Today is World Oceans Day, a day to reflect on the importance of the oceans and marine life. Sadly, it is also a day to reflect upon the damage we are doing them. We are all aware of the dumping of plastics into the ocean and the spread of micro-plastics, however, most of us are probably not aware of the hidden impacts of climate change on the oceans – ocean acidification.
Ocean acidification is caused when CO2 in the atmosphere is absorbed by oceans. The CO2 reacts with sea water creating carbonic acid. The large quantities of CO2 human activity is dumping into the atmosphere is increasing the amount absorbed by the oceans, causing the ocean waters to become more acidic over time. This all has impacts on ocean environments, like reefs, and can cause marine mammals difficulties in finding food and shelter.
Despite the potentially devastating impacts of ocean acidification, a study found that almost 75 % of the British public had never even heard of it.
Dr Christina Roggatz is a researcher at the Energy and Environment Institute and her work has been highlighting the impacts ocean acidification has on marine life, such as crabs. She has been taking her research into schools and providing students the opportunity to conduct their own experiments to better understand the issue. We worked together, supported by our friends at BetaJester, to produce our new game, Crabby’s Reef.
Crabby’s Reef is our first classic arcade-style game. You play as Crabby, a crab, and you need to collect food to keep your health up. You also have to avoid the octopuses that would make you dinner. The game play should be familiar but there is a twist – with each new level the acidification of the water increases a little, dampening your senses, making it harder to find food and avoid predators.
The game is not meant to teach you everything about ocean acidification, although there is more information on our game page, but we hope it will introduce the issue more widely and start some conversations. We also hope you have fun.
Crabby’s Reef is available to play on PC now on our site – visit the game page here.
This World Oceans Day we encourage you to support The Deep. The Deep is an international player in marine conservation, working on pioneering research schemes to protect the future of our oceans. Conservation is at the heart of everything they do. Without visitors during the Covid-19 lockdown, The Deep have lost valuable income required to continue this work. We urge you to please support them in any way you feel appropriate – visit their site – buy from their gift shop – donate directly.
We have big plans for Crabby’s Reef. We have secured funding from the European Geoscience Union to construct an arcade booth to house the game so once public events begin once more, we will be able to take Crabby on tour. The aim was always to make a virtual reality game for Crabby, a game that would show you the impact on Crabby’s world first-hand – this is the next step for the project and something we are currently seeking funding for.
Hope you enjoy the game, please don’t beat my high score!
We hope you are all keeping yourselves as safe as possible during the current period. We are very much missing being out and about and sharing our games and activities with everyone. To help share some of our work, Chris will be making short video tutorials and the first revisits the very beginnings of the SeriousGeoGames Lab and how we model the impacts sea level rise will have on flood risk.
The model used by Chris in the video is the Beta version of Humber in a Box (our first virtual reality activity) as used at Hull SciFest in 2014. The model code and data from this model were used by the developers to build into Unity-3D and add the beautiful, immersive, graphics. Sadly, Humber in a Box can no longer be used but you can get an idea of what it was like in the video below.
To go alongside the new tutorial, we are making the files for Humber in a Box Beta available so you can try it at home. It should run reasonably well on any modern PC. For a guide on how to get it running, skip to 10 minutes through the tutorial. Files can be downloaded from here.
Don’t forget to check out our previous post on how to use Flash Flood! from home too.
Freedom Festival is THE event in Hull. It all began in 2007 in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, an act passed after decades of work by Hull-born independent MP, William Wilberforce. Since 2007 it has grown massively, and in 2018 the festival had over 130,000 visitors.
“Excellent arts and culture can change lives and communities, by transmitting fundamental human values and inspiring all ages to embrace and celebrate freedom. We’ve seen it. It may be no surprise then that our ambition is founded on the legacy of Hull-born freedom advocate, William Wilberforce” – Freedom Festival website.
Chris demoing Humber in a Box at Freedom Festival 2015
SeriousGeoGames has been involved in three previous Freedom Festivals, starting in 2015 when we demoed Humber in a Box, and including 2016 when the virtual reality version of Flash Flood! was demoed to the public for the first time. With the Earth Arcade, we have the perfect opportunity to take things to the next level, and the Earth Arcade at Freedom Festival really will be something special.
