What?
My project’s what remains the only part of it that seems final, unchanging. The concrete articulation of it changes in nuances every time I try to put it down in words.
But, I know that my overall “mission” is to support ecosystem restoration (see, for example, UN Decade).
Specifically, I want to foster a link between those individuals feeling lost or hopeless about our future on a truly angered planet and ecosystem restoration as a global purpose/movement that can bring them meaning and optimism.
When I say “ecosystem restoration”…
I don’t mean liking nature – building pro-environmental values has been researched and practiced for ages.
I don’t mean protecting nature – that too has been a popular focus for decades now, absolutely essential and well popularized for by great creators.
I mean restoring that nature which has been lost, often making already vulnerable communities even more vulnerable, as close to its original likeness as possible.
Because ecosystem restoration is a new thing, we don’t know how best to empower, inspire, engage people in it. Ecosystem restoration (perhaps with the exception of tree-planting, but that isn’t always really “restoration”) is not an established concept in our minds that we would consider as potential pathways or purposes. This needs to change. Unlike climate-oriented measures, restoring ecosystems is inherently a local challenge; its execution requires more than casting the right vote or boycotting the right (wrong) company.
So, I want to contribute to coining ecosystem restoration as a concept that people would be excited to contribute to.
How?
Taking the course on gamifying narratives reinforced my leaning towards games as the preferred medium.
This might still change with further elective courses taken and more thinking on the matter, as well as researching into what formats are suitable for my mission above. But I suspect games will be suitable enough and probably most exciting for me to do.
To be honest though, anything more specific than “game” is too fleeting at this stage:
- yesterday I was passionately dotting ideas for doing a spin on collectible card games with strategy elements and narrative structures, as the excitement of drafting and exploring various cards could work well in “personifying” nature and underlining relationships between species
- before that (and still) I was very much into doing a euro-style strategy board game that would emphasize the main challenges tied to restoring different ecosystem types and what kind of people and stakeholders are required to make it happen
- during the gamifying course, I briefly thought that a tabletop RPG could be also a fun and potentially effective way to emphasize that everyone has a role to play in ecosystem restoration and that working together, we can use it to resist the climate crisis
- a persistent idea is also to do an interactive children’s book, which could inspire them to pursue ecosystem restoration as a path and build their relationship with it
Note: No matter what I do, I also want to create a “side-product” non-fiction artefact which will summarise my methodology and research, to serve as a guide-book or a evidence-based tool-kit for other storytellers.
Working titles
- Developing narrative-based gamification practices to popularize ecosystem restoration and empower individuals
- Constructing narrative-based games to empower people for ecosystem restoration
- …
