Friday, April 8, 2016

My Sust House (Climate Change Game)

I was absent on class Monday evening, so I did not choose a video game to research. As I was looking through the list of available games, I noticed "My Sust House" was not chosen. I decided to play the interactive online game, and I'm glad I did! "My Sust House" is a Scottish game that allows players to create their own town, environment, and house to live in. The goal of this game is to create a house and living situation that is as economically friendly as possible. Overall, this game is very informative. Before creating your own house, you must watch a short yet detailed introduction video. For each section (environment, town, and building) a short synopsis is given on the environmental dangers and causes of many different scenarios. 
The environmental section of "My Sust House" describes the importance of location and housing projects on the environment. The player must select appropriate settings for their house based on different locations. For each decision, a cost and benefit analysis is given, as well as the environmental impacts. The building section of this game gives the user a budget and an environmental impact sustainability meter. The player must make decisions regarding which resources to use to create a house. Like the environmental section, a cost and benefit analysis of using each resource is given. In the town section of "My Sust House," the same concepts as the environmental and building sections apply, however the user must play more than just one game. To create a sustainable environment, the player has to make decisions in different aspects of the town such as retail, agriculture, and transportation. At the end of the three sections, the player is given an overall sustainability score. The user may read about how to improve their sustainable everyday methods. 
This game seems to be appropriate for a middle school audience for the concepts are not extremely complex, however the information is also not appropriate for elementary school students. A teacher could use this game as a resource in a classroom that is learning about climate change and global warming. 
If you'd like to delve into the fun, go to http://www.mysusthouse.org/game.html!

7 comments:

  1. This game sounds like a fun way to learn more about the importance of building a sustainable house. I like that it plays a short video to talk about how important it is to make your home environmentally friendly.

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  2. I am actually thinking about playing this game for fun. My competitive spirit is beginning to take over and I feel the need to go get the best sustainability score in the game.

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  3. I like how this game ranks you in the end and tells you how to make a more sustainable city. It also seems to give a lot of useful information that many people would not think about otherwise. Hopefully after playing this game they come away with a new outlook on how their society operates.

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  4. This game seems a lot like my game. I had to build an eco-friendly town, which included making sustainable homes! I'll have to check it out.

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  5. Sustainable living is such an important part of slowing and hopefully stopping climate change, yet so few people understand how to create a sustainable home/living space. This game sounds like it allows for this information to be explained and understood in a fun and exciting way!

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  6. Most games seem to be centered around building environmentally friendly and conscious homes/towns/worlds and I really dig that! If teachers can use these types of games to teach kids to be environmentally conscious then they're going to make smarter decisions in life regarding their energy consumption.

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  7. This game sounds really informative. I like how it goes into the details about each decision. I feel like this could really help spread information about how to live sustainably.

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