Hong Kong-Based Board Game LOOP Promotes SDG 12 Sustainable Consumption & Suggests Alternatives To Materialism
Hong Kong-Based Board Game LOOP Promotes SDG 12 Sustainable Consumption & Suggests Alternatives To Materialism
Hong Kong-Based Board Game LOOP Promotes SDG 12 Sustainable Consumption & Suggests Alternatives To Materialism
By Tanuvi Joe
May 19, 2021
Summary
Educational board game LOOP: Life Of Ordinary People uses the concept of serious gaming as a channel for change, with the aim of questioning people's unsustainable consumption behaviours and consumers are taking the bait.
Created by founder Cyril Lee and launched by Hong Kong-based research and design studio Blackbody Lab, which uses the black body concept from the realm of physics to develop solutions that tackle social issues, LOOP encourages the practice of SDG 12 - Sustainable Consumption through its real-life inspired gameplay.
Lee based the game on his own living experience in the metropolitan city of Hong Kong to showcase how a materialistic lifestyle influenced various consumption choices.
To win the game, players have to recognize the consequences of MVO and decide sustainable alternatives to earn 'Happiness' eventually carrying out the strategy to execute the same.
With a real-life inspired credit card system and 20 player characters, the game has a special feature that includes the Event cards section, that lists around 30 consumption issues each with a research based note such as Loss Aversion, The Diderot Effect, The Decoy Effect, Planned Obsolescence and many more.
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has involved the board game as part of its Environment and Sustainability course, and every year, over 400 students play LOOP. "In a press release seen by Green Queen, Dr. Meike Saurwein from the Division of Environment and Sustainability at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said that she played the game as a class activity in one of her courses on Sustainability and Sustainable Consumption."It is engaging, interactive, and fun to play; and as an educational tool, it is able to visualise the relationship between human behaviour and the consequences of mindless overconsumption.
The game allows students to explore how to gain maximum value out of resources, and what kind of behavioural changes can help to sustain a good quality of life without depleting our society's resources.
Apart from the game based on sustainability, LOOP goes beyond and features sustainable material with the only plastic found in the lamination and coating of the box and game board.
The game will be shipped with zero plastic and will instead use reusable and degradable cardboard boxes and paper stuffing.
By August, the design studio will start mass production of the game and aims to ship it to all those that supported LOOP on the kickstarter campaign by November 2021.
Reference
Joe, T. (2021, May 19). Hong Kong-Based board game LOOP PROMOTES SDG 12 sustainable consumption & SUGGESTS alternatives to materialism. Green Queen. https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/hong-kong-based-board-game-loop-promotes-sdg-12-sustainable-consumption-suggests-alternatives-to-materialism/