The name Earth Arcade is meant to loosely evoke a sense of Arcadia – a mythical utopia where human society and the natural world live together in harmony. This is the future we hope for, the future we are striving to build, and we hope to inspire others to come with us on that journey. To create our mini-Arcadia we have teamed up with colleagues from the University’s School of the Arts to design the exhibit.
We will be exploring the impacts of the world’s most pressing environmental issues through our activities Flash Flood! Vol.2, Plastic Fishing, Top Trumps: Rivers, and small games on our Ipad stations. You will be able to find out how climate change and sea level rise will impact our city, Hull, and the wider Humber through our new and improved Rising Tide game on our big screen.
Freedom Festival will also see the debut of an exciting new activity space. The Forest is something a bit different to the rest of the Earth Arcade, and sci-comm in general. It is a quieter, reflective, and mindful space where people can sit and think about nature, with a small library of stories and ideas and crafts and workshops to inspire people to engage with nature more. We will be using theatrical and scenographic techniques to help people engage, such as interactive soundscapes.
Finally, we will be offering advice on how people can respond to the environmental issues explored, offering them the chance to sign up to becoming an Earth Arcade Champion by committing to making small changes in their own lives.
It is going to be brilliant and we hope to see you there!
The Prague Quadrennial of Scenography and Design is a conference for theatre makers, unsurprisingly held in Prague every four years. Over 11 days, 15,000 people will attend the conference, making it a huge event. My wife, Amy, is a Lecturer in Theatre and Performance and was chairing a panel at the conference, so I decided to tag along – I did so four years ago and found it inspiring, check out my previous blog from then.
We have been conscious about our carbon budget so decided we would take the train instead of flying. Unfortunately, unless you pay out for an expensive sleeper train, the journey from Hull to Prague is a little too long to do in one day so we split our journey via Brussels. Our planned route was: Hull – London – Brussels – Frankfurt – Nurnberg – Cheb – Prague.
Our route plan for Hull to Prague
Day 1 went ok, but our first train on Day 2 inexplicably terminated at Koln. A guard suggested another route and marked our tickets as no longer having restrictions. Our new route involved a near seven hour train from Koln to Dresden, before a train on to Prague. We settled into our new train and enjoyed seeing a cross-section of Germany, including places like Dortmund and Hannover. All was fine until 40 minutes from Dresden when the train suddenly stopped outside Leipzig. We stayed, electric off, in silence for nearly an hour, missing our connection in Dresden, before limping back to Leipzig and being herded onto an overcrowded train to Dresden.
The view from the train, outside Leipzig
We arrived at Dresden to see the last train to Prague pull out of the station. The nice woman at Passenger Information pointed us towards the coaches and we ended up on a Flix Bus – the bus service for backpackers, we were the oldest ones on there. We arrived in Prague just after midnight. Thankfully, our return journey along the planned route but in reverse went without a hitch, with all six trains on perfect time – a surprise considering the atrocious weather across the UK at that time.
It was stressful and long, but watching the beautiful European countryside whizz by the window was nice, especially across the Czech Republic. The journey took a lot longer than flying and did cost more, so I appreciate that it is a privilege that we were able to travel this way. However, it does allow us to reduce the impact on the environment and society from our travel quite significantly – according to ecopassenger.org we reduced the CO2 we produced by nearly 348 kg, producing less than 24 % than if we flew.
Calculated travel costs for London to Prague according to ecopassenger.org
The environmental concern did not end once in Prague – the city has excellent public transport and we travelled everywhere by trams and buying tickets via an App was super easy and convenient. Keep-cups and reusable water bottles are popular, and local shops have plastic bottle deposit schemes. We saw school students participating in the climate strikes, and public areas had information boards highlighting water issues in the country and worldwide.
Climate protests in Prague
Information boards in central Prague showcasing water’s importance to society
At the Prague Quadrennial, or PQ, countries (and regions, like Quebec) are invited to exhibit the best in their scenography and design over the past four years in about a 6m x 6m space. How they choose to do this is up to each country and there is a lot of variance and creativity on display. I was pleased to see several of the exhibits making use of VR but was a little disappointed that most did little more than show flat, low resolution, 360 videos on them – Ireland’s was notable as using high resolution, stereoscopic video, interlaced with graphics (including a creepy eyeball) to show the work of some of their best designers.
