Gu(d)luck

Often “risks” for a household are only associated with adverse shocks to assets, health, and financing needs due to unforeseen events. Though discourse around climate change has increased, people rarely view it as a “risk” to their health and financial security despite its impact being experienced daily.

As per the recent IPCC report, half of the world’s population lives in Climate ‘Danger Zones’ with risks to health and life. Along with rising temperatures, the year 2022, witnessed several climate-related disasters such as devastating floods, extreme heatwaves, drought, wildfires, and unprecedented weather fluctuations. Like other countries, India has also been experiencing frequent dry spells and intense wet spells over the past years forcing more than 80% of the population vulnerable to extreme weather changes. According to a study, it has been predicted that by 2050, 148.3 million people in India will be living in severe hotspots negatively impacting their living standards.

These disasters and unprecedented weather events have adversely impacted people’s health, lives and livelihoods, property, and critical infrastructure. As per a WHO report, around 12% of the world’s population spends at least 10% of their household budget to pay for healthcare. The report also highlights that 100 million people are being pushed into poverty every year as the vulnerable and marginalised are uninsured against health shocks and stresses. 

With climate shocks increasing households’ vulnerability, it becomes crucial that community members are aware and can employ adaptation and mitigation strategies to reduce climate-related threats and become more resilient. However, there currently lacks adequate approaches to make communities understand these risks. There is also a lack of clarity on what adaptation and mitigation strategies help in reducing their vulnerability. These are the gaps we seek to fill through our game that allows communities to understand these complex concepts in an inclusive way. 

To address the issue mentioned above and improve awareness and capacity among communities we propose a game, which can be played both offline and online.  

About the game: Gu(d)luck is a multiplayer game (modelled with on-ground data in the Indian context) in which the participants must travel through various seasons and protect the health of their households and finances through sudden climate shocks.  

The name G(d)luck is inspired by 2 words - 'Good luck' (Wishing the participants success against climate shocks) and 'Gullak' (A Hindi word referring to a piggy bank denoting savings, a protection mechanism against any financial impact). The game focuses on three primary objectives:

1.  Help community members understand the risk and vulnerability associated with climate-induced stresses (excess heat and rain) in their lives.  
2. Enable community members to explore and understand various risk mitigation and adaptation measures that could be employed by them.  
3. Enable community members to specifically understand the role of insurance and other financial tools as a risk mitigation strategy. 

Gameplay: In this game, the participants travel across different seasons- starting with the winter season, then moving towards spring, summer, and monsoon. In every season, the participants receive disposable income (income remaining after all the expenditures). Each participant is also given a house filled with sand representing the health of their household in the game. As they move through these seasons, they face sudden climate shocks (heatwaves or excessive rain) in some seasons that impact their household finances and health (denoted by the sand level). The participants whose health runs out (sand level) move out of the game while the others continue to play. To protect their household finance and health from climatic shocks the participants are provided with risk adaptation and mitigation strategies. These currently include:  

1. Technologies available:

• Roofing and rainwater technologies that provide varied levels of protection to their households in the game from financial and health impacts due to climate shocks. The participants can buy these various technologies with the money that is provided to them.  

2. Financial strategies: 

• Investing in assets such as gold and/or silver (commonly used as a saving instrument in India).  
• Purchasing assets such as vehicles (scooters, auto-rickshaws) or a shop.  
• Purchasing insurance to protect their households against any financial impact due to climate risks.  

The game is designed in a modular way to add other technological or financial strategies than the ones listed above as per requirement. The objective in the game for the participants is to use the various risk adaptation and mitigation strategies to protect their household finances and health from risks associated with climate change. 

As mentioned in the previous question, even though communities might be aware of climate change they might not view it as a “risk” causing “loss and damage” to life. Additionally, the lack of knowledge of the technologies and strategies available exposes them frequently to climate-associated risks making them vulnerable. To increase awareness and build adaptive capacities our proposal is an immersive game. The game can be deployed both in online and offline settings. This hybrid solution is planned considering the: 

• Communities will be in different geographies with limited or no access to technology.  
• Communities will be at different levels of comfort and knowledge on using digital games.  

Gu(d)luck game is currently developed as a physical game for adults (18 plus) in marginalised communities with limited access to and know-how of technology. We aim to build a digital version of the game to improve its reach to be played among adults (18 plus) communities with access to technology. With both game versions (digital and physical), our goal is to make this game available to everyone irrespective of their geography and technology proficiency. We have also designed the game as a framework game which allows modularity to suit other contexts and add additional scenarios.  

Through the game, our goal is to communicate the impacts of climate change on a household’s health and financial well-being. The game objective is not to preach to the participants about the decisions they should make but to present them with various strategies that can be combined to protect themselves from risks associated with climate change. Through the choices made during the game, the participants can view the impact of their decisions on the health and financial well-being of their households. With the marginalised and vulnerable communities mostly uninsured, the game also focuses on communicating the concept of insurance and its impact on the financial security and aspirations of a household.  

