It was nearly ten years ago that Stuart West, a Professor of Evolutionary Biology in the Department of Zoology, Oxford, used playing board games as a teaching tool to understand evolution and published his results in the prestigious scientific journal, Nature.1 Now, Matt Leacock‘s new game, Daybreak has been reviewed in the journal Science.2
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| – Image from amazon.com |
Matt Leacock is best known for the cooperative game, Pandemic. However, while thirty of his forty-seven published games are cooperative (including the well popular Forbidden Games series), he has also been instrumental in the innovation of legacy games, co-designing both the Pandemic Legacy series of games and the recent Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West.
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| – Image from amazon.com |
Daybreak is cooperative game about climate action where players controls a world power, Europe, the United States, China, and the Majority World, each of which has different energy demand and sources, emissions, resilience, and vulnerable populations. The idea is that players deploy policies and technologies to deal with the engine of global heating and to try to build resilient societies that protect people from life-threatening crises.
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| – Image from amazon.com |
The author of the article is Science‘s books and culture editor, Valerie Thompson who concludes that the trade-offs in the game reflect those seen in real life. Most importantly, however, where climate change is concerned, we only stand a chance if we work together.
1 West, S., Nat. (2015), 528, 192; doi:10.1038/528192a.
2 Thompson, V., Science. (2023), 382(6673), 890; doi:10.1126/science.adl4244.
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