Hi folks!
I’m excited to be back in your inbox this month because I’ve got a fun story to share with you.
I’m by no means a “gamer,” but I enjoy a good game night with friends every now and then. So when it came to my attention that a climate change-focused board game existed and that I could chat with one of the game’s creators, I jumped on it.
In a world rife with false climate solutions and woefully inadequate levels of urgency, there is yet a universe of solutions large and small being pushed out. Alternative Futures is dedicated to making these seen.
Maybe you've never thought about the gaming response to climate crisis, but now I've rolled the die for you: Read on!
Enjoy!
—Syris Valentine
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Players Race to Usher in a New Sunrise in 'Daybreak,' a Board Game of Climate Change Solutions
Syris Valentine | Deceleration
My girlfriend called Daybreak depressing and impossible to win the first time we played it.
The board game tasks players with cooperating to eliminate emissions, increase carbon sinks, and bolster their resilience to withstand the disasters that strike round after round. It’s a race against time to draw down more climate pollution than the players collectively produce. All this before global warming hits 2℃, before one of the player-managed countries collapses from crisis, and before the round counter strikes midnight on the Doomsday Clock.
It’s by no means an easy undertaking.
It compels players to grapple with the challenges of an expanding climate crisis. Yet the creators would be disappointed to hear their game had left its players disheartened. According to the rule book, the creators developed Daybreak to “tell an uplifting story about decarbonizing the world.”
That ethos of optimism appears in the game’s very name, which one of the creators, Matt Leacock, has previously said is intended to reflect, “this inflection point, this new day, this moving forward: a sunrise, not a sunset.”
Discovering Daybreak
Daybreak hit shelves with its plastic-free, FSC-certified paper packaging and pieces three years ago. Not one whisper of it graced my ears until late this May when Korby Sears, a Seattle-based game designer, asked if I’d help co-host a conversation with Matt Leacock during the mid-July Pacific Northwest Climate Week. Given my professional obsession with climate change and my amateur interest in board games, the request was easy to accept.
Ahead of the conversation, I played Daybreak with Korby twice, bought my own copy, played twice with my girlfriend, once with two other friends, some half-dozen times solo, and made plans to play with four other friends.
Suffice it to say, I love Daybreak.
Despite my affections, it’s admittedly easy for the game to induce a dose of despair if you find yourself repeatedly losing. After all, loss implies apocalypse.
