The research topic I chose was climate change. because of it's broad impacts on the world, I wanted to look at some articles about some of the issues it creates, and some articles about the solutions and human efforts to solve it. Going in, I knew I wanted to make something nature-related, so my first three articles gave me some ideas for setting and problems. I investigated the bleachings of coral reefs, the increasingly frequent forest fires in Canada, and the epidemic of heat waves globally but especially in Europe. This has led me to the idea of a weather system for a game. Presenting extreme weather events, like hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, and forest fires on a near-constant rotating basis to demonstrate the chaotic and stressful atmosphere that not fixing climate change might lead us to in real life. 

The next articles I dove into were more about the current solutions to the climate change issue, and the current state of things left me shocked. The Paris Agreement was an agreement between most countries in 2015, but due to non-enforceable goals, hasn't put enough pressure on countries to reduce emissions, and therefore, the global community is nowhere near getting down to only 2 degrees Celsius of heat, when the original goal was only 1.5 degrees Celsius. Some other things I looked at were the technologies being used to reverse global warming, such as carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management. These seem like they could work, but there is not yet consensus over how safe they would be in the long run, and also, not much funding yet. The last article was about Australia's contribution, which recognizes itself as not a big contributor to the problem, but hopes to set an example by abiding by the Paris Agreement anyway. Based on this research, I've come to the conclusion that teamwork and cooperation between countries are needed for us to really begin fixing the problem. This makes me want to make a co-op multiplayer game that might present this solution to players through gameplay. 

I also think that games are meant to be an escape from the pressure and stress of the real world. So I think it is important to present this message in the lightest way possible while still reminding players. I also haven't worked on a 3D platforming/puzzle game before. Based on these personal goals, I'm thinking of taking inspiration from something like It Takes Two, where a team would work together to overcome and survive different extreme weather events, but presented in a brighter, more colorful, childish visual style.