Catan’s New Board Game Lets You Pit Fossil Fuels Against Green Energy

Source: Fast Company, Kristin Toussaint
Photo: Courtesy of Catan GmbH

With Catan: New Energies, the iconic board game maker is challenging players to think about the realities of climate change.

Whether you’re a board game enthusiast or just a hobby gamer, you’re likely familiar with Catan. Released in 1995 under the name Settlers of Catan and created by Klaus Teuber, the game has sold more than 40 million copies. It introduced the world to the fictional island of Catan, set in the year 900. Players are settlers on the uninhabited island, tasked with acquiring resources (lumber, brick, ore, grain, and wool) and building settlements, cities, and roads.

Fast-forward to the 21st century, and the island of Catan now has new challenges—and resources. Facing a booming population, the island needs energy, and lots of it. In a soon-to-be-released edition called Catan: New Energies, players will be tasked with deciding whether to build fossil fuel power plants quickly and cheaply—which also increases pollution—or invest more slowly in renewables. The most eco-friendly player won’t necessarily always win—but if pollution levels rise past a certain threshold, catastrophe hits: The game ends for everyone, and the player who prioritized sustainability emerges victorious.

That collective impact mirrors the unequal effects of climate change: It’s often island nations that produce far less greenhouse gas emissions that have to bear the brunt of climate disaster. In this way, the game reflects “the unfairness of the world,” says Benjamin Teuber, managing director of Catan GmbH, the business that develops and licenses Catan products. He’s also the son of Catan creator Klaus. Together, father and son designed Catan: New Energies, before Klaus passed away in April 2023.

But though there’s unfairness in the game, there’s also opportunity to work together. Pollution levels limit the amount of resources produced on the island, stymying growth. Even if players first opt for cheap fossil fuels, they might switch to renewables to gain positive effects. (Though there are no carbon capture methods in the game, building renewables acts to reduce pollution—a bit of creative license necessary to make the game mechanics work).

“Very often at the end of the game, you see everybody completely freaking out like, ‘Oh man, we’ve got to save the world!’” Benjamin Teuber says. “But the pollution is already here, like what did you expect? And then maybe people start working together, and that’s a really nice effect that makes you think ‘if we do all work together and all did our share, then it can work, and all it cost is that we grow a little bit slower.’”

HOW CATAN CAME TO CONFRONT CLIMATE CHANGE

Catan: New Energies is set to be released later in 2024, but it’s not the game’s first time confronting the topic of climate change. In 2011, the company released an expansion pack for its base game called Catan: Oil Springs, offering a scenario in which oil was discovered on the island. “Oil is scarce and its use does not come without cost. Using oil produces pollution as well as climate changing emissions, which bring with them the threat of coastal flooding—and absolute disaster,” the description for the expansion pack reads. “With the discovery of oil on Catan, its inhabitants face a new challenge: deciding whether the common good is worth limiting oil usage or whether the pursuit of victory is worth the risk of ruin.”

The idea for Catan: Oil Springs actually came from outside of the company and the Teuber family. Erik Assadourian, then a senior fellow at the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research organization, and Ty Hansen, an office administrator at the American Bar Association, designed the game as part of a “Transforming Cultures Project” at the institute. Normally, the company doesn’t accept outside ideas, but for that one they made an exception. It was so interesting, Teuber says, that it inspired him and his father to think about energy consumption more broadly, and the idea of exploring fossil fuels versus renewable sources of electricity in the game.

But expanding on that energy idea was complicated, and new projects kept pushing it aside. “But then in COVID times, my dad and I, we found this idea again,” Teuber says. The world had changed since they first tried to tackle climate change: immense advancements in environmental science and renewable energy, and even more urgency around highlighting, and taking action on, climate issues.

THE CHALLENGES OF NEW ENERGIES’ GAMEPLAY

Still, figuring out how Catan: New Energies would work logistically was tricky. At the core of that is an issue relevant to any board game, whether you’re making an immunization for a pandemic, carrying out a world war, or settling an uninhabited island: the game is just a simplified simulation of the real world. “It’s always the same challenge—to wrap this huge complexity of an outside environment into a board game,” Teuber says. “That has been very much the challenge here, because on top of that, I’m not a scientist.”