Several of the exhibits featured virtual reality, including some with modified headsets
Several of the exhibits chose environmental themes. I was taken by China’s exhibit as it revolved around a long distance train journey Chinese designers travelled to get to past PQ’s – in contrast to today, it was more expensive to fly so had to go by train.
China’s exhibit used lighting, projection, and mobile phones to showcase design inspired by a long distance train journey from China to Prague
Quebec explored whether reducing our use of resources was at odds with creative freedom, and asked whether the performing arts holds the key to renewed environmentalism. They showcased the best in eco-scenography and invited visitors to complete a questionnaire whilst powering a pedal-powered propeller.
Quebec’s exhibited highlighted their designs and use of eco-scenography
Switzerland used a ski-lift carriage and a canvas held on hydraulic rods to visualise snow depth data in three dimensions, responding dynamically as the data changed resolution on the screen – you had a different perspective whether you were on the ground or one the lift.
Switzerland’s ski-lift could visualise environmental data dynamically and in three dimensions
France was one of the winning exhibits and several I spoke to said that it had moved them to tears. On the outside, harsh lights displayed the warning “No Nature, No Future” and on the other side a smoke-filled room with haunting piano music was inhabited by shaking and shivering figures made of the waste of man-made materials. It was bleak and dystopian.
The conference itself engaged with environmentalism, with espresso-sized Keep Cups for sale, and an awesome scheme where if you bought a plastic bottle then Soda Stream, one of the sponsors, would refill it for free with fizzy, flavoured water – this was 200 czk (about £7) well spent, and I really want to buy a Soda Stream now!
The way the exhibits are put together is really inspiring and I have come away with lots of ideas which I will try and use in the Earth Arcade. Portugal’s exhibit, Windows, featured mirrored metal boxes with small holes to peer through – inside were lit up models of stage designs. I would love to use this to hide away scenes of possible futures based on climate scenarios – dare you look inside?
Portugal invited you to spy on miniature design scenes through small windows
Cyprus featured a board room table with a bubbling pool of water in the middle – what about hosting a dinner around this where the water rises and falls, occasionally floods, and dinner guests can choose to purchase food, wooden blocks to hold back water, or extra place mats to raise their dinner?
A board room with a risk of flooding, from Cyprus
In Hungary’s student exhibit you had to walk through hanging plastic sticks and as they cascaded against each other it sounded like rain – through the clear floor beneath your feet were examples of design, details you cannot see outside of the ‘storm’. This was so simple, yet so effective.
I was sad to leave Prague and PQ. It’s a shame it comes around only every four years and I’ll have to wait until 2023 to go again – maybe this artists’ conference wants a resident scientist?
I’ve been working on a prototype card game for SeriousGeoGames for a while now. The game, with the working title Resilience, sees players take control of a city and its surrounding area with the aim of staying in that job until the end of the game. The catch is there is another player with their own city also trying to reach that goal. With the ability to make events happen in each other’s cities, you each pose a threat to the other’s political survival.
Although I toyed with the idea of having multiple stresses to deal with, the game just got too unwieldy, so the focused down on flooding as the main hazard. Players can build defences, enact resilience measures, or implement things purely as they are popular – if they want to be aggressive, they can send a storm towards a rival city. Through playing the game, players will learn about the complexity of flood defence from physical, societal, and political perspectives.
360 time lapse of players trying an early version of Resilience at the EGU 18 Games Night.
The game is designed to be a deck builder, so rather than each having the same deck of cards players can choose a pile from their collection allowing them to try different strategies. I’m designing the game to have enough layers – through use of cards, dice, and tokens – that there will be numerous styles of play possible. The main goal of the design is for the game to be fun, with plenty of replay value, yet the deck building aspect adds in a further dimension – collectability.
I still have piles of Pokemon and Star Wars cards from when I was a kid, even though I never played either as a game. When I get free packs of cards in gaming magazines for games I will never play, I keep them. Especially the ‘shinies’. There is something tactile and attractive about a well-designed, crisp, high quality card, and this is something I want to tap into with Resilience.
