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The Green Game Awards is a celebration of the work done by the industry over the past year to engage and motivate an audience of billions on the topic of climate change, nature and the environment.
This section of the Green Game Awards will exclusively judge the work of this year’s Green Game Jam participants. There will be five categories of new awards that will be open to anyone in the games industry to apply for. More details on the categories and criteria will be provided by the end of July.
This document is intended to be a guide for participants to consider in the background when building and carrying out the activation, and to inform how they write up their activation as part of the awards submission process.
Download the PDF version of this webpage here.
Lisa Pak | Head of Operations | lisa.pak@un.org
Louisa Keight | Project Manager | louisa.keight@playing4theplanet.org
These categories and criteria of the Green Game Awards are intended to celebrate and showcase the great work studios have done over the course of the 5th edition of the Green Game Jam (GGJ).
Throughout the GGJ developers have been challenged to implement green activations into their games. An activation can be anything ranging from time limited events, to new levels, to marketing campaigns on social media or at physical events. These activations are what will be judged using the below criteria.
Winners will receive an engraved trophy made from 100% recycled materials by Better Future Factory to display their contribution to the project of green gaming in their office.
Find out more about last year’s awards here.
Those wishing to submit for the Green Game Jam portion of the Green Game Awards must be a registered participant in the Green Game Jam 2024 and must fill out the awards submission document. Submissions will be considered for every category of awards where they meet the criteria.
For anyone who is not a registered participant of the Green Game Jam 2024, please stay tuned for the award criteria to be released by the end of July. There is also an opportunity for your work to be celebrated.
Awards have four main criteria with a possible bonus criteria that is specific to its category. Judges will score on a likert scale of 1 - 5 points, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. (0 for no points / not applicable)
The Playing for the Planet team will shortlist all submissions using this criteria and compile a list of 20 games for each category. The judges will then review these submissions under the same criteria and decide on a winner. The Trailblazer, Newcomer and Jam Spirit will be judged by the Playing for the Planet team.
External judges have been chosen and allocated to categories in which they share an expertise.
The award categories for this year are as follows:
Real-World Impact | To what extent has the team demonstrated a quantitatively and/or qualitatively successful impact of the activation in the physical world?
Design | How well did the team use the unique aspects of their game to engage players to take real-world actions for the planet?
Education | How effective is the activation as a method of communicating the impact and importance of one or more of the chosen themes?
Innovation | How bold, brave, risk-taking, and/or creative is the activation?
Judges: A panel of judges from various Google gaming teams.
Chosen by representatives from Google.
Criteria Weighting
Real-World Impact 50%
Design 30%
Education 10%
Innovation 10%
Judges: UNEP Digital Transformations Team
Chosen by UNEP’s Digital Transformations Team, the award for the activation that best incorporates the food, waste and/or restoration themes.
Criteria Weighting
Real-World Impact 30%
Design 20%
Education 10%
Innovation 10%
Bonus: Use of Theme 30%
Bonus Criteria - Use of Theme | How effectively has the studio incorporated the key themes of food, waste, and/or restoration into their green activations to encourage pro-environmental behaviours among players?
Judges: Shay Thompson, George Osborn, Robert Purchase
Chosen by a team of games media professionals, the award for the activation that excels in storytelling and thought leadership.
Criteria Weighting
Real-World Impact 30%
Design 20%
Education 10%
Innovation 10%
Bonus: Storytelling 30%
Bonus Criteria - Storytelling | How effectively does the storytelling in the activation engage and captivate players, making them want to share, explore, and learn more about the cause, game, or studio?
Judges: Trevin York, Clayton Whittle, Arnaud Fayolle, and Shayne Hayes
Chosen by representatives of the IGDA Climate SIG, a group of changemakers in the games industry. This award is for the activation that makes the best use of motivational techniques to build the foundations required for action, as provided in the workshop series.
Criteria Weighting
Real-World Impact 30%
Design 20%
Education 10%
Innovation 10%
Bonus: Motivation 30%
Bonus Criteria - Motivation | What techniques does the activation use to build the psychological foundations required for action?
Judges: Playing for the Planet
The award for the best activation made by a game that has not previously participated in the Green Game Jam. There is no bonus criteria for this award.
Criteria Weighting
Real-World Impact 50%
Design 20%
Education 10%
Innovation 10%
Judges: Playing for the Planet
The award for the activation that has broken out of the status quo. It has the wow effect, the unexpected. This has no bonus criteria but the innovation criteria is weighted highest.
Criteria Weighting
Real-World Impact 30%
Design 20%
Education 10%
Innovation 50%
Judges: Playing for the Planet and UNEP Digital Transformation Team
The award for the studio that lives and breathes the values of the Green Game Jam: collaboration, sharing best practices, working as one team, and cheerleading other studios. This does not have a weighting breakdown.
Voted for by players
As in past years, there is the opportunity for players to vote on their favourite activation. This will happen in the week of September 9th when most of the activations are live for players to engage with.
How many players can you get to vote for your activation? In previous years many participants have used their social media channels both player and industry facing to try to get as many votes as possible. Last year it was a close tie between the 3 finalists.
Voting happens on the Playing for the Planet website. Playing for the Planet will create a page for each activation on the website here. On this page we will show
This year we will run the player’s choice voting once the activations are live so that everyone who would like to participate has a chance to engage with the activations.
The activation with the most votes will win this award, which will be announced with all the other awards on November 18th.
