Sustain-air-bility® Games & learning
What happens when every airline has to win?
Turning aviation decarbonisation into a strategy game with a shared objective, and exploring how it translates to phones and inflight screens.
Project statusBrowser game with platform adaptations
How it came about
Sustain-air-bility began with the idea that a difficult subject can become easier to discuss when people have to make decisions inside it. Aviation decarbonisation involves timing, investment, negotiation and trade-offs. I wanted to make those tensions playable.
The central rule is simple: get every airline to net zero by 2050. One airline doing well is not enough. The browser game supports one to four players, and the wider project includes work on iOS and an inflight entertainment adaptation.
The difficult part
The challenge is to simplify the subject without removing the reasons it is difficult. If every sensible decision is obvious, there is no game. If short-term advantage always wins, the shared objective becomes decoration. Players need to feel why coordination matters.
Adapting the experience for different settings raises another problem. A browser, a phone and an aircraft entertainment screen do not offer the same controls or attention. The rules can remain consistent while the way people learn and operate them needs to change.
What I learnt
I have learnt that the outcome rule does a great deal of the teaching. When everyone shares the result, negotiation stops being a side activity and becomes part of the system.
Building the game has also made me think about what to leave out. It needs enough detail to make a decision interesting, while remaining understandable around a table or on a screen. I want the choices to give people something worth discussing afterwards, including where the simplified game differs from the real world.