Page 37 - Adnews Magazine November-December 2021

Breaking down climate change for children
NRMA Insurance and Thinkerbell utilised Minecraft to explain natural disasters to students.
Aworkshop on climate change with NRMA Insurance inspired the Thinkerbell team to create an Australian learning experience with Minecraft.
Just over a year later, they launched Climate Warriors, a new Minecraft world designed to help educate and engage the next generation of young Australians in understanding the importance of preparedness against the increasing risk of natural disasters.
Set in a custom-built landscape inspired by Australian coastal towns, Climate Warriors is a free interactive game for the age 7-12 demographic, bringing to life how being prepared can further protect wildlife, homes and livelihoods against natural disasters such as bushfires.
Thinkerbell head thinker Sesh Moodley says the game was inspired by the 2019-2020 bushfire season: “When we created this piece, we really wanted to adopt those real-life scenarios that occurred during the Black Summer fires and task students with a series of drills to be able
to learn through this sort of digital immersion.”
The creators wanted to minimise and manage climate
change anxiety in students.
“It’s such a hard topic to cover and we did it in a way that
had a lot of meaning and context for kids,” says Moodley. Thinkerbell launched the game in April at St John the Baptist Catholic Primary School in Freshwater, NSW, to demonstrate the power of play. Craig Reucassel from ABC’s War on Waste attended, along with Arlo the Koala, to host an interactive experiment with specially created 3D Minecraft props, to highlight the impact of natural disasters for stu- dents who were among the first in Australia to play the new
Minecraft world.
The agency also partnered with three leading Australian
and global Minecraft YouTubers, including Eystreem, giving them exclusive access so they launched with their own play- through content on YouTube.
Climate Warriors was downloaded more than 450,000 times in the first month of launch and to October 29 has clocked at 3,588,412 downloads since becoming available in April 2020.
The game was tailored to meet Microsoft’s strict Minecraft standards.
“Branding is not allowed in Minecraft,” says Moodley.
The team instead identified some of NRMA’s distinct brand assets, such as NRMA Insurance brand ambassador Arlo the Koala and the NRMA helicopter, to “drive brand salience” and used NRMA’s tagline 'Help' on the helicopter in Minecraft, rather than the NRMA Insurance logo.
Microsoft innovator educator expert and Minecraft global mentor Stephen Elford guided the team through the Minecraft educational project. Elford says the design had to suit both teachers and students.
“While our focus was primarily on classroom use, the activities, interactions, discussion points and reflection opportunities we created for players, while playing through the game, were very carefully crafted,” says Elford.
WORDS BY
MAHA OBEID
The launch of Climate Warriors.
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