Inappropriately Joyous: Climate Games and River Rights with Meghna Jayanth and Joost Vervoort

SummaryWho doesn’t want to throw down a "Bullsh--!" card sometimes? All Will Rise is a narrative deck-building video game in which you play a climate lawyer seeking justice for the murder of a river. Meghna Jayanth is a narrative designer and co-founder of Speculative Agency, the studio behind the game. Joost Vervoort is Associate Professor of Transformative Imagination at Utrecht University and the game's impact director. They call their game "inappropriately joyous" - it's deeply serious about power and why we're in this mess, and deeply playful about getting out of it. And yes, you wield the B.S. card. I love how they've taken inspiration from the real rights of nature movement (the one that gave rivers in New Zealand and India legal personhood) and built a vibrant, playable world full of psychological strategy and fun. In this episode of Earthworks, we talk about: Joost's vision of civil society as a terrifyingly powerful force ("I think citizens and the people have incredible power if we work together and understand how much of the system depends on us.").Meghna's observation that mainstream games default to a very specific idea of who has agency in the world: the conqueror, the lone hero, the only person in a world of objects. All Will Rise builds a different narrative. We need more like this!The idea that games can be a rehearsal space: practice the hard conversations, try on different tactics, fail safely, then go outside and do it for real.