Environ gameplay showing Earth, global events, score meters, and player resources.

Prior Work / UT Austin SAGA Lab

Environ

A Unity/C# strategy game where players balance environmental protection and economic prosperity against scarce funds, limited political capital, and unpredictable global events.

UT Austin SAGA Lab Unity/C# Educational Simulation Sustainability + Economics Prior Work
3D A rotating Earth anchors global events, player personas, and competing initiatives.
C# Gameplay systems, data-driven events, upgrade logic, scoring, UI, and scenario support.
250+ College-student playtesting informed the look, feel, and early usability direction.
Beta Educational beta developed at UT Austin and presented here as prior SAGA Lab work.

Problem

Make complex sustainability tradeoffs playable.

Environ was designed for a difficult teaching problem: environmental policy, economics, and systems thinking are easier to understand when students have to make decisions under pressure and live with the consequences.

Learning challenge

The game places players in a near-future Earth where environmental decline is damaging the world economy. Players have limited funds and political capital, so every action creates an opportunity cost.

Design response

Environ turns sustainability into playable strategy. Players invest, research, regulate, respond to events, and watch the world react.

What Was Built

A global strategy game for environmental systems thinking.

Events turn abstract systems into decisions.

Drought, severe air pollution, economic shocks, technology breakthroughs, and other events appear around the globe. Players can respond directly, but every response has a cost and a projected effect on the environment, economy, or future risks.

Environ event detail panel showing severe air pollution, location, duration, score impact, and action cost.
Event details connect location, system impact, duration, cost, and player action.

Initiative menus expose competing solution paths.

The simulation models research, infrastructure, energy, policy, and behavior-change investments. Players can pursue clean-energy research, carbon capture, subsidies, regulations, fossil-fuel strategies, and other levers with different costs and tradeoffs.

Environ research and infrastructure menu showing carbon capture and storage with cost and unlock requirements.
Research and infrastructure investments combine unlock trees, costs, and visual payoff.

Policy turns public support into a resource to spend.

The policy layer makes persuasion, regulation, legislation, and public support part of the simulation. The goal is not to find a single perfect answer, but to reason through a changing system with limited authority and limited resources.

Environ propaganda and policy menu showing a sustainability initiative and purchase cost.
Policy and behavior-change systems turn public support into a strategic resource.

Matthew's Role

Product, game design, production, and Unity development.

Environ was developed at UT Austin's SAGA Lab and funded by the Longhorn Innovation Fund for Technology (LIFT). Matthew helped shape the game concept, translate learning goals into playable systems, coordinate student contributors, and contribute hands-on Unity/C# development.

Product and game design

Defined core loops around scarce resources, global feedback, events, roles, initiative trees, and win/loss pressure.

Production leadership

Helped manage interdisciplinary work across education, game design, programming, art, and subject-matter input.

Unity/C# implementation

Contributed to gameplay, UI, and data-driven scenario systems in Unity/C#.

Learning Model

Problem-based learning with visible consequences.

Environ uses active experimentation to support higher-level decision making. Players compare imperfect options, observe delayed consequences, and discuss the tradeoffs that emerge.

What players practice

  • Analyzing tradeoffs between environmental, economic, political, and social outcomes.
  • Prioritizing investments when money and political capital are limited.
  • Seeing how early choices can change future risks, costs, and opportunities.

Why it mattered

  • Created a shared classroom problem space for debate, reflection, and discussion.
  • Showed how a game can make abstract systems tangible without reducing them to trivia.
  • Served as a flagship example of UT Austin's educational-game development capacity.

Outcome and Context

A foundation for complex product work.

Environ predates Good Life Games, but the throughline is clear: turn complex systems into experiences people can explore, discuss, and understand.

Capabilities shown

Unity/C# development, strategy-game systems, UI-heavy simulation design, research-backed learning goals, 3D asset integration, and team delivery in a university lab context.

Project context

The project was developed through UT Austin's Simulation and Game Applications (SAGA) Lab, formerly the Digital Media Institute, with support from the Longhorn Innovation Fund for Technology.

Sources

Public context and source links.

Additional context is available in the public coverage below.

Article UT researchers study video games to solve issues in healthcare, education, environment

The Daily Texan, February 7, 2017.

 Article UT Games provide new avenues for classroom learning

The Daily Texan, January 23, 2017.

Work together

I build clear, interactive tools for complex decisions.

Need an interactive simulation, decision-support tool, or product workflow that makes complex choices easier to understand?

Email Matthew Back to portfolio