Incentivising players to reduce their footprint by 25% below the national average

The team at Integrated Sustainability Analysis (ISA) in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney have been working with the gang at Habitat to create metrics for the players behaviours that will resonate with our demographic.

We are measuring the amount of carbon, water and land saved. These measurements are represented as:

Real World savings are represented as buckets, light bulbs and footprints

• Buckets
• Footprints
• Balloons

The players will be learning:

“The number of buckets represents the litres of water you have saved. The measurements are based on an averaged sized 10 litre bucket (2.64 gallons). 70% of the world’s surface is water and only 2.5% is freshwater with less than 1% of the freshwater accessible to humans.”

“The number of footprints represents the area of land that you have NOT disturbed by your actions. The measurement is based on a typical human footprint area of 300 cm2 (47 square-inches). By reducing your resource use, by consuming different sorts of products or by reducing waste, you are treading more lightly on the planet.”

“The number of balloons represents the volume of greenhouse gas emissions that you have saved. Measured in terms of volume of C02 gas, 1 kg (2.2 pounds) of CO2 is equivalent to 140 typical party balloons. CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas contributing to global warming.”

We have based the point system in the game around incentivising the players towards a 25% reduction in their carbon, water and land use – compared with the national average.

Below is our most current calculations showing the player reductions and the links to the point (reward) system:

The correlation between points and player reductions