Behind The Iron Mask

Simulation Fail

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 11:20:00 +0000

Simulation fail

One billion euros is a lot of money. It's the grant being sought by FuturIcT to create a new future simulation model, sorry a "techno-socio-economic-ecological knowledge accelerator".

Global-Scale Simulation of Socio-Economic-Environmental Systems? That rings a bell.

The ambitions of this project are shockingly familiar: Fate of the World has a model we've built to simulate these systems. Unfortunately, the original proposal pdf is a painfully hilarious read. I've seen plenty of academic proposals like this and I know it's par for the course to have a goodly amount of buzz-word spamming but "Zero-Delay Reality Mining"? Techno-babble and words with ICT in them aside, the challenges to be addressed by FuturIcT are quite revealing:

Financial and economic crisis

Debts and inflation

Stability of the European Union

Corruption

Organized crime, hooliganism

Extremism, terrorism, war

Epidemics (SARS, H1N1 pandemic)

Security and cyber risks

Migration and integration

Environmental change

Hooliganism? Seriously? I know this might be a list of things that aren't well modelled (or aren't well integrated into existing models) but are you really, honestly proposing a global-scale simulation without a major inclusion of population growth, resource shortages and with a focus on hoodies and 4chan? Sorry, not 4chan (that's too 2009) Second Life. I kid you not, the future knowledge of the world rests on understanding why people feel the need to explore a slow-loading low-poly world occupied by people who are there to fill rooms with giant wangs.

It's a baffling proposal and I'd much rather have information about the real academic models that they are going to try and integrate into this. In the development of Fate of the World, we've looked at a lot of modelling as possible foundations for our game, be they Integrated Assessment Models or Agent-based modelling. We have a peer-reviewed gas-climate model for carbon concentrations and warming.

FuturIct and FotW goals should presumably be aligned, right? Isn't the point of a model like this to understand possible futures, possible outcomes, possible risks? From my non-academic viewpoint, it looks like it's both too broad and missing key details. I can imagine the ideal model I'd want to make Fate of the World with (given infinite time), but the FuturIct pitch doesn't resemble it.

Reorganising!

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 09:50:00 +0000

Hi everyone, so in preparation for the upcoming beta for Fate of the World we are going to reorganise our sites a bit to allow the team members to post updates to make progress on the game much easier to follow. Thanks to all of you for following us - first of the new posts later today! :)

Cheers,

Gobion

Red Redemption’s “Fate of the World” new game title for release in 3rd Quarter 2010 Save the world or burn it down

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:34:00 +0000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 30th, 2010, Oxford, England – Red Redemption Ltd finally announces that “Fate of the World” will be the title of its latest game currently scheduled for release in the 3rd Quarter of 2010. “Fate of the World” is a nail biting set of global warming scenarios covering 200 years of Earth’s existence. At the heart of the game are 10 'Masterplans' where the player calls the shots for all mankind including 'Apocalypse' where the gut wrenching goal is to raise the planet’s temperature a lethal degree; 'Lifeboat' where the goal is to save only the player while abandoning everyone else to whatever catastrophes await them; and 'Utopia' where a player can try to build a perfect society while battling population growth.

'Fate of the World' lets players explore the next two centuries, trying out geoengineering, fusion power, wildlife adaption, and many other brain teasing and sometimes alarming, options. The balancing act of protecting the Earth's resources and climate versus the needs of an ever-growing world population, who are demanding ever more food, power, and living space, creates a challenging videogame containing many surprises.

Red Redemption’s Managing Director, Klaude Thomas, formerly producer of #1 charting 'Battlestations: Midway' for Eidos, is producer of “Fate of the World”. Thomas said 'our original title was "Climate Challenge", which built on the success of our BBC game in 2007, but we wanted the final title to reflect the wider scope of the game and suggest the black humour you sometimes need to face such a scary subject. The environmental apocalypse before us is a terrible and compelling car crash. To stretch that metaphor unforgivably, we sometimes feel we're in the passenger seat. "Fate of the World" puts us back in the driver's seat.'

