Undersökning av inkrementella spel inom ramen av hållbarhet

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study is to examine the unsustainable aspects we have identified within the genre of “incremental games”. These games commonly rely on the concept of infinite exponential growth which is inherently unsustainable. We were therefore interested in evaluating the following question: how would one design an incremental game to illuminate this unsustainability and how would that in turn affect the gameplay? In order to design the game we firstly decided to base it on the fishing industry since it gave us a direct connection to man’s effect on the environment. We thereafter connected the player’s fishing activity to a real-world based limit to growth which meant that the more the player expanded his or her fishing fleet, the more the population of fish began to shrink and ultimately collapse. This gave the game a definite ending, which is something we found lacking in other games in the genre since in those games the resources can continue to grow indefinitely. After the design portion of our study we evaluated the game on a number of participants. Our results seem to indicate that the game has good potential since the majority of participants gave positive feedback regarding the game and gameplay. The sustainability aspect of the game was identified as particularly interesting and worth continued exploration. However, some of the participants did not understand the purpose of the game and there are certain areas of improvement that would make the game even more clear in its efforts to illuminate the genre’s inherent unsustainability.