Dev Log 1- Conducting Research for game design

Over the duration of the past weeks, I’ve been researching climate change for our design challenge. To be more specific, I’ve been looking into biodiversity loss and the sixth extinction event. Presently, we are losing tons of animals, plants, and insects at an alarming rate; it’s a real cause for concern. It's incredibly interesting considering how current a topic it is for our generation. I believe that it’s very important that everyone at least learns a little bit about climate change so that we can better control our impact.

To research this topic I went through google scholar and other peer reviewed scientific journals. I wanted to make sure that the data I gathered was inscrutable and could be reliably used in a game. There are a lot of conflicting opinions in the scientific community on whether or not we are in a sixth extinction event. Different sources argue that biodiversity is lost at a consistent rate and that the amount we are losing currently is no different than in the past. Additionally, they state that extinction is not necessarily bad for biodiversity. They state that pressure is good for life because it forces new evolutions and interesting changes. While I’d say the latter is mostly conjecture, the first point is flat out wrong. Currently, we are losing biodiversity at 100x the rate we were in the past 400 years. Furthermore, that statistic was calculated with notably “conservative numbers” that are most likely much lower than reality.

Another point that I found interesting, is that scientists have recently moved away from endangered and critically endangered as blanket terms. They have started classifying animals by the types of conditions they are weak to (urban sprawl, climate change, habitat loss etc.).

Starting this design challenge, I want to focus on biodiversity loss as the main issue or plot device. I think the new classifications for animals is a good bit of data to create unique characters. For instance, each animal could be weak to a certain type of enemy similar to Pokémon. Overall, I want this game to have a misleadingly cheery atmosphere. I want the final outcome to be kind of grim, that way it motivates players to pursue climate action.