Power Up!

In Power Up! you need to manage the competing interests of energy generation, biodiversity conservation, and community prosperity across different world landscapes.


By playing you will directly contribute to cutting-edge scientific research aimed at solving real-world challenges involving energy, nature and people!



Power Up! has been designed by scientists and game developers to understand how people make difficult trade-offs between different Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). How will you decide to make choices about hydropower dams, land and river biodiversity, and people? What impact will your choices have across different landscapes?


As you manage different landscapes you will see them change. You’ll also be able to track how your decisions on investing resources can boost energy generation, lead to greater biodiversity, and increased prosperity of communities. Your choices can also cause these to decline…


As you play, you may also experience unforeseen events like drought or fire! What will you choose to do as your world is impacted?


By playing Power Up! you will directly contribute to our understanding of how humans make difficult decisions about sustainable development. Data on in-game decisions are collected and scientists will analyse these data to better understand decision-making and how people approach different aspects of sustainable development. This is the first step to finding new, more equitable ways of tackling complex global challenges involving energy, biodiversity and humans.


None of your personal data are collected, only data on your in-game decisions (full details can be found in the “Participant Information” documentation) [https://isabel-jones.github.io/PowerUp_ParticipantInformation/PowerUp_OpenPlay_ParticipantInformationSheet.pdf].


Thank you for playing Power Up! and being involved in this cutting-edge research.


- This research is led by Dr Isabel Jones [https://www.stir.ac.uk/people/256518] in collaboration with project partners around the world. Dr Jones is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow (MR/T019018/1) based at the University of Stirling, UK. Please see the “Participant Information” documentation for further details of the Power Up! game and research programme -