Common Ground Video Game Lets Players Manage Cropland Transition in California’s Central Valley

A new online game called Common Ground lets players manage a fictional Central Valley town facing real California problems: drought, groundwater loss, extreme heat, and flooding. Players work with neighbors to decide how to convert farmland to other uses, negotiate with landowners, and weigh tradeoffs between energy projects, habitat restoration, and water protection, all while extreme weather complicates their plans. The game was built by students at Harvey Mudd College with the Union of Concerned Scientists, and is free to play online with three other people.

The game is grounded in an actual shift happening in California agriculture. A 2014 state law, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, requires groundwater basins to be managed sustainably, which means more than 500,000 acres of irrigated farmland in the San Joaquin Valley alone may eventually be taken out of production. The state has set aside roughly a quarter of a billion dollars through its Multibenefit Land Repurposing Program to help fund projects like groundwater recharge and stormwater capture on that land.

For homeowners, this isn't a program you can apply to, but it points to a broader shift: land near farming communities may increasingly be converted to uses like renewable energy, parks, or flood control instead of crops. Research cited in the game's development suggests that when farmland near towns is repurposed this way, nearby residents can see real benefits, including less pesticide and dust exposure and improved groundwater levels. The game itself is meant purely as an educational tool to help people understand these tradeoffs, not a rebate or funding program homeowners can use directly.