Those who work to plan and prepare for disasters will often use a method called counterfactuals. It proposes ‘what if?’ questions to the planners and they work out how they would respond if that circumstance arose. Similarly, after something bad happens we often look back and think about what we might have done differently.
Downward counterfactuals combine these two methods. It looks back at something that happened and asks ‘what if this other thing happened too?’. For example, planners might look back at how they responded to a disaster and then ask what they would have done if they lost power to their operations room, or if the phone network went down, for example.
Good Morning is a very simple solo roleplay game. It asks you to first generate a task and then generate a complicating factor. You respond by writing down how you would respond to these. Then, generate a further complicating factor to add to your scenario. How does this change your response?
To generate a task or factor, roll two 6-sided dice, one after the other. The first roll is the first digit and the second the second digit. For example, roll a 2, then a 3, your result is 23. Then find that number on the corresponding table.
This isn’t meant to be serious, just a bit of fun to get you thinking – and imagining – how you might act is some very normal and some very odd circumstances. I hope you enjoy!
Let me know if you tried it and what happened by leaving a comment below.
This article originally appeared in the April issue of Imagination Engines. To get my content earlier and sent straight to your email, subscribe using the box below.
Easter is probably my favourite, and busiest, time of year. In recent years it has been filled with lots of gaming activities that I just love. 2025 has been no different.
Obviously, the European Geoscience Union General Assembly (EGU) in Vienna looms large over Easter. It is often the highlight of the year for me. I’ve attending it for fifteen years now and Vienna feels like a home from home. This year I had the great and rare joy of representing my employer at the meeting, something I had been advocating for and immensely valued and appreciated. In addition, I still got the opportunity to do my usual bits for the (unofficial) Geoscience Games Day.
Double chin warning!
In 2025, my activities included:
Two presentations for my day job work, plus lots of networking and learning about the latest science from the hydrology and flood worlds.
Hosting the Games for Geoscience oral session and the Geoscience Games Night.
Running a short course based on Adventures in Model Land whilst ‘presenting’ a poster on it at the same time.
Hosting a pop-up networking event for neurodivergent attendees of the meeting.
I also got the chance to attend the second Play for the Planet network meeting, which was much closer to home.
You can read all about these things, and more, in the newsletter below. Subscribe to get future issues sent straight to your email.
Celebrating the EGU Games Day: A Look Back
April 30th 2025 was officially the eight edition of the (unofficial) European Geoscience Union Games Day! Where does the time go, eh? In this post I take a look back at the origins of the Games Day and the story so far.
For the uninitiated, the General Assembly of the European Geoscience Union, often just referred to as EGU, is Europe’s largest gathering of geoscientists. Each year, around 21,000 of them converge in Vienna to share science and schnitzel. For the last seven years, Wednesdays have been what I have dubbed the Games Day, featuring our science sharing session – Games for Geoscience – and our social event – the Geoscience Games Night.
It all began when Sam Illingworth and Rolf Hut approached me in 2017 about convening a gaming session as part of the education and outreach programme. The following year we held the first ever Games for Geoscience session, thankfully with enough abstracts for both a session of talks and a session of posters.
Rolf and Sam at EGU 2019, amazingly not deliberately cosplaying as two generations of the Dr.
We also held a Games Night. The first one being in a small room in the basement. I remember forking our around £500 from my research funds to purchase 80 bottles of beer and a few crisps for the players. The room and the beer were nowhere near sufficient for the event. Since then we have had very generous support from the EGU team, with the Games Night taking place in a much larger space with access to the free refreshments in the neighbouring poster halls (although security guards added an additional difficulty level to this in 2025!).
It also started the tradition of my awful promotional images for social media. I’m no artist and my design skills are minimal. I also have no budget for this (but apparently I did for beer…) and have a determination to do things myself. Each year I have made some form of crappy image in PowerPoint to drive abstract submissions and make people aware of the Games Night.
In 2019, were joined by Dungeon Master Liz Lewis and Volcano Explorer Jaz Scarlett. We even expanded over the pond, with Rolf heading up a Games for Geoscience session at the American Geophysical Union meeting, with quest speaker Isaac Kerlow, created of the EarthGirl games.
