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Gamers are getting playful in the name of climate action, and it’s working! Featuring a digital wardrobe entrepreneur, a creative coder, an urban greening technologist, and a climate meme shitposter, Climate Curious asks –how are games encouraging people to play their way into being an environmentalist? Recorded live at Sexy Climate Change and Nowaday’s on Earth’s event, ‘Game On: Playing for the Planet’.
Featuring:
Issey Gladston, Sexy Climate Change: https://www.sexyclimatechange.co.uk
Kalpana Arias, Nowadays on Earth: https://www.instagram.com/nowadaysonearth
Lex Fefegha, Climate Crisis: Bridgewater Heath: https://lexfefegha.com
Bianca Rangecroft, Whering: https://www.whering.co.uk
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Created by TEDxLondon
Executive produced by Josie Colter
Produced by Ben Beheshty
Curated by Deesha Chandra
Hosted by Maryam Pasha and Ben Hurst
Communications by Tara Cooper and Issey Gladston
00:00 Introduction
00:54 Issey Gladston on Sexy Climate Change
02:36 Lex Fefegha on Climate Crisis: Bridgewater Heath
05:46 Bianca Rangecroft on digital wardrobes
07:15 Kalpana Arias on Urban greening
10:21 Conclusion
[00:00:00] Introduction
[00:00:00] Ben Hurst: Welcome to Climate Quickies Bite-sized nuggets of Climate goodness.
[00:00:05] Ben Hurst: From our TEDxLondon experts in under 10 minutes. In this week’s Climate Curious, we are highlighting some rather playful climate solutions games. We join Sexy Climate Change and Nowadays on Earth for their event game on playing for the planet.
[00:00:22] Ben Hurst: To ask, how are gamified climate solutions helping ramp up climate action featuring sexy climate changes? [00:00:30] Issey Gladston, urban greening technologist, Kalpana Arias, creative coder, Lex Fefegha, and digital wardrobe entrepreneur, Bianca Rangecroft. Each speaker shares their thoughts on how best to play for the planet on how [00:00:45] grabbing your controller can be a climate action.
[00:00:47] Ben Hurst: Here’s Issey, Lex, Bianca, and Kalpana. Stay curious.
[00:00:54] Issey Gladston on Sexy Climate Change
[00:00:54] Issey Gladston: Hi, I am Issey. I am the founder of Sexy Climate Change. Sexy Climate Change is a [00:01:00] podcast and a meme page, and also a column in Bricks Magazine looking at the question of how do we make the climate crisis sexy? And I think I use that terminology in a way of thinking, how do we make it fun and playful and enticing?
[00:01:12] Issey Gladston: Because a lot of the time when we think about [00:01:15] climate issues, it becomes this very like heavy. Dooms full thing. And I think the joy of actually being in the climate space is that you get to imagine a new future and you get to, to work in an industry that is trying to make things better in a world that feels like [00:01:30] it might just be getting worse.
[00:01:31] Issey Gladston: So tonight’s event is called Game On Playing for the Planet. And I think I really wanted to learn from people in the tech and the gaming space thinking about, you know, when you play a game, you are entering a new world and there is so much world building and imagination in [00:01:45] the gaming sector. And I think a.
[00:01:46] Issey Gladston: I wanted the left to be inspired by that because I think so often we talk, theoretically, we think we need culture change and we postulate about what would change culture, and we’re so scared to jump in and just try some things and I think we’re at [00:02:00] such an important point of. Starting to do things in an iterative process and making mistakes and tripping up.
[00:02:05] Issey Gladston: But through that, moving forward, rather than staying stagnant, and I think listening to some of the developers and the coders speak about their iterative process and how their mistakes have [00:02:15] shaped their output, or how maybe they had some functionality that they don’t need anymore because no one was using it.
[00:02:20] Issey Gladston: I think that’s such a humble way to approach creation and to not get so stressed about your output as much and just just put some good intentions behind things.[00:02:30]
[00:02:36] Lex Fefegha on Climate Crisis: Bridgewater Heath
[00:02:36] Lex Fefegha: Hello, my name is Lex Fefegha. I am a, I’m a game developer. I came to speak today about a game that I made with an organization called [00:02:45] Impact to Urban Health. So the name of the game is called Climate Crisis Bridgewater Heath, where you take on the role of a counselor and you have to make policy decisions for your local council, and you have to balance budget, public approval, but also the [00:03:00] environmental impact of your decisions in your local area.
[00:03:02] Lex Fefegha: It was a game made for non-gamers. That was actually kind of the goal. So I think if you are a gamer and you’re seasoned gamer, this might not be the game for you because the whole intention was [00:03:15] really to focus on a group of individuals who are non-gamers and find, um, like what could be a simple mechanic to get people to, you know, make decisions in a playful way, um, but are not [00:03:30] versed in that aspect of how, you know, strategy games.
[00:03:34] Lex Fefegha: Essentially kind of, you know, roll out or play. So there’s a lot of information being thrown at folks a lot of the time around what they should do around the climate and these things, and you just need [00:03:45] folks being burdened. And I think for me, I’ve always been interested in play as a mechanism to. Tell stories or to share information in a way that’s innate to us.
[00:03:56] Lex Fefegha: We are playful beings. We respond to play well [00:04:00] and giving people that space to play and they have that emotional feel when it’s like, oh my God, I’ve ran out of budget. And, and feeling those tension points allow them to have an insight or perspective that’s really different from before. So for me, it’s really, I, I’m interested in [00:04:15] the stories and then games are like the mechanics that allow me to tell the stories.
