Of beetles, controllers and goblins

A male bark beetle looking for his female. An oak seedling fighting for its sunny spot. A maple seed that needs support on its flight of fancy. Three scenarios that most people have probably rarely had to deal with - until now. Because now you can play through all three situations yourself in the form of "mini-games" at the Natural History Museum. Embedded in the current special exhibition "FOREST", they offer several hundred players new insights into the forest ecosystem every day. These mini-games are the result of the "Ecoquest" workshop, which took place in September 2023 as a collaboration between the University of Kassel, the documenta Institute and the Natural History Museum Kassel. Project Leader was Yulia Gromova, research associate at the Department of Art and Economies and member of the documenta Institute. The aim of the week-long workshop was to develop a game that conveys knowledge about the forest and promotes awareness of environmental problems and possible solutions. One participant was Sven Mehlhorn, a trained graphic designer and student at the School of Art and Design in Kassel. He is responsible for the visual and graphic design of the mini-games: "The backgrounds of the games are AI-generated due to time constraints, I drew and animated the foregrounds myself."

The workshop was led by Dr. Tamara Bodden, among others. Until recently, she was a research assistant at the Institute of German Studies and her research focuses on games studies. She knows that games are a very popular medium, with around one in three people in Germany using them. So there is huge potential here. "Understanding the processes of a complex ecosystem is important in order to raise awareness of the topic," explains Bodden. This also applies to the topic of forests and how they can be protected. That's why, in addition to having fun, the mini-games also focus on imparting knowledge: players learn from short explanatory texts that are displayed before and after the games that the bark beetle is partly responsible for the condition of the forest; they learn the advantages and disadvantages of planting trees close together and gain insights into the reproductive strategies of trees. "By engaging with these topics in the form of a game, they may consider the forest to be more worthy of protection," says the games expert.

After a digital game was designed in the last workshop, an analog concept is now to follow: As part of a transdisciplinary project of the new sustainability laboratory at the University of School of Art and Design, the SDG+ Lab, the participants - students from various Faculties and the School of Art and Design, again under the direction of Yulia Gromova - are developing a game on the topic of deforestation and forestry. As the target group this time is adults and a low-threshold format accessible to all was desired, the decision was made to use a board game. The aim is to develop a so-called "serious game"; these are characterized by the fact that they make use of a real problem - in this case the deforestation of regional forests - and thus depict a certain reality of life. The game focuses on Kassel and the surrounding area and is intended to reflect local players, stories and challenges.

The participants have therefore already agreed that the final game board should be hand-drawn and designed in an aesthetic inspired by the Brothers Grimm in order to combine sustainability themes with magical elements. For example, the game board could depict the Reinhardswald forest and the character you play could be a goblin or a fairytale figure that moves around in it. "The game has an economic aspect, of course, but we want to challenge the idea of traditional resource management games like Monopoly," emphasizes the project manager. "It's not just about growth or profits, but about finding a balance between environmental awareness and an economic strategy." As part of her doctorate, Yulia Gromova is also looking at which sustainability narratives shape public discourse and is researching, among other things, how the relevance of forests as CO2 reservoirs can be communicated. "Games are an interesting tool for building your own world and exploring new paths and ideas in it," she says. You can introduce certain real parameters and then discuss controversial technologies, their implementation and their consequences with others within the game, for example. "Games also allow us to think and talk about the future of ecosystems and our relationship to them."

This article appeared in the university magazine publik 2024/1. Text: Lisa-Maxine Klein