Don't panic! Sim City can help us save the planet

Keith Stuart
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 9 September 2009 18.30 BST

Last week, at the CEDEC game conference in Japan, the creator of the legendary giant robot manga series Mobile Suit Gundam launched an astonishing attack on gaming. "I think that videogames are evil ... [Gaming] is not a type of activity that provides any support to our daily lives, and all these consoles are just consuming electricity! Videogames are assisting the death of our planet!"
I think the venerable Yoshiyuki Tomino was partially joking – especially as the Gundam series has spawned more videogames than I can begin to remember. But does he have a point?
In a sense, becoming a gamer does add a clown shoe-sized girth to your carbon footprint; you've got the console itself, that large-screen LCD TV you bought to get the most out of the HD visuals and maybe even a home theatre sound system; that's quite a drain on the power grid.
Of course, there are modest ways to reduce your impact – switching off your console when it is not in use, turning off the TV when you're downloading large files, buying games and movies via digital distribution, and investing in a solar panel gadget to charge your DS or PSP – but this isn't really addressing Tomino's fundamental complaint that we're all sedentary power vampires destroying the planet one shoot-'em-up at a time.
But I disagree. For a start, videogames have proved a highly engaging means of communicating ecological issues to young people – much more effective than old Al Gore shouting at us in front of a presentation. Most major charities are commissioning their own educational titles – Greenpeace, for example, has a whole selection– and there are children's MMOs such as Elf Island and Emerald Island designed to impart a digestible eco-message to kids. And of course, Sim City will tell you all you need to know about the consequences of mass industrialisation, without preaching to you about "doing your bit".
More importantly, the next generation of gamers could be the one to get us out of this whole darn mess. Almost every videogame is about the individual engaging with and defeating complex systems. While real life tends to make us feel hopeless and disengaged when it comes to massive global issues, the virtual environment is a comprehensible and crucially malleable space in which consequences are immediately apparent. Games like Sim City, Spore, Civilization and Tetris are not only an intellectual training ground, they foster and endorse a view that big problems are solvable. Far from assisting the death of the planet, this attitude is probably the only thing that can save it.