Games

Mini Games

We are developing a collection of minigames to help raise awareness, improve preparedness, and create resilience in the face of disasters from wildfire. Our approach is community-driven design, and we are working directly with residents and local experts in communities that have been recently disrupted by wildfires, to ensure that the games reflect the lived experiences of people in wildfire-prone areas. We have published our findings from early design workshops: https://doi.org/10.1145/3613905.3650735

Thank you for joining us on this journey and we would love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out to mljohns@ucsc.edu for more information about our project and how you can get involved.

Play the game at this link:
https://ucsc-wildfire-games.itch.io/

Board Game

Using the strengths of a board game format, the game helps community members think about wildfire evacuations and practice community response to wildfires in a low-stakes, investigative environment, so that they’ll be ready if the real thing comes. This game was created by Tom Maiorana with collaboration from community members and an interdiciplinary team from UC Davis, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. Initial concepts were funded by a 2019 Seed Fund Award from CITRIS and the Banatao Institute at the University of California. Our team then received a Stage 1 Award from the National Science Foundation’s CIVIC Program. Most recently, our project has grown with support from the National Science Foundation’s Smart and Connected Communities grant.

So far, we’ve worked with several communities, such as Marin County and Tomales, CA, and are always looking to partner with more!

Learn more:
https://prototypingresilience.com/