Beyond awareness: Climate games as invitations to care for the future

Care is a valuable lens for engaging with climate futures. Care for the environment is needed as a motivator to prevent further climate change, as is care for other humans and non-human species who face climate change effects. Games are a promising medium for practicing climate care, but little is known about how these games invite players to care for the future. We analyze a database of 287 published games that relate to man-made climate change. Through a comparative analysis, we develop a typology of these climate games, and for each type we discuss how these games invite players to practice future care. Five types of climate games emerge: casual, knowledge, systems management, experience, and backdrop. Each type offers its own combination of care practice affordances and representation of futures. ‘Systems management’ games engage with care with a broad range of affordances and long time horizon, but in a very abstract mode. ‘Experience’ games have shorter time horizons and focus more on emotions. ‘Knowledge’ games offer control over player outcomes, but little care practice or futures imagination. ‘Casual’ games offer a practical but thin invitation to care; and ‘backdrop’ games only use climate futures as a background, offering no direct possibilities to care for the climate. Our analysis reveals both existing and unused design spaces when it comes to making caring for the future accessible in games and in futures-focused media more generally. • Climate games invite players to practice caring for, about, with, and of the future, expanding future imaginaries and -literacies. • We develop a large database of 288 climate games. • Five types of climate games emerge: Casual, Systems Management, Knowledge, Backdrop, and Experience. • Each type of climate game has distinct affordances in care practice, and in futures represented. • Design space exists in the combination of practice in concrete care-giving, and rich futures representation.