In this new blog series Drs. Michael Toomey, Andrew Judge, and Jenny Morrison (all University of Glasgow) explore how board games can be used as effective pedagogical tools to bring abstract concepts to life in the classroom. Each entry focuses on a specific game, outlining its mechanics, practical classroom applications, and any possible adaptions or limitations to its use within a standard seminar set up. In examining individual games, they aim to provide a support resource for educators seeking to experiment with games as part of their classroom activities, as well as engage critically with when and why we might use games within teaching. This month we continue with Andrew Judge’s Daybreak, a game about climate change and international cooperation.
How does it work?
Daybreak is a cooperative boardgame in which four ‘world powers’ – the United States, China, Europe and the ‘Majority World’ – work together to try and prevent catastrophic climate change. Developed by Matt Leacock (the creator of Pandemic) and Matteo Menopace, it is designed to be, “an unapologetically hopeful vision of the near future” in which players aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reach drawdown – the point when more carbon is removed from the atmosphere than is being produced. To win, this must happen before temperature increases exceed 2°C since 1900. Players work together to achieve this goal, dealing with global crises and events such as forest fires, global social unrest, or fossil fuel lobbying.
While working towards this common goal, each player also has their own local game board where they need to balance energy supply and demand, reduce emissions and ‘dirty energy’, and prevent local communities from falling into crisis. They do this by playing combinations of local project cards which deploy various technologies and policies such as industrial electrification or reforestation. Cards can also contribute to the completion of global projects, such as developing and utilising technologies at scale or signing treaties. A cool feature of the game is that the project cards include QR codes linking to pages with more details and further reading about the policy or technology.
Applications for teaching
The game offers a sophisticated and engaging model of both the physical and social aspects of climate change. Unlike Pandemic which placed viruses at the centre of the gameplay, Daybreak focuses on the human impacts both in the various project and crisis cards, and through the emphasis on impacts on communities. Global crises or a local mismatch between energy supply and demand can tip communities into crisis, which reduces the number of local project cards that players have in future rounds. This can be addressed by choosing to devote resources to local or global resilience-building projects. The combination of these various game mechanics creates numerous situations where players navigate different trade-offs and make decisions under uncertainty.
One of the downsides of this being a cooperative game is that some of the more competitive dynamics that are a perennial feature of real-world climate politics are downplayed. This is very much in line with the ‘unapologetically optimistic’ tone of the game and a welcome corrective to some of the climate doomerism that I encounter with some students. However, this does mean that some of the most important political dynamics involved in addressing climate change are not as present in the game. Power differentials are present to a degree, since each of the ‘world powers’ have different starting points and experience the impacts of particular crises differently. But what is missing are opportunities for more explicitly competitive behaviour. In principle a player could act in a completely self-interested way and sabotage the efforts of others, which could make for an interesting game. However, the game cards don’t offer many opportunities for students to pursue policies that may actively work against collective goals.
That said, identifying these kinds of limitations, biases and power dynamics are the bread and butter of political analysis. One potential use for this game is as a foil for critique, with students playing the game and then being asked to identify some of the assumptions that underpin how the game was designed.
Adaptation and setup
One of the challenges with using Daybreak for teaching purposes is that it is a complex game. It took us far longer than the advertised 60-90 minutes once you factor in setup time and the steep learning curve involved. To get the most out of the game, players need to get their head around several different mechanics. While this is precisely the thing that can make playing Daybreak such a rich experience for students, it is also quite challenging to get into on a first playthrough. At a minimum, we would recommend that students watch the how to play video before class.
One possibility would be to use the game at the end of a course on climate, energy or environmental politics as a means for students to apply what they have learned. It’s certainly a good way to enable discussions about why one combination of cards may be desirable rather than another. However, many of these same benefits could be achieved more easily through using or adapting one of the many climate and energy simulation games. Daybreak may offer a readymade environment for these kinds of discussions, and this could work as a fun end-of-semester activity for students. However, it is likely that a simulation that is more closely aligned to the aims of a course may be better.
There is perhaps more potential to use the game as a set of mechanics and resources that can be adapted for other teaching exercises. For instance, the project cards (and the links available through the QR codes) could be used to design an exercise in which students have to consider different policy options and the trade-offs involved in choosing one option over another. Students could then design their own project cards, either as an in-class exercise or as an assessment.
Conclusions
The complexity of Daybreak is both its strength and its weakness. It is a brilliantly crafted game, but it is difficult to see how it can be used effectively in a Politics/IR classroom without the mechanics becoming a distraction. That said, there is scope for adapting some of its mechanics and resources – which is only possible because of how good the game is at modelling the physical and social aspects of climate change.