My rubbish PowerPoint mock up (left), and Kelly’s design to use on the back of the cards (right). A big improvement!
Enter Kelly Stanford, Sci Artist. I’d been looking for an artist for a few months and seen some nice work, but no one seemed quite right for the game. Then I came across Kelly’s work on her Twitter and was blown away. She is a specialist in making science-based art and has worked on numerous public engagement projects, working in a range of styles from sculpture, hyper-realistic, and cartoon. She’s also a gamer and after a coffee meeting at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry it was clear she got what I trying to achieve.
Here’s a some of my personal favourite artworks from 2018! 🎉 Thank you to everyone for the constant support + encouragement throughout the year and I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing my artworks as much as I’ve enjoyed making them! ❤️😊 #sciart#NewYearsEvepic.twitter.com/Bj1DmwjeKF
I commissioned her at the beginning of the year to develop the designs, and Kelly has wasted no time producing great designs for the cards – nothing like my rubbish PowerPoint efforts! So far we have the awesome logo for the back of the cards, a card template, and some concepts for the card types.
My original card template (left), Kelly’s template design (middle), and Kelly’s concept sketches.
I’m hoping to try out the first full prototype combining game and art designs at the EGU Games Night on April 10th, and after that I’m still not sure where it will go. There are several options to look at for production and dissemination, such as getting funding for a limited run, crowdfunding, getting a commercial backer, or simply releasing the game in a PDF to print your own cards. The game is designed so that additional decks can be added to the initial deck to add further complexity and variety, and I plan on offering bespoke limited edition shiny cards for events and projects.
I’m really excited about this project. I think the game has the potential to not only be fun but really help with the communication of flood risk management and its complexities and challenges. There is nothing quite like a game for putting you in someone else’s shoes. Keep an eye on this blog and Kelly’s blog for further news about Resilience.
The resolutions you make at New Year are very rarely met and even rarer is for a New Year’s resolution to be successfully completed before the year has barely got started. However, my resolution to build my own retro gaming arcade cabinet has been completed way before schedule.
My starting point was a book by John St.Clair ‘Project Arcade: Build Your Own Arcade Machine’. This tome is over 500 pages of essential guidance, advice and plans for how to make your own arcade machine from scratch and comes with a CD containing plans for different cabinet designs. However, after reading a couple of chapters I concluded I would need some more basic skills before I tried making my own.
A bit of googling and I came across the answer to my problem – the Picade. This beautiful little thing is a build-yourself mini-arcade cabinet in kit form – just add a Raspberry Pi. I promptly ordered both a Picade and a Pi 3 starter kit and waited impatiently for them to arrive. The Pi arrived first so I got playing, installing an operating system and getting it onto the internet, which surprisingly easy to do.
The Picade arrived in a gorgeous box and the components had been packaged sepaerately based on their function. I had to wait a few days before I had time to build it, so I would occasionally takes bits out and just look at them, waiting for the time to build. I also got a pack of cool stickers which now adorn the Earth Arcade flight cases.
The build took me an evening. The instructions are printed on a poster and you have to take care to follow the separate errata sheet. I found early on I was struggling to follow the written instructions, but the manufacturers have a YouTube video which takes you through the build and I found this extremely helpful.
The artwork which comes with the cabinet is on printed sheets of cards sandwiched between two clear pieces of Perspex. There are three sections – surrounding the screen, and keypad console, and the top section which overhangs the screen. I like this as it would be very easy to customise, for example to add Earth Arcade branding…
The Picade is designed to work with the RetroPie operating system which includes emulators for all sorts of retro consoles – essentially the first Playstation and anything older. The kit comes with a ‘hat’ which is an extra circuit board which sits on top of the Pi, and it has spaces for you to plug all the wires for the controls, buttons and speaker into, and is pre-programmed to be able to use all of these in RetroPie – this is brilliant for novices like myself. Similarly, there’s a piece of kit which sits between the Pi and the screen which sorts out all the magic for you. My only issues were I was little too firm connecting up the speaker and the power button and damaged the connectors – the speaker works fine, but my power button is lightless and lifeless. I got around this last issue by using a chisel to widen the access hole at the back to use the power button on the hat itself.