The Covid-19 lockdowns forced EGU online in 2020 and 2021 and the organisers did a phenomenal job in pulling together the meeting during this time. I hosted Games for Geoscience from my bedroom, whilst the 2020 Games Night saw the convenor team live stream a game of Monster Flux – not geoscience-themed but needs must! In 2021, the Games Night took to Gather Town where I hosted a pub quiz in a bespoke games room I designed. The convenor team changed, as we said goodbye to Sam and Jaz, and welcomed in Lisa Gallagher and Malena Orduna Allegria.
The meeting in 2022 was fully hybrid, with onsite and online connection. The Games Night returned to a physical setting and we tried a return of the Games Room hosted event. Sadly, there was not much demand for it and since the Games Night has remained an onsite only event.
I was so happy to be offered the chance to attend EGU in person again in 2024, my first time in five years, and host the Games for Geoscience session and the Geoscience Games Night live. I was back again this year too and the whole Games Day just keeps going from strength to strength. I think this year was our busiest ever Geoscience Games Night. It is an event that relies of organised chaos and I am worried we may be reaching the limits of that working successfully – we may need to adapt to expand. For now, watch this space!
Creating Game Worlds from Models: Adventures in Model Land
Model Land is a concept proposed and explored by Professor Erica Thompson in her monograph Escape from Model Land. The idea will be well-known to those of us who use numerical models:
Models are built to simulate real world systems but to be useful they have to simplify the sheer complexity of nature. The way those simplifications are made is determined by the requirements, knowledge, experience, and biases of the model builder. Consequently, what these models simulate is not the real world but a world of its own making, a model land.
Erica implored us to get out of model land – to understand how the simplifications of the models make them wrong and use them carefully when they are informing real world decisions. This is absolutely vital, especially in my professional area where models are used to help us make decisions on flood risk. The key word in that last sentence is ‘help’ as models should never be making decisions for us otherwise, as Erica would likely say, that decision is made in model land and not the real world.
But when I hear the term model land, I have additional questions: what does a model land look like? What would it be like to explore one? How would life survive in one and could people call it home? These are probably not the most important questions for a modeller or decision-maker but wouldn’t it be fun?!
If games are ‘operas made out of bridges‘, models are simply bridges made out of bridges, or at best are very low quality operas. A game is a model of a system (sometimes often built using multiple models itself) – the bridge bit – that uses story and art to immerse players within it and bring it to life – the opera bit. Consequently, game worlds are themselves model lands. When you step into Link’s shoes and explore Hyrule in any game of the Zelda series, you are actually exploring a simplified representation of Hyrule, optimised for the purpose of the game and the hardware available. You are entering a model land.
What separates the model lands created by numerical models and game worlds is that paucity of opera. That’s all.
And we can fix that by using the Adventures in Model Land system and our imaginations.
Adventures in Model Land has been created by myself, Erica, Liz Lewis, Sam Illingworth, Rolf Hut, and Jess Enright as an open-source resource for numerical modellers. The latest version, v0.2, still in the beta stage, provides a step-by-step guide for the ‘operafication’ of any numerical model to create an explorable model land/game world. It leans heavily on the world-building methods of tabletop roleplay games (TTRPG) and the intention is to allow modellers to lead players on quests within their model lands.
Summary of the Adventures in Model Land system.
At EGU this year, I led a short course using the v0.2 of Adventures in Model Land, leading over thirty participants through the worlding process, creating model lands and writing postcards describing their experiences. It was a great opportunity to test the idea out, gather some feedback, and further refine the system. We even had people designing new games based on the model lands they had brought to life! I think there is great potential in using the system as a workshop with modelling groups and the users of models to help them better understand the models used to make decisions – something I am working towards.
You can download the system for free and use it whatever you like. However, we would really appreciate feedback on the system and how you have used it. Please do also share your model lands and the games you create, our plan is to produce a compendium of our favourites in the future. I plan to release an update to the system later this year as a v1 – subscribe to this newsletter to keep up to date with progress and new releases.
Neurodiversity at EGU
I am a big fan of social media. Probably too much so. I am not so great at in person networking but I feel I have successfully made use of social media to plug this gap. Not only does it connect me with people working on things I am interested in, it also allows me to learn a bit about them and that means when I meet them in person it is much easier to start that conversation.
