Global Gamification Gathering on Sustainability

Could games be used to negotiate a more favorable future?

By Giacomo Taddei

Business Development Intern & Negotiation Associate

Rational Games, Inc.

March 1, 2025

When games tackle serious issues, the impact is much greater than you’d expect.

This idea brought together collaborators from around the world at the Global Gamification Gathering on Sustainability this past weekend in Krakow.

Applying gamification to sustainability efforts presents a powerful opportunity. To

understand how games can support sustainability, we first need to examine what truly motivates people to take sustainable action.

Games continuously have to engage the brain, players can participate only willingly.

This voluntary nature makes them a very insightful tool for understanding motivation. If we want to encourage sustainable behavior, identifying and leveraging the right motivational drivers is crucial.

Pictures from The Global Gamification Gathering 2025

To form a deeper understanding let's dive in:

Motivation Drives Action

Keynote speaker and gamification guru Yu-Kai Chou shared his Octalysis Framework,

which identifies eight core drivers behind human behavior. Every action we take is motivated

by at least one of these drivers.

One powerful insight: long-term change is fueled by Epic Meaning & Calling—the sense of contributing to something bigger than oneself.

A compelling example? OceanHero is a search engine where each search helps remove plastic from the ocean. Their motto says it all:

"By searching with OceanHero, you can help save the oceans from plastic pollution."

This gives an epic sense to a straightforward yet virtuous activity, using a sustainable search

engine.

Businesses, policymakers, and organizations can create lasting engagement by integrating meaningful motivation into sustainability efforts. Focusing on long-term drivers like Epic Meaning—rather than short-term motivators like Pain/Problem Avoidance—ensures that gamification strategies inspire sustained rather than fleeting action. If motivation were based purely on immediate concerns like scarcity or fear, these frameworks might lead to frustration rather than empowerment.

Thinking with Your Hands Unlocks New Perspectives

Sustainability is not just about motivation—it’s also about creativity. Playful approaches

create a safe space for experimentation, fostering unexpected ideas and skill development.

In a powerful workshop, Lucy Hawthorne and Richard Spencer from Climate Play demonstrated how LEGO Serious Play can break habitual thinking patterns and

spark deeper conversations around sustainability. Instead of approaching questions through

traditional logic, participants first built models with LEGO, assigning meaning as they

went—essentially thinking with their hands.

This shift in approach led to faster, deeper, and more constructive discussions, making

complex and emotionally charged topics easier to explore.

By externalizing thoughts into tangible models, participants were able to visualize

connections and emotions that would be difficult to articulate through words alone. This

method allowed for more nuanced discussions, fostering collaborative problem-solving and

making sustainability challenges feel both personal and solvable.

Games Create a Safe Space to Learn and Act

More than ever, there is growing recognition of the power of games in understanding

motivation, unpacking complex challenges, and training critical skills. For 25 years, Rational

Games have been using playful methods to teach negotiation to serious people—and this

conference reinforced why this approach is so effective.

By combining long-term motivation, creativity, and structured play, gamification proves to be

a powerful tool for change. Whether in negotiation, sustainability, or beyond, games allow

people to engage, learn, and take meaningful action in a way that traditional methods often

fail to achieve.