Video Games Are Sneaking in Climate Change Storylines

The Appleseed Timber Co. has a problem. Big, bad wolves are attacking workers. No one wants to leave the tent, and those trees aren’t going to chop themselves. Arthur Morgan is not much of a lumberjack, but he’s a deadeye with his Landcaster Repeater. The gun-for-hire is hired.

One of the many memorable side quests in Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018) see the player (as Morgan) hunt the predators. Blowing away God’s creatures is a subtle way into an important environmental message — and no, it’s not “Save the Wolves.” Not directly, anyway.

Alex Avard, project manager for Playing for the Planet — an industry group working to promote sustainability goals in video games — is especially fond of how this mission plays out. But the message comes over the course of several years, not a couple minutes of gunfire.

Video games can present the passing of time “in a way that a linear film or TV shows can’t,” Avard tells THR. “You see the results of your impact on the open world over time.”

And here’s the lesson RDR2 players end up learning: No wolves to inadvertently stop or slow deforestation results in, well, no more trees.

“It’s just a clearing — a barren clearing — and the camera pans out. [The game] doesn’t say anything; it just shows you the impacts, and that is really profound,” Avard says. “The messaging that has resonated the most with me is when it’s coming almost unexpectedly or surreptitiously while playing games that I really loved and enjoyed for different reasons.”

Red Dead Redemption 2 has earned the Playing for the Planet stamp of approval, as have other perhaps not-obvious mainstream games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023) and Pokémon Go (2016).

Mounting research shows video game storylines that “engage with environmental themes” — even quietly — are “resonating” with gamers worldwide, the Playing for the Planet Alliance says. The effort to subtly incorporate climate themes into games echoes similar initiatives in film and TV.

A new study, “Beyond the Endgame: How Climate and Nature Enhance Game Narrative,” a partnership between Context Collaborative and the NRDC’s Rewrite the Future project, praises Red Dead Redemption 2’s “meticulous attention to animal behavior and habitat,” which allows players to “absorb ecological knowledge organically through gameplay.”

For example, a survey from the University of Exeter in the U.K. found that, when tested, RDR2 players could identify an average of 20 percent more animal species in photos than nonplayers.

There is reason for developers to be bullish on green gaming. The video game ecosystem engages more than 3 billion players a year, per Playing for the Planet, and its annual revenue of nearly $200 billion exceeds film, television and music — combined. That’s a mighty platform for raising awareness.

The “prototypical environmental game,” according to Avard, is Final Fantasy VII, a title “so good they made it twice,” he quipped, referring to the original in 1997 and the remake in 2020. Final Fantasy VII follows mercenary Cloud Strife (OK, so the name’s a bit on the nose), who joins an ecoterrorist organization to stop a megacorporation from draining the planet’s life essence as an energy source.

Jenn Estaris, a game director and environmentalist, echoes Avard’s praise for the role-playing game, telling THR that it’s the “only game I really beat.” The experience had a major impact on her career.

In 2021, Estaris and studio ustwo games entered Green Game Jam, an annual contest built around an eco-theme (this year is “rainforests”). Their entry: a Monument Valley 2 expansion (Green Game Jam submissions consist of new downloadable content — DLC — made for existing, and live, games) called “The Lost Forest,” based off Peter Wohlleben’s New York Times best-selling book The Hidden Life of Trees. (The DLC cost players nothing more than their John Hancock on an environmentalism petition.) The submission was such a success that Monument Valley 3, directed by Estaris, carried a green-friendly theme throughout.

Monument Valley 3 follows Noor, an apprentice who “discovers the world’s light is fading” and “must rise to find a new source of power before the light of the world fades forever.”

Far too many games present the environment as a postapocalyptic lost cause, says Estaris, who consulted on the “Beyond the Endgame” study. She prefers, instead, to “elicit joy” in games by demonstrating the beauty of nature.

“What does joyful rebellion look like? How do we show that a sustainable future is a good thing?” she says. “It’s about understanding and reconnecting to our home and to each other and to a better tomorrow.”

The Playing for the Planet study similarly concludes that it’s more effective to inspire players into climate action than to scare them.

“While dystopian settings provide rich conflict, striking visuals and compelling gameplay, the saturation of doom may be counterproductive to climate action, potentially reinforcing fatalism rather than inspiring more positive collective visions of the future,” it reads.

Estaris says one challenge advocates of green storytelling in video games need to overcome is that the gaming industry sees sustainability as a nice-to-have, not a must-have. Statistics, she says, prove that false.

The study found 81 percent of respondents “would like to see more environmental content” in games, and 61 percent “would pay for that content if it adds to the experience.” The report cites a smaller-scale Yale University study that found similar results.

The biggest console-makers are taking some steps toward a greener future, though those tend to be discussed in terms of corporate policy and not the end-user experience. Microsoft, parent company of Xbox, plans on all its divisions being “carbon negative, water positive and zero waste” by 2030; Sony Group, its main rival in the next-gen console wars, says it is about a decade behind that. Not that Sony is asleep at the wheel.

Sony’s Climate Station, a free edutainment game for the PlayStation 5 and PS VR2, takes players through a year’s worth of weather events and charts the gradual warming of earth across the past 120 years. Its “Projections” mode plays out how different choices will lead to various environmental results.

Avard calls Xbox and Sony, which are both founding members in his group, “critical leaders” in the space. He says Climate Station is “amazing” and adds that Sony has seen “really good engagement” from its players.

Nintendo, though not a Playing for the Planet member, says one of its “most important responsibilities is to protect the environment. To that end, the company “engages in sustainable business practices.”

“Reducing our global energy consumption remains a priority for us and will continue as we work to advance these initiatives,” Nintendo shared through a spokesperson.

Because no one wants it to be Game Over, planet Earth.

This story appears in The Hollywood Reporter’s 2026 Sustainability Issue. Click here to read more.