Based in Oxford, England, indie games company Red Redemption (http://www.red-redemption.com) makes games that provoke and challenge. "Fate of the World" is a PC & Mac title being released in Q3 2010.

February Round Up

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:46:00 +0000

It has been another busy month for us here. We completed core gameplay and began work on the final stages of production, so rather than focus in on one particular area I'd like to give a quick overview of where we are at:

Screenshots:
We were able to release some of the first shots from the pre-Alpha version of the game. These give a good sense of where the game is now, but expect lots of dramatic developments over the next few months as we focus in on the user experience. I've posted up two technical shots from our globe engine and also a view of the pre-Alpha user interface. You will probably notice the hand of cards along the bottom, that is one element that has made it from the original BBC Climate Challenge to the current game, but this is so much bigger a game that I look forward to investigating the key areas over the next few months with posts to this blog.

Radio:
I was interviewed on the Jo Thoenes show and Bill Heine shows on BBC Radio Oxford and on the Sunday Morning Roast on Jack FM. It was an interesting experience and good to see what questions the presenters had about the game. Key themes that came up were population control, the fact you get to control the whole planet for two hundred years and that we don't stop you trying to break the world if you want. Actually we encourage it :D

Press:
We snuck out a small release to announce that Dr Myles Allen had provided the climate model in the game, it got picked up by the Nature Blog, Develop magazine and Guardian. The feedback was good and useful and helped us shape our final thinking on...

Final Game Title:
We will soon be announcing the final headline title for Climate Challenge, which is exciting. We have to come up with a name that defines a game that in many ways will be unique. We love 'Climate Challenge', but it doesn't really portray the breadth of actions the player can take - you can save the world, destroy it, escape to mars, build eco cities, tackle geo-engineering, etc. We want something that captures the spirit of the game!

Development:
Over the last few weeks we considered each game feature against value to players and work to complete, and made a shortlist of those we want to finish for the launch version of the game. Now that we have done that, we have a solid picture of what we want to accomplish and are working steadily toward our alpha version. What we are working on most is presentation, response, and reward for players, and our 'instantiation' (which is where the gameplay will become evident instead of being seen only in potential in the underlying system).

Positech Games

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:58:00 +0000

One of the things about being an indie developer that is so great is getting to meet other indie developers and swap war stories. I was fortunate to spend the day today with Cliff Harris of Positech Games (maker of the excellent Gratuitous Space Battles, Democracy 1&2 and Kudos 1&2).

Democracy 2 is considered one of the benchmarks in real world gaming, and was a real inspiration for all of us at Red Redemption when we were considering how to make Climate Challenge into a fully featured PC game. If you have ever wanted to run a nation then pick it up from his website: http://www.positech.co.uk/democracy2/index2.html.

I got a lot of play out of Democracy 2 and it is a fine game. If you like where we are heading with Climate Challenge - check out Democracy 2 - it was a trail blazer!

Cliff was extremely generous with his time and we talked about all sorts of things. Excitingly for me I got to see the latest expansion for Gratuitous Space Battles (http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/index.html) which is a great game of epic space battles stripped of all the other exploration and diplomacy you normally get in these kind of games.

What you get instead is a beautiful, well realised, fun game of space battles where you can have many hours of enjoyment tweaking your fleets and challenging your friends. Highly recommended (I bought it as soon as it came out and it gets played a lot at my house :D)

Positech Games

Climate Challenge 2010 Progress Bar

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:47:00 +0000

To keep everyone up to date with how we are doing on Climate Challenge 2010 we are now including a progress bar on our logos. Its a bit of fun, but we will keep it periodically updated.

Our experiences of the Copenhagen COP-15 Negotiations

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:50:00 +0000

Hannah Rowlands, our in-house science advisor attended the Copenhagen COP-15 climate change negotiations in December. Hannah wrote up her experience of the ups and downs of the conference which we wanted to share.

