These digital games are teaching players about the world's most fragile ecosystems
In the Arctic Futures Game, available to play on ASU's Ask A Biologist platform, players build food webs that depend on sea ice, connecting organisms from microscopic algae to polar bears and human communities. Photo courtesy of Ask A Biologist/Frozen Connections
As Earth Day highlights the importance of protecting the planet, a pair of digital learning games from Arizona State University’s Ask A Biologist is helping people move from awareness to action in their everyday lives.
The Arctic Futures Game and the Coral Futures Game do more than teach environmental science. They immerse players in fragile ecosystems and show how individual and collective choices can help protect them.
“There are actions in the game itself,” said Stephanie Pfirman, deputy director and professor in the School of Ocean Futures, who helped lead the development of both experiences, collaborating with Ariel Anbar and ASU’s Center for Education Through Exploration, or ETX Center. Players leave with “a list of actions they can take and implement in their day-to-day lives” that benefit the conservation of these ecosystems.
Turning complex science into everyday decisions
Both games place players inside ecosystems where every decision has consequences.
In the Arctic Futures Game, players build food webs that depend on sea ice, connecting organisms from microscopic algae to polar bears and human communities. As they play, they experience the cascading effects of melting ice, pollution and resource use.
The lesson is clear: Environmental change is interconnected, and human actions play a central role.
Similarly, the Coral Futures Game challenges players to maintain reef ecosystems while balancing real-world pressures such as fishing, tourism and coastal protection. Players must respond to threats like warming oceans and pollution while using conservation strategies to stabilize the system.
“Players will learn about the complexity of coral reefs and that hard corals form the foundation of these diverse ecosystems,” said Yvonne Sawall, assistant professor in the School of Ocean Futures. “They learn that threats can interact with coral reefs in multiple ways. Some affect corals directly, and some affect other organisms in the reef. The combination of certain threats can lead to rubble fields, which are very hard to recover from. On the other hand, players also learn what can be done to prevent some of the threats or to recover from them.”
Learning by doing and going beyond the screen
For Anbar, President’s Professor and director of the ETX Center, the impact of the games comes from active participation.
“The idea is not just to get people excited, not just to show stuff, but to also have interactive elements that provide feedback, so people actually learn through the doing,” he said.
The ETX Center brings scientists, educators and technologists together to design and build digital learning experiences that go beyond just delivering content. That expertise enabled the creation of these games that allow players to not just read about climate change, but also to experiment with decisions and see outcomes in real time.
“In a really good educational game, even if you don’t fully understand the topic, it can still be played for fun, and then you can walk away knowing more about the topic than you did before,” Anbar added.
That learning often carries into daily life. The games introduce players to actions such as reducing carbon emissions, supporting sustainable practices and protecting ecosystems, connecting gameplay directly to real-world behavior.
One of the most important outcomes of the Arctic Futures Game is a shift in how players see their own ability to make a difference.
By embedding solutions into gameplay, whether lowering carbon emissions or restoring ecosystems, the games reinforce that change is possible.
Pfirman noted that this sense of agency is supported by research showing that players feel more empowered after playing.
Reaching students and influencing choices
Hosted on ASU’s Ask A Biologist platform, the games reach a wide audience, from middle school students to adults.
“Games are the biggest thing on Ask A Biologist,” said Karla Moeller, senior program manager at Ask-A-Initiatives. “We find that actually engaging players and building in some lessons with a few of the main points that you want to get across into the game works really well.”
With popularity across the platform and strong early engagement for the Coral Futures Game, the reach continues to grow, bringing environmental learning into classrooms and homes.
Since its launch on Ask A Biologist in late 2022, the Arctic Futures Game has been played more than 127,000 times, with players returning to the game multiple times. Since last November, the average playtime has been 13 minutes and 20 seconds.
“The level of engagement we’re seeing reflects a real appetite for interactive learning experiences like these," said Patrick Rossol-Allison, associate vice president of strategic partnerships and enterprise collaborations at ASU Learning Enterprise. "Across ASU’s learning games, we’ve seen millions of plays over the past year, and what’s especially important is that learners aren’t just engaging, they’re making decisions, seeing outcomes and beginning to connect those choices to real-world impact.”
Real-world lessons in the classroom
Beyond online play, the games are integrated into university courses where they connect directly to real-world thinking.
Pfirman asks students to map relationships they observe in the Arctic game, such as how melting sea ice affects species, and then compare those insights with Indigenous knowledge systems.
The assignment often leads to powerful reflections.
“It was then I realized that neither of the maps was more important,” one student wrote. “We need both lived experience and outside knowledge to make decisions.”
Pfirman said the assignment resonates strongly with students.
“One student at the end said that was their favorite assignment in the whole class,” she said.
For the team behind the games, the goal is not just to inform, but to influence how people think and act.
“It’s been very fun to work with Stephanie, who’s come very much with that philosophy very strongly and has helped us innovate in that direction,” Anbar said.
This Earth Day, as conversations focus on global challenges, these games offer something practical. They give players a way to understand complex systems and see how their own choices can make a difference.
As players navigate melting ice and threatened reefs, they are not just learning about the future. They are practicing how to shape it.
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