It is also a catalyst for ideas and starting things – something I apparently have a knack for. In the run up to EGU this year, I saw a post by Simon Clark, EGU’s Projects Manager, who was asking if anyone knew of a STEM-focussed network for neurodivergent folk. I reflected that I would be interested too but did not know of any. However, I also reflected that EGU has an active and effective EDI committee, so if any STEM-focussed organisation should be hosting an network for neurodivergent folk, EGU is a great candidate.
Simon and I exchanged a few messages and agreed to host an informal networking event at the conference to try and bring together others who might be interested in a network. We held this on the Wednesday morning and it really was a positive experience. Having attended the General Assembly for 15 years now, it was just nice to connect with people who struggle with the same things and remind yourself you are not broken and you are not alone. Simon put it best on BlueSky after the event when he said it “filled my heart”.
Some of the attendees at the pop up event.
Alongside the pop-up event we also put out a survey simply asking people what does and what does not work well for them at the General Assembly, along with a chance to register their interest in being part of the network. This will be open until end of May 2025 and you can complete it here.
Encouragingly, we were not the only ones to have this idea. Lucile Turc and Ana Bastos (who recently wrote about her experiences of ADHD and science in an article for Nature), was part of a group organising an neurodivergent scientists picnic. I was enjoying an apple strudel at gate D35 of Vienna airport at the time, sadly, so could not attend.
The next steps will be contacting those who registered their interest, and pooling the learning from the two events and the survey to compile a report for the conference organisers and the EDI committee. I’m really excited about the supportive community we can build together.
Exploring Games for Environmental Solutions at Play for the Planet 2
In April I had the opportunity to attend and present at the second Play for the Planet network meeting in York. It brings together people of different backgrounds who all use games to address environmental issues. Firmly within my interests and the remit of my work with Games for Geoscience, I attended the inaugural event in 2024 and jumped at the chance to attend again.
In the build up to the event, the venue was moved from the main University of York campus to their King’s Manor location in the city centre. It left me reflecting how ridiculously fortunate I am to have an environmental games conference held within a ten minute walk of my house! A big change from the bus-train-bus trek I had to make (and self-fund) from North Lincolnshire last year. In 2024, I did not really have much to share so I presented on my thoughts about the relationship between models and games.
The presentations this year were in the form of research blast talks – 1 slide, 3-mins. This was a fun format and allowed for more people to share their work in the meeting. It was also pretty friendly to my easily distracted brain. For my research blast, I showed off the latest version of the Adventures in Model Land system I have been working on (see above for more). Following the research blasts there was a ‘world café’ style discussion where we debating crucial topics including ‘what is a game?’, ‘how do we best market environmental games?’, and ‘how do we evaluate our games?’.
Following the lunch break there was a chance to play demos of some of the games. This also gave the developers an opportunity to playtest and get feedback. For example, Games for Geoscience 2024 keynote Matteo Menapace was testing a streamlined card-based version of the immensely popular Daybreak game, provisionally titled Dawn.
I enjoyed catching up with my former University of Hull colleague, Steven Forrest, who was sharing the excellent work the Energy & Environment Institute have been doing with The Flood Recovery Game. This game is played with flood risk stakeholders, including community groups, to identify and better understand systemic gaps in the process of recovering after flooding. I’m sure I’ll do a summary of the research behind it in the near future.
Another highlight for me was playing the 2D city-builder game Oxygen Not Included. Whilst this is a commercial game, it was being used by Truzaar Dordi to help students understand how complex and coupled human-environment systems operate. This, along with some of the earlier discussions, reminded me of the power of good game (and model) design to effectively simulate complex systems whilst steering clear of becoming complicated. Complex is good, complicated is not.
As much as I enjoyed Play for the Planet, I did reflect on the lack of professional games designers at the meeting. There is a strong desire from that community to be part of the work tackling environmental issues, evidenced by the success and growth of movements like Playing for the Planet Alliance and the Global Green Game Jam. I would like to see much more interaction between those networks and our own academic networks like Play for Planet and Games for Geoscience. How? I’m still figuring that one out…
The Play for Planet network was established by and is run by the York Environmental Sustainability Institute (YESI), led by Linda Dunlop, Prasad Sandbhor, Pen Holland, Judith Krauss, Anna Morfitt, and Daisy Kemp. It is open to games designers, researchers, and educators with an interest in using games to address environmental crises. You can learn more and join the network here.
