Playtika’s Berlin-based studio, Wooga, gave one hundred thousand dollars to the Snow Leopard Trust for the 2023 Green Game Jam. They decided that for their third consecutive year of participating in the event, they ran an in-app activation for their mobile game June’s Journey.
Playtika’s Wooga invited players to join Wildlife Week in the game to garner support for the Himalayas. June’s Journey had a limited event that ran from May thirty-first to June sixth where players collected new animal decorations over the course of that week. Wooga set a community milestone of five hundred thousand decorations to be collected, however, the players overshot the goal by a landslide. They had managed to collectively obtain nearly one million animal decorations during the event and Wooga celebrated by donating to the Snow Leopard Trust. In collaboration with the community-led environmental association, Dots, June’s Journey allowed players to donate money in-game. Cumulatively, Playtika’s Wooga was able to generate almost seventeen thousand American dollars in donations.
“After taking important first steps towards becoming a more environmentally friendly company in 2020, we are now thinking about the topic of sustainability very holistically and our continuous participation in the Green Game Jam plays an integral role in this”, stated one source.
The Green Game Jam is an annual initiative hosted by the Playing for the Planet Alliance. It is facilitated in the United Nations Environment Program and gaming companies from around the world are challenged to implement green activation into their existing titles according to a common environmental theme. The aim of the challenge is to engage more players into taking action for the betterment of the environment. In addition, the Green Game Jam wants to increase the number of gaming companies that get involved in the conservation efforts of the environment.
For the past two years, Wooga has actively participated in the Green Game Jam: they have planted over 225,000 trees worldwide and crowned winners at the Players Choice Award in 2021 and 2022.
June’s Journey is a hidden objects puzzle game that takes place in the 1920s. Players take the role of June Parker who is an amateur detective and sets off on a journey to solve mysteries around the world.
Launched in 2019, the Playing for the Planet Alliance plans to have all of their active members integrating green activations into their games. This would reduce emissions in the atmosphere while supporting other global environmental initiatives like planting trees and reducing plastic waste. They hope that the gaming industry will not just see games as forms of entertainment, but tools for education and inspiration towards liable causes.