The build was a great challenge and I am dead chuffed with the end result. Getting RetroPie and games onto it was straightforward too once I’d found some instructions online. However, navigating the legal grey areas of abandonware and intellectual property of old games is not so straightforward, and I’m still not sure what I can use and how to obtain game files legally. This won’t be a problem if you made your own games however.
Now, I need a new resolution to keep me going until 2020…
We have had a fantastic and extremely busy 2018. Definite highlights have been the redevelopment of Flash Flood!, exhibiting in the Natural History Museum, and obviously, launching the Earth Arcade. In fact we have been so busy, we’re going to show you our highlights month-by-month.
January
We had over 80 school pupils from Newland St John’s visit us and try Flash Flood! and River in a Box as they learnt about flooding.
February
Our founder and SeriousGeoGamer, Chris Skinner, was awarded a University of Hull Research Excellency Award for Outstanding Impact, Outreach or Engagement, for his work with SeriousGeoGames.
March
In March we took Flash Flood! along to demonstrate at the Flood and Coast conference. We were part of a stand promoting our new home, the Energy and Environment Institute at the University of Hull.
The Energy and Environment Institute stand at Flood and Coast 2018.
April
2018 saw the first ever, unofficial, Games Day at the European Geoscience Union‘s General Assembly in Vienna, Austria. Chris Skinner convened a full science session sharing how researchers use games to research, teach, or share geosciences, and then in the evening over 200 scientists came together to play the games.
Promotional image made for the EGU Games Day 2018.
Articles featuring Flash Flood! were published in Teaching Geography and Geographical Review magazines.
May
In May we started putting together the kit and branding for the Earth Arcade, and its fist outing was supporting a visit of a delegation from the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). We even featured on the front page of their newsletter.
Chris Skinner demonstrating the Earth Arcade interactive touchtable.
The kit we put together includes five full VR stations and a large interactive touchscreen table.
Later in the month we spoke to over 500 members of the public at the Natural History Museum, as we were joined by colleagues from the University of Reading to demonstrate Flash Flood!. The event was part of the Museum’s half-term programme supporting NERC’s Operation Earth.
Demonstrating Flash Flood! at the Natural History Museum.
June
Chris Skinner shared Flash Flood! at the Natural History Museum with a Nature Live talk.
July
We were invited to participate in the Living with Water project’s Hulltimate Challenge event, and we took a copy of Flash Flood! down to Queen Victoria Square, central Hull, to support the press launch of the event. This was the first time we used the branded Earth Arcade kit in public.
August
We launched the Earth Arcade officially to colleagues within the University of Hull with an event held in the Map Library of the Cohen Building.
Setting up the Earth Arcade branding for the first time in the Map Library.
September
In September things got really busy! We started by once again teaming up with BetaJester to redevelop Flash Flood! for our new Earth Arcade kit – Vol.2 features sound effects, voice overs, improved graphics, and greater realism.
As part of the British Science Festival, hosted at the University of Hull, we took three activities down to Humber Street for an evening science street party. We demoed Flash Flood!, Humber in a Box, and our touchscreen table.
Earth Arcade assets at the British Science Festival.
At the Hull Science Festival we officially launched the Earth Arcade to the public and exhibited a mini-festival within the festival itself. In our Earth Arcade we showed the Flash Flood! Vol.2 for the first time, Plastic Ocean Fishing, Flood City – Hull, Humber in a Box, and a collection of Top Trump card games.
The first ever Earth Arcade at Hull Science Festival.
For the second time we were nominated for the HEY Digital Award for Best Use of Technology in Education, but lost out to the excellent Ron Dearing UTC.
We collaborated with colleagues across the University to use our games and research to help with teaching students, including assisting with modules in Drama, Digital Media, and Computer Science.
A delegation of flood risk practitioners from Sweden were visiting Hull to learn from the local City Council and the Living with Water project. We were invited to share Flash Flood! Vol.2 with them, and even got a tour of the Hull Tidal Barrier.
At the end of the month, Chris Skinner spoke to over 50 City of Culture volunteers about the University of Hull’s research into plastic pollution and the #MyPlasticPledge project as part of a masterclass for the launch of the Hull Refill scheme.
