Nieuw online spel: “The Fossil Game”

The Fossil Game is a “choose your own adventure” browser game where you experience – with real-life examples – how fossil-fuel multinationals make decisions that harm people and the environment because of incentives in our current economic system and shareholder capitalism. You, the player, take over the operations of a big fossil-fuel multinational. You have mines and boreholes everywhere, supply to the whole world, and employ thousands of people. Your goal is to make a profit and keep the company’s share price up to keep shareholders happy. You are confronted with crises and difficult decisions. Can you do good and keep your shareholders happy? You learn the consequences of your choices for the environment and the local people at extraction sites, and also for the company’s share price and your shareholders. With the current system of shareholder capitalism, there are often not enough incentives to do the right thing. Obviously, the storyline is fictional and simplified to fit our 21st century attention spans. The news articles we link to in our fact checks, however, are from real life. These are not even rare exceptions: there are so many examples of fossil multinationals acting unethically that it could be argued that ethical behaviour is the exception. Fossil companies spend millions on PR to convince you that they are responsible and ethical, are working hard to be greener and cleaner or that it is in fact your “carbon footprint” which is responsible for their behaviour. This game simply presents the wide body of evidence to the contrary. There is a huge body of evidence that corporations operating in the Global South exploit weak oversight and trigger-happy governments to maximise their profits. This has deadly consequences for the environment, the planet, and not least those who push back.

Speel het spel hier.