Can Computer Games Help People Understand Biodiversity on Their Land?

The project's interactive online game and set of virtual farm tours is designed to test and build players knowledge of on-farm biodiversity.

Farmers' knowledge of biodiversity on their land directly affects their willingness to engage with environmental schemes and adopt management practices that support wildlife. But much of the information available to them comes in static formats — reports, PDFs, and written guides — which often fail to hold attention or test understanding. The FRAMEwork project has taken a different approach, developing the DigiFarm game: an interactive digital tool that uses gamification to engage farmers with biodiversity concepts while identifying gaps in their knowledge.

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What is DigiFarm?

DigiFarm has two components. The first is an embedded game set in a simulated farm environment featuring livestock fields, arable land, woodland, ponds, peat bog, and rough grazing. Players manage the farm over a simulated 10-year period, choosing which crops and livestock to deploy while using booster cards — such as hedgerow maintenance, wildflower strips, wildlife corridors, bird boxes, minimum tillage, and citizen science engagement — to influence four key parameters: biodiversity, soil health, community (social capital), and financial value.

The game tracks how each decision affects these parameters, making the trade-offs and benefits of different management choices visible in real time.

The second component is a set of bespoke eLearning virtual tours, built from 360-degree footage taken on real farmer cluster farms in the UK, Austria, and the Czech Republic. Each tour includes embedded quiz questions — written in the farmers' native language — that test knowledge of local biodiversity and management techniques. Players can explore the landscape, answer questions, and access linked resources to learn more. The tours are available online: Scotland, Austria, and Czech Republic.

Who is it for?

The tools are designed primarily for farmers and cluster facilitators, but they are also relevant to anyone working in agricultural training, farm advisory services, or environmental education. The game helps identify specific areas where farmers' biodiversity knowledge may be limited, which can then be addressed through targeted training. The virtual tours offer a way to explore different farming landscapes and biodiversity contexts without leaving your desk — useful for facilitators preparing to work with clusters in unfamiliar regions, or for farmers curious about how biodiversity management works on other types of land.

"I can see online virtual tours like this, focused on biodiversity in farm landscapes, becoming a useful part of agri-tourism in our region in the future" ~ Pavel, Czech Cluster Farmer

Where to find it

The full report describing the DigiFarm concept and its development is available from Zenodo. The virtual tours can be accessed directly from the James Hutton Institute's site and via this site at: https://www.framework-biodiversity.eu/knowledge-tools.