About the Project

Gamification

In order to enhance the consumer behaviour to chance their consumption patterns in a way that their choices would be better for the environment the
CoCo project chooses gamification as the strategic attempt. CoCo wants to promote social inclusion and is aiming to create outreach to people with
fewer opportunities, but at the same time being open to all citizens.
Therefore the CoCo partners made initial need-assessments in target communities they did choose in their country. The need-assessments were
done amongst adult educators working in formal and informal trainings, especially with socio-economic disadvantaged people, and amongst adult
citizens, who are mostly not yet involved in regular education, both within the choosen target communities and areas.
The game should be attractive to play by the people in these target communities. In a Game Jam with people from all partner countries, that took
place in Berlin in December 2022, several game ideas were surprisingly already developed based on the need-assessments and the wishes of the
partners concerning their communities to get an education mean for what they see they need to approach the very special need concerning
conscious consumption in their choosen community.

Game Jam

The partners learned a lot about the needs of the people in their communities and defined tasks for possible games to be used in their communities. For example the colleagues from Berlin defined a task to educate school children that the food they consume are not made in the supermarket but are from growing plants and what this means. The task was to activate especially migrant families through a gardening project at a primary school and the game should be about planting anf gardening and the kids should be able to take the game home to their families. Kids should go home and inspire their families. One of the groups in the game jam managed to develop such a game and named it the CoCo Garden Game.

The CoCo Garden Game

The CoCo Garden Game was one approach to teach children about conscious consumption. The game principle was easy, there are four seasons and various plants that can be cultivated in each season. Most of the plants could be cultivated in other seasons but then they need more resources. By learning this, the kids and their migrant families got some awareness about how to consume with more consciousness: Seasonal products should be e.g. consumed in the right season and not all year long. The CoCo Garden game was tested by the Berlin partners and here are their comments: “Please remember that the game is great as it is (seriously, it is a fun, very playable game). In the comments, I simply wrote down some ideas based on About the Project – Conscious Consumption https://consciousconsumption.eu/about-the-project/[31/01/2024 23:30:32] our experience. Our garden group is a bit chaotic, kids are usually tired after 6 hours of lessons but also have a lot of energy after so much sitting in class so the simpler the instructions the better Also maybe a short simplified German version? Förderverein in our school is planning a spring event in the schoolyard. I will be there to represent the gardening group and I’ll have your game there as one of the activities, so hopefully, many more opportunities to play it.” There are several other games that have been developed in the game jam of Berlin. They are an inspiration for the Serious Game we are developing. For the Serious Game a knowledge vault is set up at the moment and the facilitators guide will also be created. The little games that were developed during the game jam in Berlin are just kind of minigames. But they show already very well, that learning to consume consciousnessly means not to just learn facts and apply them but to develop the skill to think and reflect about ones own consume.