Swamps are spooky. This is the prevailing notion from the depiction of wetlands – the saturated lands of swamps, bogs, and fens – in the media. From the folktales of Will-o’-the-Wisps guiding travellers astray to the many, many swamp monsters of Scooby Doo, the sign is clear: a scrawled “stay away from here” thrust deep in the mud, writ by centuries of storytellers. As a reputation it’ ...[Read More]
This year as part of EGU’s 4th annual Games Day we ran two Geoscience Game Jams. A game jam is a challenge to games developers to create games for a specific theme and in limited time. They are becoming increasingly popular and many foster extremely active communities of shared knowledge. We really hope to grow and expand these game jams and create those connections between geoscientists and games ...[Read More]
This year once again the EGU General Assembly of 2021 will be going online, however unlike in 2020, for vEGU21 the Programme Committee, Council and other organising members have much more time to prepare this year. So in follow up to last year’s online stream of our very popular EGU Games Night, for 2021 we are delighted to introduce the EGU Games Jam – co-ordinated by the EGU Games fo ...[Read More]
Ocean acidification could be described as climate change’s evil twin, not that it needs one. The world’s oceans are partly absorbing the carbon dioxide we are pumping into the planet’s atmosphere, which then reacts with seawater and forms carbonic acid. This process decreases the pH of the oceans, making them more acidic. If you are a crab resident of the ocean, this is not good news. Norma ...[Read More]
The last two years, myself and the Games4Geo crew (Sam, Rolf, Jaz and Liz) have had an absolute blast running the Geoscience Games Night. We have been blown away by your enthusiasm to share and play geoscience games. Who would have thought we’d have managed to bring together over 300 geoscientists to play games but take a look back at last year’s Games Night – it was rammed and people were p ...[Read More]
For years, geoscientists have been both fascinated and perplexed by the beautiful (yet often inaccurate) landscapes present in several video games. But are people with a geoscientific education better at telling ‘fake’ natural features from real ones? Rolf Hut, an assistant professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and his colleagues sought to answer this question in a new st ...[Read More]