with Tree-Nation. And since we're playing the perspective game, let's just say their contribution helps not just once in a lifetime but rather think about the amount of CO2 these trees can absorb per year which if Google is not incorrect it would total about 1 thousand metric tons which is about the amount of emissions that 226 gasoline-powered cars make in one year.

The Urgency of Environmental Action & Rate of Climate Change

While we've been focusing on these wonderful things that Free Lives decided to do with the launch of their game, any action taken is always welcome and always comes at the right time because the world needs it. And the world really needs it year after year because it's often not news when we hear that our society is consuming its annual yearly resource limit before the year even ends. This year, unfortunately, the news came as early as August 1st, with the world already reaching the established limit. And even some countries having reached their limit as early as March!! That's only 3 months into 2024 that they have already consumed all of “their” resources. By the way, you can always check out more on this by searching Earth Overshoot Day, but I'll leave the link in the show notes and if you want an episode dedicated to this let me know and I'll do my homework to further research into this.

Our Role as Consumers and Our Future Climate

Anyways, while there are very obvious solutions to our year after year problem of overshooting our resource limit, the obvious solution here is how this company probably took the opportunity of having developed a game about environmental consciousness to take environmentally conscious initiatives.
This led me to think about our impact and responsibility as consumers. I'm not a perfect person and I clearly need to improve on so many things, whether it is treating my anxiety for my own sake or becoming a conscious consumer for our world's sake. And it's analyzing my impact/responsibility that helps me improve on that second thing by making somewhat environmentally positive decisions and ultimately maybe that helps a little on the first thing too. Imagine you're a gamer and all of the games you've purchased had the same initiatives as Free Lives and every game donated 8% to a conservation non-profit like EWT and then planted almost 90 football fields worth of trees. How much different would the news be? and how much different would our world be?

But why is this relevant? Well that's because the world consumes its resources for people like you and me, because we are the demand, whether it is by our needs or wants.
So, what if as consumers we decided to only purchase from companies that take initiatives to improve our world. Well then you wouldn't really have to imagine the green actions taken by your favorite game developer company or your favorite t-shirt manufacturer. It would all be real. I bet you're thinking that it's all about the profit, and you're probably right to some degree. We live in a consumer society and that's hard enough to change but things are changing and while a profitable business is still the reasonable business approach, it's not just ALL about the profit but also about giving something back. There are in-fact studies that prove that it is relevant, at least for consumers, which already is a great deal because we're the ones that can help make a change through our purchasing decisions. Heck, take into consideration this report from PwC released in May this year, showing that 46% of consumers are willing to buy sustainable products as a way to play a part in reducing their impact on our world.

Terra Nil as an Inspiring Game for Mitigation and Adaption

This ultimately shows that as consumers, a lot of us are becoming self-aware of how our demand for products impact the planet.
Like how someone can buy directly from a farmers market not just to support farmers or because it's more organic but also because there’s less plastic involved, and less many other things too. So an action like Free Lives to donate 8% of Steam Sales profits is something similar to that. I saw the game and loved the idea of being guided through a simulation where I can restore beautiful habitats and see animals slowly reappearing in these habitats but when I saw that they donated to a non-profit with a mission for conservation, preservation and protection of endangered species, I said, “ABSOLUTELY, YES.”, believe me, as a consumer I felt good about it too. And it’s actions like these from companies that may inspire other companies to appeal to the consumers with a weakness towards helping the planet, trust me that while reports like PwC's require a lot of scrutiny, to think almost half of the world's population is thinking about this type of things, it means there is a lot of us out there.

Real-Life Parallels: The Effects of Climate Change

I wanted to share some small notes on the game Terra Nil that I loved as a retired gamer and science enthusiast.
The game is very informative as it contains a journal of the zone you’re trying to restore and it also is very pleasing as you get to see how you turn infertile dirt to fertile soil and finally to a lush grassy area, plus many other complex simulations. But it truly makes you wonder, “I’d love to do something and help make this happen in real life too.”, so I guess you could say the game is truly inspiring with people that have a soft heart towards what’s going on in the world with our climate and environment. And as another important aspect, Terra Nil dives into things like humidity, toxicity, fertility, salinity and of course temperature, to show that when these change in our environment huge shifts can happen. Things like flowers and moss reappearing, or species like bears and deers being reintroduced to that specific zone when specific conditions are met.

Drawing a parallel with real life and how we’ve noticed reports of species migrating from their usual habitats because things are rapidly changing.
This rapid change has a name and this isn’t Harry Potter and unlike Voldemort, this isn’t fictitious, climate change is real and it’s not just evidenced with large migrations, which by the way, is already a big tell, as a great team from the University of Southern California are estimating that roughly half of the world’s species are migrating northwards. But also, landscapes are changing, rivers and lakes are becoming dry, forests are disappearing, being cut down illegally, and if we compare this to Terra Nil’s depiction of our post-apocalyptic world, it has many similarities. Let’s say we began taking impactful actions towards restoring current habitats of species, previous species would likely reappear in habitats that they previously migrated from and maybe landscapes can return to looking somewhat similar to what they looked before.

Closing Thoughts: Transforming Inspiration Into Adaptation Actions

Indirectly, or directly when you think about it, there are inspiring books or movies or people and I believe Free Lives, through Terra Nil, is precisely that. As someone that was very inspired by Steve Irwin and his constant hunger for conservation, I feel Free Lives is part of those Sustainable Stars that decided to use their talent and create a visually beautiful, informative and fun game to inspire, not to mention the 8% donation to EWT and almost 49 thousand trees planted, taking their actions a step further, just like Steve did through his show.

Thank you for joining me through this first episode of Sustainable Stars. I hope you enjoyed this journey through Terra Nil’s immersive world and learned how its creators are making a real impact beyond the keyboard and mouse. The stars of this episode are the developers and their masterpiece. Free Lives has demonstrated that art, technology, and activism can come together to create something truly transformative like Terra Nil. Plus, in a world where we’ve grown tired of the grayish cement color, where people want to escape busy cities and explore more natural places, games like Terra Nil are truly revolutionary.

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to share it with others who care about sustainability and those who love gaming, so they see its potential to inspire real-world action. Until next time, keep thinking about how we can all play a role in restoring our world, one small action at a time.

Feel free to comment on tips for improving the show. English isn't my first language and sometimes it may not be so great but I'm trying to improve. I'm also trying to find the ideal way to make these, maybe I should be more conversational rather than informational.

Here are some important links:

Inspiring Sustainability & Battling Climate Change with Video Games - Season 1 EP1