Playscreen, players and game modes

The play screen will represent a dairy and crop farm landscape.

The player will be able to click on each of the landscape elements (farm buildings, animal housings, fields, animals, hedges, wetlands...) and choose from a list of available agroecological practices.

Information will be available for each practice, as well as a description of its main effects. The availability of practices will be regulated by working time and budget constraints, as well as some necessary developments to access novel techniques.

Steering indicators (productive, social, environmental and economic indicators) will be displayed on screen in order for the player to see how far from her/his goal she/he is.

The serious game will allow the player to pilot a dairy and crop farm, located in one of the four partner countries (Belgium, France, Italy, Poland). The player will have to make her/his farm evolve by implementing various agroecological practices, in order to attain a defined objective.

Players will :

• take adequate decisions to manage a transition from conventional towards agroecological farming, taking into account restricted resources (e.g. workload, money) and adapting to unforeseen events and hazards (e.g. pest attacks, climatic events)
• study the multiple consequences of practices and decisions (e.g. crop rotation, pesticide applications, animal feeding, manure management) in the short and long term on the functioning of the farming system
• experiment a range of practices and observe their impacts on sustainability indicators (economic, environmental, social)
• by doing and playing and thanks to the multi-level multi-entry design of the game, the learners will gain knowledge on agroecological practices and their combination, and understand the systemic effects of practice changes on a farm.  

Several game modes will be available.

• “Systemic thinking”: starting from a typical dairy and crop farm, the player will have to improve as much as possible the overall sustainability of the farm by mobilizing agroecological practices.
• “Agroecological practices”: the player will be able to read some information on agroecological practices and their effects, and will be able to test their short and long-term effects on the farming system.
• “Teacher mode”: the teacher will have access to a fully customizable game, and will be able to choose the starting situation, the objectives for the student, and the means to do it. Depending on chosen settings, the level of difficulty of this game mode will vary.

The results of the decisions taken by the player will be evaluated by a set of social, economic and environmental indicators, allowing the player to assess the correctness of the adopted strategy and the distance from the assumed objectives.

The game will be available for all freely online.