I was lucky enough to be in Copenhagen for a brief visit during the COP15 climate change negotiations in December 2009. My trip was a mix of disappointments and unexpected opportunities, as well as the chance to see several different climate change worlds.

I'd not been to a COP (Conference of the Parties to the 1992 UNFCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change)) before, so didn't really know when, during the two-week process, would be the best time to be there, so we rather arbitrarily decided that I would go during the second week, when hopefully things would be quite tense and interesting.

Oxford University, where I did my Masters degree, were kind enough to let me join their delegation of students and academics, which would allow me entrance to the actual negotiations being held in the Bella Centre.

In the first week, I was following closely the news coming out of Copenhagen as well as the emails going around the Oxford University delegation. At the negotiations, I was hearing about walk-outs by developing nations and harsh police behaviour at protests, and from Oxford University I was hearing about incredibly long queues to get into the cavernous Bella Centre. I wasn't sure what to expect when I finally go there.

On the day of my flight (for the record, we did look into taking the train and it took around 24 hours and cost around 3 times as much as flying, sorry, we're on a budget...) I received an email from the Oxford University delegation organiser saying that rumours were going around about limitations to the number of NGO (Non-Governmental Organisations) people being allowed into the Bella Centre for the rest of the week. However, since I was only there for one full day, Oxford University offered me one of their strictly limited passes for Wednesday. By the time I arrived on Tuesday evening, I was told that they were not allowing any new NGO registrations, which would make that precious pass completely useless.

So, I took the shuttle bus from the airport directly to the Bella Centre in the hope of registering before it was too late. Unfortunately, I arrived just after registration had closed. It just wasn't going to be.

My first event in Copenhagen was a very prestigious reception hosted by the UN Foundation and Deutsche Bank, to which I was kindly invited by Mark Fulton, who is one of our private investors. And so I caught a glimpse of my first climate change world – the corporate, high-level, governmental world. This world involved high security – road blocks and passport checks – and champagne, as well as discussion of enormous sums of money and “game-changing” technologies. From inside this world, climate change can be solved by putting enough money in the right places. I was surprised and impressed by how mainstream this world is now. There was a televised address by Bill Clinton urging delegates at Copenhagen to do their best to solve the problems of climate change. Bankers, representatives of the world's biggest companies, US Senators, all big guns in our society, and all talking about what to do to tackle climate change.

After the reception, I went along to an event called “Canopy Canapés”, a drinks reception to highlight the issues of deforestation, held at the Copenhagen Botanical Gardens in a glorious 19th Century glass hot house. I met with my Oxford University friends, and had been hoping to pick up my pass for the next day, although I now realised that the pass had better go to someone else who had been able to register at the Bella Centre.

This was the second climate change world I saw in Copenhagen. It was made up of passionate academics and NGO folks, working somewhere in between the bottom-up grassroots movement and the top-down government-corporate world.

I had decided to go to the Bella Centre, despite knowing I couldn't get inside. I had heard about another protest happening that morning and I wanted to see it for myself. The Bella Centre is on the metro from central Copenhagen. The night before, I had got the shuttle bus straight up to the Bella Centre but this morning the police had decided, what with the threatened protests, and the arrivals of state leaders, to heighten security. The metro station for the Bella Centre was closed, and delegates had to walk from neighbouring stations, going through police roadblocks placed half-way between those neighbouring stations and the Bella Centre.

Without a pass, I couldn't get through the roadblock, but I could sit on the metro as it shot straight pass the Bella Centre on its overhead tracks. Once again, there were huge queues of delegates waiting to get in, then there was a large gap of empty road, another roadblock, and then a huge crowd of protesters. I knew the protesters were planning to storm the Bella Centre, but it was clear the police weren't going to let them even get close to the building, let alone get inside.

After travelling up and down the metro past the Bella Centre a few times, I continued into central Copenhagen to meet Mark Fulton for lunch. He generously gave me two hours of his time to discuss ideas for the game (as well as a delicious lunch at his hotel's restaurant). I came away from the lunch buzzing with ideas for the game to work on in January.

