How to Save the World | The Psychology & Science of Environmental Behavior If You Want to Save the Earth, Think Like a Game Designer, Jesse Schell PhD Ep20
If you want to save the Earth, you need to think like a game designer.
In this episode, I sat down with Jesse Schell, author of the canonical game design textbook, The Art of Game Design, and asked him how he would go about saving the planet as a game designer. Jesse is a Distinguished Professor of Experience Design at Carnegie Mellon University and the CEO of Schell Games.
Think about these qualities : peak motivation, obsessive focus, a drive to win, life-long mastery of a complex skill, desire for epic planetary-wide quests — it all sounds like a pretty good skill set to save our real planet, right?
Manifesting these emotions listed above is the craft that game designers specialize in. People who specialize in game design are a treasure-trove of design-thinking insight about how to get people into a state of obsessive flow, hack into human happiness, and pique the reward system of the brain.
I love Jesse’s book The Art of Game Design because when I read it a few years ago, I asked myself “how would l apply all this game design thinking to climate change, plastic waste, or eating less meat”? Reading a game design textbook through the eyes of an environmentalist opened my imagination when thinking of ideas for environmental change, in a way that nothing else really has.
Jesse joined us for our monthly Fitbit for the Planet video hangout for this episode.
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