Introduction 

Games are increasingly recognized as bringing innovation in educational content. Educational games, as opposed to entertainment games, have the added imperative to infuse learning content along with game and engagement content. Games and gamification, the latter being different from the former, are often used as a tool to scale complexity of tough-to-teach topics. However, they can also be used to understand and appreciate the real-world complexity of processes, topics and actions albeit within the safety of a classroom/fictive setting. One such real-world topic, which is also of urgent concern these days, is sustainability & more specifically sustainability as an approach to counter some of the alarming trends of climate warming, biodiversity crisis, pollution of our ecosystems combined to the for raw materials and sources of energy.  

Significant interventions are underway to tackle climate change and bring more sustainability to the agenda and many science and technological innovations are being championed. However, one of the most important, but often invisible/underrated, forces that we see driving change is that of “Negotiations” or “Deal-making”. One might have the most innovative technology at hand but it is only through negotiations that one might be able to get it implemented. Often these skills are only developed through years of experience and hardly taught enough formally. We propose that a sustainable future can be fast-tracked not through technological innovations alone but the essential skill of negotiations.  

Educational intervention & Impact:  

Gamification is intended to exemplify the complex interdependencies between different land-use areas such as forest, lakes, mountains, coastal areas and even sea-beds and subsurface. In order to enhance the sustainability agenda, land modifications come at a significant cost and are made as such to mirror reality – such as European regulations around forest use and forest replantation tariffs). The paper proposes a game designed in such a way that one needs to grow their empire (of their own sector) to thrive and earn resources and money – both of which are needed to fuel further growth. Yet, growth will result in overlapping strategies and competition for resources as well as land. While one could be more unsustainable and expand at the cost of natural resources alone, the game stands out in its message that one can use the art of making deals to meet growth objectives with minimal or limited impact to the environment. The message being imparted is then along the lines of “savvy deal-making can influence and help you meet your sustainability objectives faster and cheaper”. The game is under development and the impact is yet to be measured – but from an engagement perspective we see very high engagement from the students as well as an acceptance of a transformed mindset- i.e. looking at the world from a different perspective than then one they started out with.   

 Contextualisation in conference theme:  The use of such a game to drive sustainability ambitions within the mining and mineral processing sector are axplored. It is one of the most pressing demands of society in their dialogue with the raw materials sector. The game will integrate the life cycle of a mining or quarrying activity, from mine area allocation, exploration drilling, acquisition of exploitation and environmental permits to full scale mine development, mineral & metal processing and waste management up to closure and land reclamation.