One of the cooler possibilities about an immersive, interactive game is that it’s one of the best ways to teach empathy. A game can put you in someone else’s shoes, and can make you feel for the character. It gives you a view of why people make the decisions that they do.

I was in Te Papa National Museum the other day, in an exhibition about the colonisation of New Zealand.
The impact it’s had on the plants and animals is quite large: more than 75% of the country used to be covered by forest (15% now), and many species have become extinct.

There was a game there for kids called “Survivor”. Basically, your character was an Alien that had to leave your home planet and live on earth (An analogy to the colonists coming to NZ from England). In the game you pick various species of animals and plants to take with you to.
The possibilities here are huge, not to preach about the evils of humanity, but to help the kids understand why the colonists (Maori & European) brought “useful” species with them.

Unfortunately, the only possible outcomes were:
1. The species you took with you didn’t survive in the different climates, forcing you to leave…
2. They struggled, and you went mostly hungry…
3. Or they thrived, but killed off the native animals or plants.

It’s not possible for a kid to pick species that do fine alongside the native species (like sheep do), so it comes across as a little preachy.

However, great work to them for coming up with a fun way to explain the complexities of bringing new species when colonising.