Tao-Tao Chen, Yen-Lin Chen, Yu-Xuan Su and An-Qi Zheng. Art by Sy Li, Masha Tace, Will Meadows and Sarah Lafser. Artana, 2021.
2-4 players | 45 minutes | Age 14+
Power Failure is a card and dexterity game where players try to collect city cards which account for points at the end of the game. The game involves building power stations, which come with varying levels of risk when activated, to try and generate enough power to win a city card. When building and activating power stations players must add wooden blocks onto the carbon tower, the success of these additions dictates the success of the player’s turn. The more unsustainable the action, the more blocks must be added to the tower. For example, when activating a coal power station, 3 blocks must be added, whilst a renewable power source automatically accumulates energy without the need to add any blocks to the tower.
Although the game uses figures likely to be realistic to current energy production, this encourages the building of nuclear, gas and coal power stations over greener energy sources. The renewable power stations don’t require any activation and come with less risk. However, with the amount of green energy produced usually relying on which card is dealt for that turn, sometimes the green power stations can produce zero energy. The game tries to combat this failing of renewable energy by making players add more carbon blocks to the tower when activating fossil fuel power stations. However, there are event cards which can allow the player to escape this risk.
Through its mechanics, the game communicates the carbon cost of energy generation, prompting play decisions about balancing energy production with emissions. The renewable energy sources in the game are represented as zero risk, suggesting that, should such energy sources be able to compete with fossil fuels in terms of production, they would solve the current problem of energy production leading to carbon emissions. However, as Mike Berners-Lee points out, the past 150 years of energy history tells us that the arrival of new sources have dented but not stopped the growth of other energy sources. In other words, energy efficiencies often produce concomitant energy demands and until energy consumption declines overall, there is no way renewables can replace fossil fuels (Berners-Lee 2019: 81-2).
There are several ways in which the game could be hacked to make the game engage players in more complex thinking around energy production, efficiency and consumption. For example, one hack to the game could ask players to work collaboratively and exchange cards to produce the most efficient, high output system. Several of the coal, gas and nuclear cards could simply be taken out of the deck to encourage players to build greener energy supplies. Alternatively, the power outage for renewable cards could be increased whilst giving a larger forfeit to those who are using finite resources. Such an addition might help simulate the economic policies that will have to go hand-in-hand with transitions to greener energy, as explored in Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel The Ministry of the Future (2020), which advocates world banks issuing carbon draw-down currencies and carbon taxes to encourage a rapid shift away from fossil fuel extraction and burning.
Adapted from the Ecogame Ludography entry written by Seth Etchells, Charlotte Gislam, Lucy Roberts, Chloé Germaine, Paul Wake and Jack Warren.