*I must remember to take photos when I attend things but I was having too much fun!
Building a Business Plan for Creative Success
Back in my January issue of Imagination Engines I wrote about accountability and how I hoped to use this newsletter to keep myself accountable to my own plans. In hand with this was a promise to produce a business plan and progress report each April so I can measure if I have been successful or not. It might also stop my mind wondering into new projects that take me further from my goal and help me know what I should say yes to and, probably more importantly, what I should say no to.
I promised to produce my first business plan in April this year and here it is if you fancy a read. As it turns out, my business plan is not much of a business plan after all. My ambition, the end game for all my work with FloodSkinner, is not to make money and to sustain myself off the profits of a small business but a means to be creative and work on things I enjoy. Ultimately, I want to write a book and everything I do should contribute to that.
I start with my mission: to empower people to unlock their full potential by transforming their imagination into a powerful, actionable skill. I will do this by providing science communication and education consultation and services.
A common way of planning business activities is to use a funnel analogy. At the bottom of the funnel is the actual stuff that makes you profit – it has a very narrow focus. In my analogy, I replace profit-making with writing my book. In the middle of the funnel are activities that help build relationships with people who could be potential customers. In my analogy, these are the research projects and workshops I will work on that help me make connections and learn more deeply about relevant topics. Finally, the top of the funnel is the widest point and this is about building an audience and signing people up to your mission.
Businesses should start at the top and progressively narrow their focus. This means starting with the mission, the purpose for why they exist, and only then do they progress down through the funnel and find that thing they can provide that will produce a profit. In 2025, I am still at the top of the funnel and my activities will be focussed on continuing to build an audience, both through this newsletter and on my YouTube channel.
I hope you will continue to join me on this journey.
Gaming Environments… no more…
I have sadly decided to retire the Gaming Environments newsletter. This was where I shared the latest news I had found from the nexus of gaming and tackling environmental issues. It was a surprisingly time consuming process to put it together and it does not help me get to where I want to be – managing my time is increasingly important.
I will be more actively recruiting volunteers to support Games for Geoscience in the future, so if you would be interested in taking over the Gaming Environments newsletter please do get in touch (chris at floodskinner dot games).
About This Newsletter
I am Chris Skinner, a science communicator, STEM professional, and ADHDer. I am on a mission empowering people to unlock their full potential by transforming imagination into a powerful, actionable skill. This newsletter tracks my journey. I would like you to join me, so please subscribe. The newsletter also includes a copy of Gaming Environments, the monthly news relating to the nexus of gaming and the environment that I collate for the Games for Geoscience website. This newsletter is free and I do not offer a paid tier. If you would like to say thank you and/or help me in my mission please buy me a coffee using the link below.
Views expressed in this newsletter are mine and do not represent those of my employer. Content and links are provided for informational purposes and do not constitute endorsements. I am not responsible for the content of external sites, which may have changed since this newsletter was produced.
Back in 2019, at the peak of my work on the Earth Arcade, I picked up a board game called Photosynthesis. I am not a big board game player but I was attracted by its beautiful, and very ‘green’, aesthetic and its tactile tree playing pieces*. I was also drawn by its promising environmental messaging, with the publisher’s, Blue Orange, motto proudly stated ‘Hot Games Cool Planet’.
I also remember playing it with Amy. Each turn the sun moves around the board. You plant trees. Those trees collect light energy and cast shadows on other tree to stop them collecting energy. You use energy to grow your trees or plant new ones. You score by chopping grown trees down. We remarked how it was bizarre how you won an environmentally-themed game through deforestation but then thought no more of it. I went on to use the game as an example of an environmentally themes board game as part of my Earth Arcade Academy launch event.
Dr Chloé Germaine and Prof Paul Wake of the Manchester Game Centre think about games on a whole different level to most people. Certainly more than me. Recently, I was very happy to be invited to the University of York’s Environmental Sustainability at York (ESAY) by Director of Education, Prof Lynda Dunlop, to hear Chloé and Paul talk about their research. And Photosynthesis was right in the heart of their work.
