I appreciate this feedback, sincerely. I’ve had some of the same doubts myself. I welcome your scepticism.
One of the important issues you raised is what I call the temporal problem. Some of the data we use to measure the health of our planet does indeed take years or decades to accumulate or mean anything. Engagement with a game can mean a few minutes for a mobile game or a few months for a big AAA game. So it’s about syncing the rate that earth data changes with gameplay loops. The good news is that there is a lot of earth data that changes a lot, from electrical pulses in mycellium networks to the number of tons of trash collected in a weekend beach clean-up project.
I’m early in developing this platform, and just this week filed articles incorporation so we can start raising money. ESRI is the first organization to offer concrete support. I’ve spent the past year and a half consulting with people who know a lot more than I do about various aspects of this vision, and have been encouraged by the feedback. I’ve talked to people at Microsoft, Ubisoft, Unity, Amazon, the UN Environmental Programme, the IGDA Climate SIG, Ustwo Games, Flash Forest, the Surfrider Foundation, land trusts, independent game developers, AAA game developers, IoT device manufacturers, computer science professors, and basically anyone who will listen. You’re the first person to call this idea a fantasy.