October
The big event of October was the Living with Water’s Hulltimate Challenge – a huge 10 km assault course around the centre of Hull. The Earth Arcade was a sponsor, we exhibited Flash Flood Vol.2 and Ocean Plastic Fishing, and large team from the Energy and Environment Institute successfully completed the course.
Team EEI and the Earth Arcade at the Hulltimate Challenge.
We were invited to bring the Earth Arcade to the Manchester Science Festival via a Platform for Investigation at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry. This was our first ever plastic pollution focused event.
PI – The Problem with Plastics at Manchester Science Festival.
The University of Hull stand at Scarborough Science and Engineering Week won an award for Most Informative Exhibit, and we were pleased to be part of this stand with Flash Flood! Vol.2.
November
November saw Flash Flood! come home. The original Flash Flood! was produced for and funded by the NERC Flooding from Intense Rainfall (FFIR) research programme, and with the programme coming to a conclusion we were invited to provide a Games Room at the final showcase for the event at the Royal Society, London. We brought along the full set of Flash Flood Vol.2, Flood City – Hull, and were joined by games from University of Reading and Sam Illingworth of Manchester Metropolitan University.
Exhibits and the Earth Arcade at the NERC-FFIR Showcase.
The final public event of the year for us was using Flash Flood! Vol.2 to promote the Energy and Environment Institute at the Scarborough Business Day, where the keynote speaker was former Deputy Prime Minister, Lord John Prescott.
The EEI stand at Scarborough Business Day
December
We ended the year as we begun with a visit from pupils from local schools who used Flash Flood! Vol.2 as part of a workshop looking at flooding and geomorphology.
Finally, we were part of a team including #MyPlasticPledge and Kids Against Plastic looking at how we can all reduce the amount of plastic waste we produce at Christmas, with the 12 Days if Plastic-free Christmas.
2019
2019 promises to be an equally busy and exciting year and will see the development of new games, including Inundation Street (an urban-based VR flood simulator), and Resilience (a collectible card game). It is also sad as we say farewell and good luck to SeriousGeoGame veteran, Chloe Morris, as she travels to Australia to start the next stage of her career – we will miss you Chloe!
Good bye Chloe… 🙁
Thank you everybody who has supported us in 2018, and a special thank you to all the volunteers who have helped us bring our games to the public – we really couldn’t do it without you.
Today we launched the Earth Arcade, our brand new project and most ambitious one to date.
The Earth Arcade is a space for us to bring together all our games and activities and share them with you. It will allow to us to meet more people and share the latest environmental research more widely.
As part of the Energy and Environment Institute, University of Hull, will we focus on key environmental issues faces us now and in the future, such as
how do we manage climate change?
how do we make flooding less damaging?
how do we reduce our use of plastics?
how do we make sure we have enough food for everyone?
how do we make enough energy without harming ourselves and the planet?
And in SeriousGeoGames tradition, we will be doing this through the medium of games!
This is our Earth. This our Arcade. And we want to show that when it comes to dealing with environmental issues, like climate change and plastics, it isn’t game over, it’s game on!
We are super-super-super excited to tell you we will be bringing our Flash Flood! VR game to the Natural History Museum in London. We will be joining a series of other exhibits as part of the Museum’s half-term Operation Earth showcase, and we will be there from the 29th of May until the 31st of May, 11am to 4pm each day. To find out more about this event, click here.
In the last couple of years we have been at the Science Showcases for the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) – Into the Blue and Unearthed. This year, NERC are doing something a little different, working with museums and science centres to bring their Operation Earth family science show to people up and down the country. To learn more about Operation Earth and to find an event near you, click here.
We are also very excited that we’ll be joined by our friends from the University of Reading, and the NERC-funded Flooding from Intense Rainfall project (FFIR) – the project for which Flash Flood! was designed. At the event you can play Flash Flood! and meet the scientists whose research inspired it, both from Reading but also the Energy and Environment Institute (EEI) at the University of Hull.
SeriousGeoGames will be supporting the Geoscience Games Night, both by providing the drinks (free beer!) and bringing along some of our games and will be debuting our prototype deck-builder card game, Flood: Attack & Defend. Below you will find a list of the games we know people are bringing, but do feel free to bring your own along too. Let us know if you’re bringing a game and we’ll add it to the list.