Games can be broken down into their components: the mechanisms of the rules and systems that dictate how it plays; the dynamics of player inputs and decision-making; and the skin of aesthetics and story that add flavour to the game. They saw through the skin of Photosynthesis to what it was hiding underneath. It isn’t an environmental game at all, it is a war game and they were going to show it by peeling back the game’s skin and revealing its true nature.
Chloé and Paul took the game back to its bare bones. They created a new narrative based on the siege of Bastogne during World War 2’s Battle of the Bulge. New artwork was commissioned for the board and all of the game assets. The rule book was reproduced but not rewritten – only names were changed. Suppressive Fire was created. Functionally, the game was completely unchanged yet visually it was unrecognisable. When they tested it alongside Photosynthesis, audiences preferred the deskinned version as the narrative fit the mechanism more comfortably.
The presentation taught me valuable lesson about the importance game mechanics. The way a game works, the decisions it compels players to make, are a huge part of what they take away. Assuming good faith from developers, the mechanics of their game will be leaving players having learned the wrong message. A pretty, green-coloured skin is not enough to make a game environmentally-themed, especially when it is rooted in a system that is creating the problem.
You can read more in Chloé’s chapter, Nature’ Games in a Time of Crisis, in Material Game Studies: A Philosophy of Analogue Play. More publications based on this work are in the pipeline and will likely be included in the Gaming Environments newsletter in the future.
What game would you reskin to give it an environmental aesthetic?
*The trees have been useful for my gaming imagery over the years…
This post originally appeared in the Imagination Engines newsletter. To read this content a few weeks earlier, subscribe to the newsletter below.
Ideas do not come out of nowhere. We are all influenced by the environment around us. We absorb information and experiences that shape our mindsets. The people we encounter will bring us new ways of seeing the world and inspire us. In this new item, which I hope to make a regular feature, I introduce you to someone who has been an inspiration to me and ask them a few questions about their thoughts on imagination. I’m going go to start with legendary science-poet, Professor Sam Illingworth.
Sam is a Professor in Academic Practice at Edinburgh Napier University. After completing a PhD in Atmospheric Physics at the University of Leicester, Sam instead chose to pursue a career in science communication. He is best known for his poetry, with his science poetry blog attracting over 100,000 readers a year.
He is dedicated to service in scicomm too. He is the Chief Executive Editor for Geoscience Communication and founder of science-art journal Consilience. He was a convener for the popular EGU science communication session, which was where I first met Sam after I presented my work with Humber in a Box.
Sam shares my love for games and has published many himself, including a climate change hack of Settlers of Catan and Carbon City Zero. He gave me a hugest of legs up in my career when he and Rolf Hut approached me about starting Games for Geoscience at EGU – it wouldn’t have happened without them.
I refer to Sam on how science communication research should happen: innovative, blurring boundaries, fun, yet thoroughly evidence-based. Every so often, I revisit his presentation from when he accepted the Katie and Maurice Krafft Award to remind me of these things.
Why is imagination important to the work you do?
Imagination is at the heart of everything I do – whether it is writing poetry, exploring how students interact with GenAI, or making games. For me, poetry is a way of stretching thought, a means of making connections between ideas and disciplines that might not otherwise meet. It is also a space for possibility, for imagining the world not just as it is but as it could be.
How do you keep your imagination sharp?
Writing poetry is one of the best ways I know to keep my imagination alive. The constraints of form – whether haiku, sonnet, or something more free form – force me to think differently, to approach ideas from new angles. I also find that collaborating across disciplines, whether with artists, scientists, or educators, pushes me to engage with new perspectives and ways of thinking.
What are you currently working on you would like to shout about?
Two projects I am particularly excited about at the moment:
Student x GenAI ( https://www.studentxgenai.co.uk/) explores how students are using generative AI, giving them a platform to share their experiences and perspectives. It is an ongoing, collaborative project funded by the Leverhulme Trust that raises some fascinating questions about creativity, authorship, and learning in an AI-shaped world.
Rooted in Crisis ( https://rootedincrisis.com/) is an incredible project at the intersection of science, art, and environmental storytelling. It uses games and narrative to explore climate change, and we should hopefully go live on Kickstarter later this year. We also have some new artwork to share very soon!
What would you write a science-poem about?
This post originally appeared in the Imagination Engines newsletter. To read this content a few weeks earlier, subscribe to the newsletter below.
GeoSkinner 