[00:04:19] Lex Fefegha: Would I say. The game that I’m gonna say is probably my favorite game ever, and I clock a lot of hours on it, is football manager. And the reason why I say this is partially [00:04:30] because of, I like the story. It’s, if you think of it, it’s a sandbox type game. Um, but it allows you to almost create stories or narrate stories of who you can necessarily be.[00:04:45]
[00:04:45] Lex Fefegha: So yes, you do have to do the tactical stuff and the football managing staff, but you as an individual has an opportunity to create stories. So, like for example, I’ve played, I’m like almost 30 years in to a football manager save right now. I played the same [00:05:00] save for almost two years just because football manager 2025 didn’t actually come out, but.
[00:05:04] Lex Fefegha: It for me. I get really immersed in that character that I’m creating. It’s almost like the Feld sports career I never had, and I get to channel it in that [00:05:15] way. So I do have a deep innate kind of thing. That’s why I call it my favorite game. I don’t think it’s the best game ever made. That’s a different perspective, but I think it is my favorite game because of the ability, the way it allows me to [00:05:30] drink.
[00:05:30] Lex Fefegha: And that’s, I guess what I crave a lot of the times is dreaming or creating narratives in my head of who I could be in another life.[00:05:45]
[00:05:46] Bianca Rangecroft on digital wardrobes
[00:05:46] Bianca Rangecroft: Hi guys.
[00:05:46] Bianca Rangecroft: I’m Bianca, the founder, and CEO of War Wearing is the largest digital wardrobe and personal styling app for your clothes. We’re helping millions of people around the world play for planet, um, by letting you shop your wardrobe instead of mindlessly doom. Scroll on shopping e-commerce websites. We help you track what you wear to be able to give you wardrobe stats around how your personal style is evolving, but also monitor cost per wear or your return on investment on your pieces.
[00:06:17] Bianca Rangecroft: And we also help you, um, style strangers on the internet via our style submissions. So we are bringing the clueless dream to life. Um, basically reenacting share horowitz’s, um, wardrobe [00:06:30] by helping you digitize your clothes, um, and leverage technology to help you style yourself at the click of a button.
[00:06:36] Bianca Rangecroft: Play helps us reimagine the future by helping us reduce our dependence on doom scrolling and our over-reliance on social media [00:06:45] to help ourselves find. Style. Um, it helps us play in community, which is really exciting by democratizing access to style. So opening your wardrobe for others to come and play and style you for free.
[00:06:58] Bianca Rangecroft: Um, and lastly, it helps [00:07:00] you realize what you’re wearing, what you’re not wearing, so that you can experiment and create a multitude of really exciting new outfits with the things that you already own.
[00:07:14] Kalpana Arias: Hi [00:07:15] everyone.
[00:07:15] Kalpana Arias on urban greening
[00:07:15] Kalpana Arias: My name is Kalpana Arias. I am a technologist, a gorilla gardener, and a nature rights campaigner. I’m the founder of Nowadays, which is a social enterprise that’s fighting to bring more nature into cities. The way I’m playing for the planet is by looking at the ways that we can mobilize citizen engagement for urban greening and to scale nature-based solutions, um, at a grassroots level.
[00:07:37] Kalpana Arias: So we’re working with different organizations as well as grassroots groups and citizens themselves to hack the [00:07:45] city. And we’re doing that through Glitch, which is our cyber gardening tool that’s turning Gray Streets into green oac. And we’re looking at the ways that we can mobilize citizens to mbed themselves back into their [00:08:00] community spaces by taking a walk in their streets and their neighborhoods, and finding all of the green gaps.
[00:08:07] Kalpana Arias: And then playing with Glitch, which is a fictional. Cyber bug, um, that you can co-design a garden and a green space with, [00:08:15] so you can, uh, plant a tree digitally. And then we’re working with, um, local institutions to help plant those into green spaces in real life. At the moment, we’ve got 1,500 users counting and growing.
[00:08:28] Kalpana Arias: A lot of people have [00:08:30] described Glitch as the Pokemon Go, but for plants and green spaces. Um, and that’s been a really interesting way that it’s been described to us. And we’re definitely gonna be making more like ar quests and Pokemon styled um, [00:08:45] planting activities. I think right now we’re living through an imagination crisis, and we need to look at the ways that we can embed play into our day-to-day habits and life in order to think of the [00:09:00] different futures that can form and kind of come out of just experimenting and playing.
[00:09:06] Kalpana Arias: Uh, your surroundings, your environment, but also playing within your community. And one of the things, um, that I think playing allows us to do is [00:09:15] tap into this form of radical imagination. And there’s a really incredible quote from Alex Wolf who’s a technologist, and she says that, um, design changes.
[00:09:26] Kalpana Arias: Behavior faster than good ideas. And I feel like if we design our cities [00:09:30] with more play, we’re gonna be able to change our behaviors that, uh, transform the way that our city looks, the way that it’s designed and the way that we behave inside of it to be ecological citizens. So I’m not a traditional gamer, but one of the things that [00:09:45] really sort of brings me into this sense of reciprocity and care is my tamagotchi.
[00:09:52] Kalpana Arias: And I just love having this, you know, idea of like this. Pocket size creature living with you that you can take [00:10:00] care of. And that’s kind of how I feel about our cities and our gardens, um, within our landscapes and just to build in this form of reciprocity. And that’s really what we’ve been wanting to build with Glitch is, um, to mobilize citizens to think about the way that they can be a part [00:10:15] of nature solutions when it comes to urban greening.
[00:10:18] Kalpana Arias: Future-proofing cities.
[00:10:21] Conclusion
[00:10:21] Ben Hurst: Thanks for listening to this quickie.
[00:10:23] Maryam Pasha: This episode was created by our superstar podcast team at Telex London. Until next time,
[00:10:28] Ben Hurst: stay [00:10:30] curious.