To have a nuanced understanding of the different perspectives in climate change discourse and build a game with complexities, we have a diverse and interdisciplinary team. Our team comprises researchers, coders, and artists from different academic backgrounds (technology, arts, computer science, social science), geographies, and ethnic communities across South Asia. This enables us to not only build culture-appropriate technology but also take it to their communities, to reach a wide scale. The team lead, Srinidhi Santosh, through her research has interacted with diverse stakeholders from different backgrounds, geographies and at different levels. She has had conversations with organisations, individuals and government actors during the COVID-19 pandemic for the RDPR department (Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Department, Government of Karnataka), to understand networks of care that had been formed in the country. She has worked with the wards of the waste workers to design appropriate survey methodologies to understand safety requirements for waste workers. Through these experiences, she has developed expertise to understand and evaluate the tools that suit and help engage with different stakeholders.

 While developing tools we use a collaborative and partnership approach. We partner with organisations working closely with communities to collect on-ground data for customising the tool to specific contexts. For Gu(d)luck, we partnered with Mahila Housing Trust (MHT), an organisation working to empower women in vulnerable and marginalised communities in India. A collaboration of our game-building expertise and a community-based organisation’s outreach expertise help’s us engage and build resilience among communities in the long term.

We have piloted the game with women in vulnerable and marginalised communities in Ahmedabad, India. For this, we partnered with an on-ground organisation Mahila Housing Trust (MHT) in Ahmedabad, India that works to empower women in vulnerable and marginalised communities. The game is currently embedded in their capacity-building and training sessions on climate change. The game is developed in collaboration with this organisation for raising awareness and build capacity among women from vulnerable neighbourhoods. 

As experts in developing immersive and experiential tools, we are confident about the impact potential this tool can have in the pathway towards creating resilient communities. Given many capacity-building tools in the market, we seek guidance on developing a business model and a pitch to position the game with different partners. We would require support in developing a strategy to make the game not only financially sustainable but also accessible, and affordable.  

We would want the game to scale across geographic boundaries for organisations and individuals to use in different parts of the world. From Solve’s experience, we would seek access to these networks to culturally adapt this tool outside India and assist in strategy development to make the delivery of this tool modular.

As part of monitoring and evaluation, we currently use methods of survey and feedback forms. The sustainability of this method is dependent on the number of users. With our long-term plan to scale the game, we would seek guidance from Solve to develop a robust methodology to evaluate the game in different contexts across multiple users.

The traditional method of building awareness and capacity building includes theoretical/audio-visual modules which teach communities “the ideal and the right pathways to achieve an end goal”. Often the missing link in these awareness programs is understanding the perspective of the communities, the actors they interact with, and the challenges faced. Games create a fun, interactive and immersive environment for the participants to understand and explore strategies and see their impact. Gu(d)luck thus offers the following:

• Experiential learning: Experiential learning is a cyclic process where learning can begin at any stage (concrete experience, observation and reflection, formation of abstract concepts and testing in new situations). This game is designed for the participants to experience the tensions and self-reflect on the outcomes by exploring different strategies. With the tool also showing the consequences of their decisions, the participants are sensitised to the complexities and impacts of climate-associated risks in their lives.  
• Test strategies: Modelled on real data, the game provides a platform for the participants to test different strategies and observe their impact on health and financial parameters.   
• Ease of use and accessibility: The game is modular and extensible and can be easily modified to add more scenarios and adapt to the other context. This modularity will also be incorporated into the digital game.  

Our goal with the game Gu(d)luck is to facilitate behaviour change in long-term by building capacities and resilience-

• Among informal settlements and marginalised communities that are vulnerable to the impacts of climate-related risks.
• Among young adults and the general population

To achieve the above goals, our focus in the next year would be to develop the digital version of the game incorporating the complexities of the physical version. For this purpose, we would be partnering with a community-based organisation in India to collect relevant data, incorporate a regional language into the digital version and embed this game into their capacity-building efforts.

In the next five years, our goal is to start scaling the game by building partnerships with fifty other community-based organisations to embed the game into their capacity-building efforts. During this process, we also aim to incorporate more regional languages so that the game can be played by communities in different geographies.  As part of our goal to build capacities and resilience among young adults and the general population, we would also like to embed an open-source version of the game in official platforms that are frequently accessed for climate change-related reports (eg: ActNow- A United Nations campaign, UN CC: Learn- The One UN Climate Change Learning Partnership etc. ) 

The quantitative indicators we are measuring are: 

1. Number of CBOs that have integrated the game as part of their capacity building efforts.  
2. Number of people from different communities who play Gu(d)luck.
3. Number of towns or villages and states where people play Gu(d)luck
4. The diversity of demographics that the players come from:

• Age
• Literacy level
• Language capability
• Urban or rural

5. Number of instances of gameplay with different audience. 

6. Number of instances of gameplay with same audience (if the game has been played to test risk adaptation and mitigation strategies)

The qualitative indicators to measure focus on whether the game has met its objectives:

• Are the participants understanding the impact due to climate-related risks (through discussions post-game)?
• Are the participants discussing various technological and financial strategies available to them post the game?
• Are the participants able to notice changes in the impact on the health and finances in the game when they combined strategies (through discussions post the game)?

