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CNN
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For many people, gaming is an escape into a world of fun and fantasy.

It might come as a surprise, then, that the latest edition of a popular board game tackles a current, not-so-funny issue head-on: the climate crisis.

Catan, a game about collecting and using resources like bricks and lumber to build and expand settlements in a fictional world, turns 30 next year. Although the company has since released multiple versions and expansions—and sold more than 45 million copies worldwide—its latest release, Catan: New Energies, is one of the biggest departures for the game to date.

Instead of being set in pre-industrial times, New Energies is set in the 21st century, with real-world elements like power plants and pollution playing a major role.

In many ways, it makes sense that a game about the rapid expansion of humanity would explore the effects of the climate crisis. After all, industrialization caused it.

You might not expect a game about the climate crisis to be funny — or to be backed by a deep exploration of the intricacies of the subject. But the developers of New Energies worked hard to balance joyful play with environmental science. And they are not the first.

In fact, climate change—or elements often related to it—are appearing in more games as the topic becomes more prevalent in news reports and cultural conversations.

The popular empire-building video game Civilization 6 released an expansion titled Gathering Storm in 2019 that was almost entirely centered around the climate.

In Gathering Storm, player actions, such as burning coal, have serious consequences—rising sea levels and more frequent natural disasters like tornadoes—that affect gameplay.

“Terra Nil,” a popular world-building strategy game released in 2023, sees players transform a barren wasteland into an inviting paradise through the use of technology such as wind turbines and “toxin scrubbers.” That was the same year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report saying we have a very small window in which to “ensure a livable and sustainable future for all.”

“Climate change is an ever-growing issue … it makes sense that the world’s most popular media outlets also cover these growing challenges,” Rachel Cowart, a research psychologist specializing in games, told CNN.

That’s, says Cowart, because “games reflect culture.”

Adding elements of the climate crisis to games can also make the topic more accessible, Covert says.

“It adds that element of playfulness and fun. That makes it a social activity,” she says. “Not many people will sit down and read papers on climate change, but people love Catan.”

In New Energies, the basic gameplay of gathering resources to build settlements is the same as in the traditional version of Catan. But in this version, there are additional maps, parts and mechanics that introduce elements of the climate crisis.

Instead of just building roads, towns and cities, players must build fossil fuel plants or renewable power plants to harvest energy. But their choices have consequences.

If a player builds a fossil fuel power plant, for example, the level of greenhouse gases in the game increases – indicated on the board itself by a small marker. When this happens, the potential for climate-related events in the game, such as flooding or air pollution, also increases.

These weather events can block resource production for players and therefore their ability to expand their settlements and win the game. It can also trigger an early endgame, in which case the player with the most renewable power plants wins.

Players can add green discs to the bag – which can give bonuses to players using renewable energy – by building renewable power plants. This also reduces the global carbon footprint of the tracker, so fewer discs need to be taken out of the bag each turn.

Adding climatic elements to Catan certainly makes it more challenging to play. But it also reflects the reality of our world. Even experts struggle to reach a consensus on the best solutions to mitigate climate change.

While Catan: New Energies was released on June 14th of this year, the game has actually been in development since 2011.

It started with a scenario called Oil Springs, based on oil resource management, which was presented to the Catan team by Eric Asadourian, a researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, a sustainability think tank. In the Oil Springs scenario, players could use oil to expand faster – with the added potential to flood the world of Catan.

“At its heart, Catan is a story of growth,” Asadourian says. “Without recognition of the limits to growth, that’s a problem.”

The Oil Springs scenario, combined with WWF’s Climate Solutions 2050 report, inspired the idea for Catan, which deals with electricity as a resource, says Benjamin Teuber, game designer and managing director at Catan GmbH, who founded New Energies with the late his father, Catan creator Klaus Teuber, who died in April 2023.

When new energy development began in 2011, there were three renewable energy sources: wind, water, and solar. That, among other things, made it “very complicated,” Teuber says.

Development of the game was delayed until the Covid-19 pandemic hit, when Benjamin Teuber and his father had more free time to revisit the idea. Immediately, solutions to the game’s initial problems began to emerge, Teuber says.

To ensure that the game’s climate science was still within the bounds of reality, Assadourian stepped in as a consultant for New Energies towards the end of its development in 2022. He also wrote a climate almanac at the end of the rulebook, for to build a thematic background of the game.

“You can only do so much when you’re limited by the simplicity of the game mechanics,” Asadourian told CNN. In real life, “No renewable energy power plant will have minus one point of pollution.”

Instead, Assadourian hopes the game will show people how we can transition from the current energy and economic system we’re in to a sustainable and regenerative one. The first step towards this is reducing energy consumption.

Even the physical materials for new energies were chosen with the climate in mind.

“When you’re creating a physical consumer product, it’s impossible not to have an impact, but we focused on how we could reduce the impact on the environment,” says Kelly Schmitz, director of brand development at Catan Studio. “The New Energies English stamp is printed and assembled in the United States using sustainably sourced paperboard and wood.”

Before the design of New Energies was completed in December 2022, external playtesters were asked to provide feedback on the game. After all, it won’t work if the game is too complicated or not fun to play.

“People liked it because nobody felt like we were forcing our opinion on them,” Teuber says. “They said, ‘Oh, I can actually grow pretty well with fossil (fuels).’ do I like this I don’t know.’

“We wanted to really make it feel like a simulation, if you will, of reality. And for this reason, it is important to be able to profit with fossil fuel energy. I think it would be bad if we just balance it in a way that’s impossible, because then you’re giving the wrong message – you’re not giving the message of reality. The more real it feels, the more serious people will talk about it.”

Many of the testers had to question their own morality and make decisions based on it, Teuber says.

“They said, ‘It’s fascinating because I really wasn’t sure what to do. I had this moral thing, but I wanted to win the game.

In real life, almost everyone has an opinion on what we could do as a society to reduce the effects of the climate crisis. But few of us are able to make changes on a global scale.

Having the power to improve the health of the planet, even in a board game, can be empowering.

“The fun thing about games is that there’s enough detachment that you can engage with this big, scary concept in this big, diverse space,” says Cowart, the research psychologist. “And then maybe at the end of it you come away with a better understanding of what you can actually do, what power you have.”

If players come out of New Energies having philosophical discussions about our climate and trying to make small changes in their lives, the game will have done its job, Teuber says.

“The game itself won’t change the world, but maybe it will allow you to think a little bit, ‘Oh, maybe I have more power to change things.’