Free browser game
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Cultural
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Accessibility friendly
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Based on real world research
Free browser game
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No download required
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Accessibility friendly
-
Based on real world research
CASE STUDY: Future Farming Challenge
Choices that Grow
Future Farming Challenge is a multi-player digital life simulation currently developed in partnership with the Bioeconomy Science Institute and Hum Interactive. Players step into the role of a New Zealand farmer, navigating three rounds of seasonal decision-making. Each round surfaces genuine tensions between economic survival and environmental stewardship.
Across the game, players manage paddocks, wetlands, horticulture and technology, balancing productivity against long-term land and water health. Disruption events and shared community challenges test those choices further, helping players measure trade-offs as conditions change. Every decision plays out visibly on the farm board, so the consequences, good and bad, accumulate in front of the player rather than staying abstract.
The Challenge
New Zealand farmers face a difficult balancing act: the pressure to stay economically viable, season after season, alongside a growing responsibility to protect the land, water and biodiversity that sustain the farm long term. These pressures rarely show up as a single, obvious choice. They surface gradually, through weather, markets, and the slow accumulation of decisions made under uncertainty. The challenge for Bioeconomy Science Institute (BSI) was to help people feel that tension directly putting players inside the farmers shoes, making the decisions, so the trade-offs between economic survival and environmental stewardship become something they can visualise and feel.
Project Outcomes
Making systemic trade-offs tangible
By turning economic and environmental pressures into concrete, sequential decisions, the simulation gives players a felt sense of how farm-level choices compound over time. This is something difficult to convey through reports or presentations alone.
Shared and community-facing challenges
Alongside individual paddock and property management, players face disruption events and community-wide challenges, reflecting how farming decisions ripple outward and interact with the choices of others.
A platform for dialogue with BSI
As a multi-player experience, the game is designed to be used in workshops as a conversation starter, giving BSI a practical tool to bring farmers, researchers and stakeholders into the same room and surface real perspectives on land use, trade-offs and the bioeconomy.
"Geo A.R. turned a complex physical game into a simple, effective interface. Jolene and her team were fantastic to work with. We can't wait to share our game and help farmers and communities talk about the future of farming with confidence."
Suzie Greenhalgh, Group Principal Researcher
Resources & Associated Papers
Bioeconomy Science Institute (BSI). (n.d.).Home page. Bioeconomy Science Institute. https://www.bioeconomyscience.co.nz/