Playing with mangroves to imagine other futures

Rooted Together, The Mangal Play and The Machine Mangrove Gaming Installation demonstrate how serious games can help to engage us in sustainable futures

How do you motivate someone to do something or change their behaviour? There are three stories that, like the roots of a mangrove, run through Kenya, Colombia, Miami and the overworld of Minecraft, giving a possible answer: via playing. The building of trust and empathy, active listening and experience-related gratification are, in fact, the elements that are activated within the dynamics of the game and represent one of the most interesting possibilities of activism for sustainable development.

“Rooted Together” and the Mangrove Mothers 

In Kenya, some courageous women are working on restoring one of Africa’s most important mangrove forests, aware of the centrality of these trees for the survival of their communities. They call them “Mangrove Mothers” and live on Pate Island, on Kenya’s northern coast, which lost about 20% of its mangroves from 1995 to 2014.

The cost of the loss of an ecosystem such as Pate Island outweighs the benefits of exploiting its resources: the mangroves provide medicine, firewood, fodder for cattle, raw material for local housing and a natural nursery for sought-after species such as the crab and mangrove snapper¹.

This is well known by the women of Pate Island who have joined together in the Mtangawanda Women’s Association and, led by Zulfa Hassan², are working to restore the ecosystem through a project of education, micro-financing and environmental monitoring³.

To help them, in 2022, another mission developed in the digital world of the popular video game Minecraft⁴.

The “Rooted Together” project was entirely built around restoring an endangered mangrove forest: the game’s protagonist is the character of a researcher in charge of the Mangrove Restoration Project⁵, who needs help restoring the endangered forest. At the protagonist’s disposal, there is a special new technology: a seed cannon.

Born as a collaboration between the game’s production company Mojang Studios and the US non-profit organisation The Nature Conservancy⁶, in six months the project raised and donated $227,000 for mangrove restoration, thanks to contributions from the gamer community.

«Minecraft was originally based on very basic principles of earth geology, with elements such as trees, stones, water, lava and diamonds. In recent years, Mojang has continued to draw inspiration from the real world by adding coral reefs, bamboo forests, pandas and bees to the game» explains gamer, YouTuber and writer Stacy Hinojosa, a.k.a. Stacyplays, who engaged her community of over 2 million followers in a game session within the campaign.

«The mangrove swamp biome is one of the latest additions: these natural parts of our world deserve to be valued for their beauty and uniqueness, and they also deserve our protection», Hinojosa emphasises. «I think it’s great that a child’s first introduction to the knowledge of these trees, plants and animals can come from a video game.

The livestream I made with my online community helped raise funds to restore more than 60,000 mangroves.

I am very proud to have participated in Mojang’s campaign to raise awareness about coastal ecosystems and the role mangrove swamps play in the carbon cycle of the planet».

The capacity for active community involvement, the sensitivity shown by gamers around the environmental issue, and thus the real impact of the project, are a concrete example of new activism and digital engagement.

The price of engagement through fear

The urgency of engaging people on ecological issues and environmental change follows many different paths. The best known and most popular is the appeal to fear, «persuasive messages that attempt to arouse fear by emphasising the potential danger and harm that will befall people if they do not adopt the recommendations of the messages⁷».

A fitting, and somewhat extreme, example is WWF Italy’s October 2023 campaign, #WeAreThePanda, which ironically congratulates the human race on its path to extinction. The message that sparked a debate within the Italian advertising community is «Extinction. We are doing it right⁸».

The effects of these communication techniques were well analysed within the study Appealing to Fear: A Meta-Analysis of Fear Appeal Effectiveness and Theories⁹, published in 2018 in the scientific journal Psychological Bulletin.

The authors analysed different message transmission models related to the perception of danger, focusing on three variables: content, recommended behaviour and audience characteristics. The research results confirmed that «fear appeals have a significant and positive effect on outcomes. That is, compared to participants in the comparison groups, participants in the treatment groups had attitudes, intentions and behaviour that were more in line with the advocated position». 

But at what price? There are severe and certified negative effects linked to the transmission of fear, which manifest themselves, particularly in terms of mental health. Another important scientific study entitled Climate Change Perception and Mental Health. Results from a Systematic Review of the Literature, carried out by a team of Italian researchers and published in 2024 for the European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education, is highlighted, after an analysis of more than 3,000 studies on the subject, that «an increased perception of climate change was significantly associated with a higher risk of the most widespread mental disorders, such as major depression, depressive symptoms, anxiety, or stress¹⁰».

In this setting, the exploration of gaming and serious games as instruments for fostering engagement, consciousness, and involvement holds significant promise for revitalizing activism concerning environmental and socio-ecological concerns.

Mangroves and the Mangal Play model

The project “Mangal Play: A Serious Game to Experience Multi-Stakeholder Decision-making in Complex Mangrove Social-ecological Systems” is undoubtedly one of the most interesting projects that uses the gamification technique to create new social and ecological sensitivities.

The game is designed to help the stakeholders of a particular socio-ecological system understand and recognise the interests, values, worldviews and goals of other stakeholders and thus overcome problems that arise when faced with divergent positions. It is a game that triggers an experiential learning method, intending to have participants adopt the role of a particular stakeholder in an imaginary mangrove forest. 

When you play Mangal Play one can be the government or the aquaculture worker, the coal company, the woodcutter or the tourist. But also the NGO, the scientist or a media representative. Each of these roles has a task, rules and objectives that, in the preliminary phase of the game, each participant must get to know by developing their behavioural profile. During the game, everyone will then act as a parliament, voting for or against a proposed bill for adoption, and interacting with each other to understand positions and motivations.

