Fate of the World has been developed by UK independent social gaming company Red Redemption which was were behind the original Climate Challenge game made in partnership with the BBC and played by over one million people since its launch in 2007.
The Red Redemption team includes Klaude Thomas, behind such greats as Battlestations, Futurama and Formula One 2000; and Ian Roberts, one of the UK’s up and coming Creative Directors and Lead Game Designers, amongst others.
Covering the next 200 years, players of Fate of the World must find a way to protect Earth's ever-depleting resources and climate whilst reconciling the needs of a growing world population who demand more food, power, and living space. At the start of the game, the player – as head of the Global Environment Organisation (much akin to the World Trade Organisation) – must complete a series of missions and make the necessary tactical decisions to call the shots for all mankind.
“Fate of the World is a mix of ambition, strategy and occasional direct intervention where the player has to make the necessary global and regional decisions and changes needed to survive and prosper – or cause an apocalypse. Interaction comes via the paradigm of playing policies as cards – which unlock other options and opportunities, and in response, the world changes – technologies are developed, the snow retreats, deserts shift, countries go to war. Essentially the future unfolds and the player is in the driving seat for that,” explains Gobion Rowlands, Chairman and co-founder of Red Redemption.
Several scenarios can be played out in Fate of the World. In Save the Amazon the player must protect the rainforests of Latin America at all costs, in Oil Crash America the player is tasked with creating an America able to prosper and survive without oil, and Africa Reborn asks the player to build a thriving self-sustaining Africa for the 21st Century whilst battling population growth and climactic phenomena. And for those more sinister players with megalomaniacal tendencies, there is the Dr. Apocalypse mission whose aim is to raise the planet’s temperature a lethal degree, and finally Star Ark where the goal is to save only yourself whilst abandoning everyone else to whatever catastrophes await them.
The video game includes real prediction models from University of Oxford climate change expert Dr Myles Allen who has provided state-of-the-art climate science for the game. According to its developers, it is the first time the world has been accurately modelled for a game. “There's real data here, but it is applied data in the same way that you have realistic physics in a Formula One game - when you corner you want it to feel like a real F1 car; with Fate of the World we are modelling the world, we want it to respond with similar fidelity," says Creative Director and Lead Designer, Ian Roberts.
"For far too long, climate policy has been developed by unelected technocrats in smoke-free conference centres or through talk-show sound-bites. The public, confronted by some people telling them it is the end of the world, and others telling them it is all a tax-raising scam, is being completely excluded from the real debate on what to do about it,” says Dr Allen. “What I like about this game is that it allows people to experience, in an idealised world, of course, the kinds of decisions we are likely to confront and makes it clear there are no easy answers.”
Renewables play their part
No climate change scenario would be in any way complete with out renewable energies being included in the mix, and as Matt Miles Griffiths (Game Director on Fate of the World) explains: “renewables are a major part of gameplay, and a narrative we are ever-refining as our knowledge base increases”.
Currently, Fate of the World includes a renewables-focused pathway aimed at maximising solar, hydro and wind energy generation in all of the world's regions. “We are also including some of the problems faced by this sector, such as issues of intermittency,” reveals Griffiths. “As technology levels in the game increase, and notions such as super-smart grids become available, other options come online (e.g. vast Saharan solar farms, supplying a large chunk of several continents' energy needs)”.
Griffiths also explains that biofuels are another subject explored in the video game, from today's highly controversial foodcrop-based fuels (and their concomitant impact on human nutrition), through cellulosic (second-generation) biofuels up to algae-based, third-generation generation "Oilgae" products.
Fate of the World will be available for pre-order sale and beta download from 29 October 2010. A percentage of revenues will go to organisations such as Oxfam and TckTckTck.
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