CHOICE at the EGU General Assembly: Bringing Climate Action into Play with Hotspot Earth
What if climate science could be experienced through play?
On 6 May 2026, Jan Steinhauser from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) presented “Hotspot Earth: a climate action game” during the Games for Geoscience session at the EGU General Assembly 2026 in Vienna, Austria. The session explored how games can support science communication, learning, and public engagement around complex geoscience challenges.
The annual EGU General Assembly is one of Europe’s largest and most prominent geosciences event, bringing together scientists from all over the world to exchange knowledge across the Earth, planetary, and space sciences.
Within this inspiring scientific setting, Hotspot Earth offered a fresh and engaging perspective: climate action is not only something to study, discuss, or model — it can also be something people actively explore.
From individual choices to collective change
A key message of the presentation was that climate action is not only about individual decisions. It is also about collective momentum.
In Hotspot Earth, players build a diverse network of activists who fight alongside them and strengthen each other when matched strategically. This reflects one of the game’s central ideas: every person can become part of a wider movement for change.
The game also links action to consequences. Between rounds, players make choices that influence global heating, resilience, and electricity supply and demand. These choices affect how dangerous future hazards become and how well societies can respond.
By turning climate risks and trade-offs into gameplay, Hotspot Earth helps players experience the urgency of the climate crisis while also exploring the power of solutions, cooperation, and systemic change.
A game where climate action becomes tangible
During his presentation, Jan introduced Hotspot Earth as a science-informed climate action game that combines fast-paced action, light management, and climate simulation elements.
In the game, players lead a growing climate movement and try to survive until the end of the century while increasingly powerful monsters, symbolising climate hazards, try to overwhelm them. Each round takes players to a different country, where they support local relief efforts and protect cultural points of interest under threat.
The gameplay is built around a simple but powerful loop:
Empower your movement.
Face the crisis.
Survive the century.
Players fight climate-driven hazards such as droughts and floods, collect momentum, recruit activists, and then use their resources to activate societal change options linked to political, industrial, and cultural transformation.
Interested in Hotspot Earth?
Explore the demo version and experience the game:
Why this matters for CHOICE
This approach strongly resonates with the mission of CHOICE.
CHOICE works to make climate mitigation pathways more accessible, inclusive, and connected to real-world behaviour, particularly across food, agriculture, and land-use systems. The project aims to bring scientific knowledge closer to citizens, communities, policymakers, and industrial actors by combining modelling, behavioural insights, digital tools, and engagement campaigns.
Hotspot Earth reflects this spirit by showing how complex climate concepts can be translated into an experience that is interactive, understandable, and emotionally engaging.
Games can do something that traditional communication often struggles to achieve: they allow people to test choices, experience consequences, receive feedback, and feel agency. In the context of CHOICE, this is especially important. Climate-conscious change depends not only on information, but also on participation, motivation, and the ability to see how choices connect to wider systems.
Looking ahead
The presentation closed with a clear message:
“Let’s put the Action back into Climate Action.”
Through this contribution, CHOICE highlights how innovative engagement tools can bring climate science closer to citizens and stakeholders. By combining modelling, behaviour change, digital tools, and creative communication, CHOICE supports more informed, inclusive, and climate-conscious choices for a sustainable future.
Want to dive deeper into the game? Explore the full Hotspot Earth presentation here.
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