Teuber enlisted Assadourian’s help once again to translate the complexities of climate science into the game. The game’s rule book even dives into the realities of the energy transition that spurred the climate crisis, noting the start of fossil fuel use in the industrial age and pointing out how humans have released trillions more tons of CO2 into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.

When it comes to the actual gameplay of Catan: New Energies, “you have to know that it’s a simplified version of the reality, of course,” Teuber says. “But in the essence, the idea is what’s important.” As a game author, he needed to make renewable energy more expensive so that it balanced the questions of, “do I want to grow fast, but at the cost of polluting the environment, or do I spend more of resource X and grow slower but more responsibly?” That resource became “research” cards. It takes more turns for players to accumulate those cards, making renewable energy growth more costly and slow. Today, it’s cheaper to build and use renewables than to build coal or natural gas plants—but those are somewhat recent developments. Between 2009 and 2019, the price of solar electricity dropped 89%, thanks to huge leaps in technological advancements.

There’s no carbon sequestering in the game, because it was too complicated to add in. Instead, building renewable energy counters pollution by putting “green tokens” into play. In the beginning of the game, when players have to draw a token to trigger an event, there are only brown tokens, representing hazards like air pollution, environmental pollution, and flooding. As players research clean energy, green tokens get added to the mix. Pulling those instead of a brown token comes with rewards, like allowing players with more renewable power plants to take additional resource cards. In reality, carbon removal technology is in the works, it just needs more research to scale up—which ties back in to the game’s new resource card.

FROM THE GAME TO THE REAL WORLD

The eco-friendly push extends to the physical materials of Catan: New Energies. Most English editions of Catan already don’t use plastic pieces, and they’re assembled in the U.S. Catan: New Energies materials are made with sustainably sourced wood and paper, and there’s no plastic shrink wrap around the game box; just small stickers keep it sealed. Kelli Schmitz, director of brand development at Catan Studio, says the company looked at every decision they could to minimize the production’s impact. “Of course, that means yeah, it’s a little more expensive,” she says. (It’s available for preorder for $69.99.) “It’s not a cheap game—it can’t be. I think that just illustrates the point of the game, making those conscious decisions where you can. Nothing’s going to be perfect, but all those things add up to something that is better than what it was before.”

More and more games (both board and video) have tackled the topic of climate change. But since Catan is a legacy game brand with a built-in audience, it might have a unique chance to reach players around this issue. “The more mass appeal of the Catan brand gives us a bigger voice. It gives us a bigger platform,” says Schmitz. “And, obviously, I think more responsibility to use that platform to talk about important things.”

Climate change is undoubtedly a serious topic, but Teuber maintains that the game is still fun. To him and his father, Catan: New Energies was designed as an experience, not a lecture. “For me, it was always the best experience to learn while doing, and that is true for this game, too,” he says. “You can play it, and you’ll get it, intrinsically. If you play five times, 10 times, you’ll figure out: If I behave like ‘this’, ‘that’ will happen.”

Teuber predicts most players will heavily pollute the island of Catan in their first game. “Me included,” he says. “It’s still my first move.” But over time, your gameplay may surprise you. Teuber plays Catan: New Energies often with two editors he calls “aggressive.” “The three of us, we always make the world go to hell.” But at some point, they tried playing differently, investing more in clean energy. One of those editors is from an area of Germany dedicated to clean energy, “and he said, ‘it’s actually true that I should behave more like my city does,’ and then we all played green,” Teuber says.

Those insights may spill out beyond the board game. Teuber says Catan: New Energies has sparked discussions with friends, like about riding a bike rather than driving a car on a particular day. “The outcome of this game won’t change the world. But maybe your way of thinking will change, and you can later go and change the world.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/91070634/how-to-reinvigorate-your-brand-content