The Mangal Play, which involved more than 450 people in its experimental phase, has already proven to be able to convey three important notions to all participants: the exercise of oral rebuttal and debate, respect and appreciation for the conditions of other stakeholders and players, and an understanding of the complexity of decision-making.

A project like this can demonstrate how serious play enables the development of skills such as empathy and active listening, which are crucial in any cooperation process aimed at achieving a common goal or convincing someone of the importance of a behaviour or action.

The Machine Mangrove by Leo Castañeda

The investigation along the border between activism and play, between real consciousness and virtual experience is also at the centre of the works of Colombian-born artist Leo Castañeda. His productions take the form of episodic games and immersive installations that fuse Latin American surrealist painting, virtual reality, augmented reality, wearable objects, video and sculptural furniture.

Castañeda has focused his artistic research on the contamination between the language of art and the dynamics of gaming and video games, certain of the connection between these languages as the key to engaging people on the most important issues of common interest, such as the impact humanity has on ecosystems. «The game and game world don’t take away the capacity of domination and destruction but rather make it less efficient, more arduous and more awkward», explains Castañeda. «Thus, the audience and players that experience this world are encouraged to be interdependent and collaborative within an environment where all beings, technology and landscapes share sentience¹¹ and interconnection». 

During Miami Art Week 2023, Castañeda presented Machine Mangrove Gaming Installation, the latest episode of the video game and transmedia work Levels&Bosses. In Castañeda’s project, the audience ventures into a post-human biome where all landscapes, technology and beings are interconnected, as in a socio-ecological system. Participants can interact using a wide range of actions, including harmonisation, touch, camouflage, deep listening and illumination.

«The project started from observing South Florida’s biomes made sentient and mingling with influences of Latin American surrealism», explains Castañeda. «This is how the design of the world emerges simultaneously through aesthetics, conceptual storytelling and playful interaction. Exploring how the language and structures of video games intersect with the world at large, this work reimagines models of conflict and energy consumption through computer-animated biomes influenced by Latin American Abstraction, South Florida landscapes, and Anime mythologies. Adaptation to the landscape, camouflage, and the design of a neo-primordial world with a species that is both alien and familiar are foundational. As is a setting to give stakes to the next few levels, to make the player feel part of a sustainable community that is facing incoming massive change».

Castañeda’s work thus highlights how his artistic language enters the world of video games through multiple keys, with the declared aim of creating a new mythology that puts sustainability at the centre. «In my work, the viewer is a navigator whose movement and perspective play a role in shaping the work itself. Video games can share the aesthetics and concepts of any art historical legacy. Finally, creating a series of art as a form of world building and when combined with video games every painting can become a reference, map, or texture to a virtual world. Much of my work is using this structure of “concept art” and fused with conceptual art».

From the mix of play, painting, video art, textiles, furniture, and digital comes a participatory artwork that reimagines patterns of interaction and consumption. «Fusing gaming software with traditional fine art methods, I’m combining experimental game mechanics and texturing techniques for virtual assets that re-interpret South Florida and Latin American biodiversity through a continuous integration of analogue and digital arts», says the artist. «Many stories and mythologies have a significant influence on the design and systems of our world: one of the intentions of Levels&Bosses and the Machine Mangrove installation is precisely to create a mythology and system of interaction that promotes sustainability through worlds of self-similarity and sentient interconnectedness, which then continues in the live installations».

Here again, the game transcends the limits of physical experience, using imagination and cultural symbolism to enable people and communities to come into contact with different worlds and, above all, with other futures by committing to them.

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1. A type of bony fish from the species Lutjanus griseus. Cfr. Lindeman, K., Anderson, W., Carpenter, K.E., Claro, R., Cowan, J., Padovani-Ferreira, B., Rocha, L.A., Sedberry, G. & Zapp-Sluis, M. (2016). Lutjanus griseus. In The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species ↩︎
2. Sass, I. (2022, September 28). MAMA MIKOKO: How Kenya’s mangrove mothers restoration efforts benefit nature and people. In The Mangrove Alliance. ↩︎
3. Kamadi, G. (2021, May 24). Green growth: the save-the-mangrove scheme reaping rewards for women in Kenya. In The Guardian. ↩︎
4. Rooted together. (2021, October 19). In Minecraft.net. ↩︎
5. Dankis, S. (2022, June 21). The mangrove restoration project. In Minecraft.net. ↩︎
6. Minecraft. (2022, November 11). Minecraft mangroves: making an impact [Video]. YouTube. ↩︎
7. Tannenbaum, M. B., Hepler, J., Zimmerman, R. S., Saul, L., Jacobs, S., Wilson, K., & Albarracín, D. (2015). Appealing to fear: A meta-analysis of fear appeal effectiveness and theories. In Psychological Bulletin, 141(6), 1178–1204. ↩︎
8. Redazione. (2023, October 22). WWF mostra i progressi dell’uomo verso la sua estinzione con la campagna #IlPandaSiamoNoi di Accenture Song. In Brand News. ↩︎
9. Tannenbaum, M. B., Hepler, J., Zimmerman, R. S., Saul, L., Jacobs, S., Wilson, K., & Albarracín, D. (2015). Appealing to fear: A meta-analysis of fear appeal effectiveness and theories. In Psychological Bulletin, 141(6), 1178–1204. ↩︎
10. Gianfredi, V., Mazziotta, F., Clerici, G., Astorri, E., Oliani, F., Cappellina, M., Catalini, A., Dell’Osso, B., Pregliasco, F., Castaldi, S., & Benatti, B. (2024). Climate Change Perception and Mental Health. Results from a Systematic Review of the Literature. In European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education, 14(1), 215–229. ↩︎
11. «Capable of sensing or feeling: conscious of or responsive to the sensations of seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, or smelling» (“Sentient” in Merriam Webster). ↩︎