Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation

The ocean is a vital source of many valuable resources and services, such as food supplied through fishing, energy derived from oil and wind power, and often overlooked materials like sand, salt, and minerals. Each of these resources is finite by nature, so the need to sustainably manage them is paramount if we wish to ensure their availability alongside healthy ocean ecosystems for future generations. Doing so will require science-guided policies and laws that are crafted in coordination with stakeholder input from ocean-users and members of the public. Sustainability does not just require protection of ocean resources, but encouragement of human welfare as well. As such, public and stakeholder input is vital. However, engagement can be limited by barriers of inaccessibility: ocean-conservation topics are often complicated, and the policy processes and economic solutions we use to address them are equally so. This project offers a unique solution to fill that gap by representing real world issues and policy processes as a cooperative, physical board game. This process is called gamification: applying game design elements to non-game contexts. By gamifying ocean policy processes and making conservation decisions fun, Eight Oceans strives to demystify opaque policy processes, empower players to learn and discuss a myriad of complex ocean topics, and inspire player involvement and action in the real world. This game was created by assigning game mechanics and elements to real world processes and creating a conservation-focused objective for players to accomplish. This basic game ruleset was then put through many rounds of playtesting with a diversity of players, who provided feedback to revise and create new iterations of the game. The resulting prototype version serves as the framework for a more fully tested and complete product, intended for eventual marketability. Through the lens of gaming, Eight Oceans intends to bring important topics in ocean conservation to a unique new audience.