Our theory of change is that an experiential learning methodology through games and simulations is the most efficient way to build civic capacities in communities.

• Games are an inclusive medium and enhance collaboration because anyone can participate in them, irrespective of educational background, exposure and experience.
• Games are an extremely effective medium of awareness and capacity building because participants are more willing to take risks, be creative, and experiment, as they don’t have the risks of failure.
• Games allow for collecting intangible data in the form of preferences and biases that is crucial for understanding what actions will be towards inclusive development.
• Games create an inexpensive and highly engaging medium to test various civic action solutions and their outcomes with different affected and influencing groups.
• The nature in which the games are played (group-based play) promotes solidarity and support amongst the members of the community.

The online version of Gu(d)luck will involve building a back end for the game's logic, assets and moves; this will be through a Javascript library (boardgame.io). This game server will utilise a WebSocket protocol (using Socket.IO) for enabling real-time multi-player gaming capability. The front end of the game will be built using an HTML + JavaScript + CSS framework. As the game requires constant multi-layered updates to the state, a reactive Javascript framework would be used, preferably Svelte or Vue.js. The hosting and deployment of the game will be in a web server with both the client and game server hosted in the same container to keep latency as low as possible. This architecture enables the game to be scaled to as many instances and players as needed.

Given our work is extensively on development issues that are complex, we recognise the need to consider diverse stakeholder perspectives. Hence, we have an interdisciplinary team comprising individuals from different academic disciplines- social science, media, art, urban planning, computer science and economics among others. Our team members also belong to different geographies (within India and across South Asia) and socio-economic backgrounds. This helps to get nuanced and diverse perspectives on a problem we explore. As an organization, we focus on creating an inclusive workspace and practice parity in pay. We ensure that remuneration for all employees is based on the responsibilities undertaken in the workplace regardless of their background and identity. 

We believe that the best way to address a complex problem is through collaboration. Hence, we partner with different stakeholders belonging to different areas of work and different levels– government actors, universities, government actors, and researchers. These partnerships are for data collection, tool dissemination, domain knowledge or sometimes even for game testing. For Gu(d)luck we partnered with Mahila Housing Trust (MHT) which works with women in vulnerable and marginalised communities. We also conducted game tests with the waste workers associated with Hasiru Dala (an organisation in Bangalore working in the waste sector). 

Our business model is to reach people through community-based organisations that already work on the ground to build capacities and resilience among the people against climate-related risks. We already have a partnership with Mahila Housing Trust (MHT), with whom we developed the physical version of Gu(d)luck. Similarly, we will collaborate with other community-based organisations to create the digital version and customise it to the context for the organisations to disseminate the game.  The game will be embedded in the existing capacity-building works conducted by community-based organisations.  
 
Being experts at building experiential tools, we believe that our game will augment the existing work of community-based organisations, improve engagement and build capacities and resilience in the communities.  

We partner with organisations to develop tools based on their needs. Hence,  our revenue model involves charging service fees to the on-ground community-based organisations (CBOs) we partner with to develop and conduct the game with their communities. The service fees also include the training of the facilitators of the organisation to ensure long-term use of the game. Since the CBOs we partner with work with the specific community on improving awareness and capacity building, they have a budget allocated towards this. 

Post the game development, there are primarily two different revenue models we use for playing the game with other stakeholders: 

• Direct service delivery: It costs us US $150 to conduct a 90-minute game session. This $150 covers the costs of facilitator fees and their local travel. (This does not cover the costs of any of the research, game development or server hosting fees. We consider those our initial capital investment and not part of our operational budget.) The venue and other infrastructure for the game are provided by the organisation we are conducting the game for. During our pilots, we have experimented with charging up to US $250 for a 90-minute game session, which organisations have been willing to pay. 
• Training of Trainers: We license the use of the game to a partner organisation for a period of 12 months, and we train facilitators within that organisation to conduct the game with their target audience. Within the 12 months, the organisation can conduct the game as many times and with as many participants as they want without any restrictions. The licensing fee for 12 months is US $1000. The fee for training facilitators is $500 for a 6-hour training session, with up to 10 facilitators at a time. 

We realise that there will be rural governmental institutions or non-governmental organisations that will not be able to pay for our services of conducting the game. For such organisations we will implement a cross-subsidisation model, i.e., we will use the revenue we charge organisations that do pay, to conduct sessions for organisations that cannot pay. We would also explore grant and CSR funds to augment the funding.