Flying Guardians
- Brand
- Planet Labs
- Year
- 2024
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Tech & Telecom
- Mechanic
- Simulation & Strategy
- Platform
- In-Game
- Agency
- AlmapBBDO
Objective
Greenpeace Brasil needed to make Amazon destruction — 1,409 hectares cleared by illegal mining in 2023 alone across Yanomami, Kayapó and Munduruku lands — visible to an audience that doesn't read NGO reports. The goal was to turn gamers into active reporters of real-world threats rather than passive donors, while giving Planet Labs a mainstream showcase for its satellite data.
Solution
The player downloads a free mod from flyinguardians.com and installs it into Microsoft Flight Simulator, then picks a Greenpeace plane and takes off over the Amazon. The terrain below is no longer the simulator's stock imagery but near real-time Planet Labs satellite maps, so real mining pits and freshly cleared patches show up under the wings. Four command towers mark the coordinates of Munduruku and Yanomami territory, and four radio channels narrate what's happening on the ground below. Spotting a scar of illegal mining or logging, the player reports its coordinates without leaving the cockpit — those in-game coordinates match the real ones and go straight to the authorities — then can sign the in-game petition, donate, and share the sighting tagged #FlyingGuardians.
Results
1,800 players took part as Amazon protectors, filing 2,933 threat reports to authorities in total — 1,096 illegal mining sites, 992 deforestation areas, 608 land invasions and 237 other threats — with over 325 hours of the mod watched via live streams.
- 1
The player finds Flying Guardians at flyinguardians.com and downloads the free mod for Microsoft Flight Simulator.
- 2
Installed into the player's own copy of the simulator, the mod replaces the game's outdated default map imagery over the Amazon with near real-time satellite imagery from Planet Labs.
- 3
Starting a flight, the player selects a Greenpeace-liveried aircraft added by the mod, matching the type Greenpeace flies on real environmental protection missions.
- 4
The player takes off and patrols the Munduruku and Yanomura indigenous territories, guided by four command towers the mod adds that display the areas' coordinates; four in-flight radio channels carry additional content on Greenpeace, Planet Labs and local anti-mining activism.
- 5
Because the mod's map is geolocated, in-game coordinates match real-world coordinates, so the player scans the satellite terrain below for actual signs of illegal mining and deforestation.
- 6
On spotting a suspicious site, the player reports its exact coordinates from inside the game; reports feed a database passed to the authorities as the starting point of formal investigations.
- 7
Without leaving the flight, the player can sign Greenpeace's 'Amazônia Livre de Garimpo' petition against illegal mining and donate to Greenpeace, both through the same in-game interface.
- 8
The session ends with the player posting their alert image to social media tagging @GreenpeaceBrasil with #FlyingGuardians and #AmazoniaLivreDeGarimpo, the mechanism by which streamers drew in the next wave of players.
