New video games teach players about climate change.

The fastest-growing component of the media sector worldwide, the video game market, is a $37.5-billion-ayear industry — and that’s excluding hardware and related merchandise. Video game spending has already surpassed domestic revenue from movie ticket sales, and this year it’s well on the road to overtaking music spending by nearly 20 percent. The industry could reach $50 billion by 2011, according to a recent report from Pricewaterhouse Coopers. Today, “serious games” — online and console video games tackling social and environmental issues — aim to influence the way people think about gaming, and the way they think about current issues. A handful of pioneering firms say they see the business potential for games with a purpose.

Take Operation: Climate Control, for example. A slick, online video game aimed at educating school children about environmental issues, underwritten by the U.K. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Operation: Climate Control was created by Oxford-based Red Redemption, a company that develops environmentally conscious games and interactive media.

Red Redemption and other companies like it are serious about bringing environmentally conscious games to the forefront of the video game industry. Gobion Rowlands, managing director, producer and co-founder of Red Redemption, says the company’s primary focus is on producing games that directly address sustainability and climate change.

“Part of our initial focus was to develop a strong track record in the field and a market lead that would allow us to develop bigger games addressing climate change and sustainability,” says Rowlands. “When we started making our environmental games there were many unknowns about the market and whether it was possible to make fun games on the issues involved.”

Red Redemption creates educational video games aimed at environmental issues.

Before creating Operation: Climate Control, Red Redemption partnered with the BBC to launch an interactive climate change game called Climate Challenge. Inviting people to guide a virtual Europe through the next century while reducing carbon emissions and halting global warming, Climate Challenge, accessed through the BBC Web site, was played by 82,000 people during the first week of its release, according to Red Redemption.