The central square in Copenhagen was filled with climate change-related posters, sculptures and booths. The whole city really had gone climate change mad! Various well-known companies seemed to be vying for advertising space on billboards, telling us how much they were doing to tackle climate change.

Copenhagen Business School had offered a lecture theatre with a webcam showing the live feed of the negotiations for those who didn't have passes for the Bella Centre. I tried watching the negotiations for a while, but, I confess, it was incredibly boring and, with another Oxford University student friend, I decided instead to check out the Klima Forum. This was a civil society parallel conference, hosted by the Danish Government in a central Copenhagen leisure centre, with talks and films about climate change, as well as – and this was crucial in the increasingly cold, snowy weather – a warm building with food and hot drinks.

And so I saw the third climate change world – the civil society, grassroots, activist world. I briefly bumped into a friend from Oxford who had been at the protests earlier in the day, had been very nearly arrested earlier in the week, and had spent the afternoon doing press interviews about the unreasonable (in his opinion) behaviour of the Danish police. The Klima Forum was full of slightly scruffy-looking students sitting in hallways, hats and scarves and gloves strewn around the floor. I found myself in a nice, warm room watching the most appallingly awful film about completely nonsense technological solutions to climate change. This was a shame, as I want to believe that unexpected solutions might crop up and help humanity out, but the suggestion to help home-inventors come up with zero-point energy on the off-chance that it might solve climate change was so out of keeping with the enormity of the problems being addressed at Copenhagen that it just annoyed me.

On Thursday, my last day in Copenhagen, I had only one appointment, which was to take a test drive in an electric car in Copenhagen but, before heading back over the bridge for the last time, I took an hour to walk around Malmö and buy some pretty Swedish Christmas decorations. And now, finally, on the train going over the Oresund Bridge, I could see the view of the straits between the two countries. I also saw the wind farm in the middle of the sea, lines of turbines vanishing into the distance.

Both Malmö and Copenhagen were, by this point, covered in snow, and this was providing one cause of disruption to transport. The second disruption was due to “protesters on the tracks”, as the announcement on the train informed us. I wasn't sure, however, what was actually happening to cause these protesters to be on the tracks. I can imagine perhaps they were deliberately causing disruptions, or maybe they were being chased by police and accidentally ended up on the tracks? Thirdly, the arrival of more heads of state was causing closures of roads and stations. Luckily, from this point of view, I was leaving before Barack Obama was due to arrive, which was going to cause the closure of the Oresund Bridge to road traffic for several hours.

All of these disruptions unfortunately also caused my electric car test drive to be cancelled, as the roads were too slippery. Nevertheless, I went along to the venue to have a look at the car and chat with the engineers. As it turns out, the electric car company in question had hired out the lobby of the Radisson Hotel in central Copenhagen to display their electric cars. I had to show my passport and have my bag searched before I was allowed into the hotel. Being told that the Chinese delegation were staying at this hotel helped explain this heightened security. The hotel was, inevitably, a nice, warm place, so I spent quite some time finding out all about electric cars and the systems that are being put in place to make them more affordable, such as car owners leasing the batteries rather than purchasing them, and how they can be integrated into renewable electricity systems to help deal with the issues of intermittency (car batteries can be told by the grid to charge during the night at times of greatest wind speed, for example).

By this point, I only had a handful of hours left before my flight, so I took myself back into central Copenhagen to the main shopping street to get some lunch. After that, I got the metro to airport and, after a slightly tedious but not so bad given the weather conditions delay of two hours, was on my flight back to the UK.

I was very pleased to have been in Copenhagen, even though I never actually saw the negotiations at first hand. In some ways, arriving as late as I did without any real hope of getting in, I was saved the horrendous queues that other delegates endured. But just being in the city, talking with people about the negotiations, it became a real, immediate thing, rather than a distant process that was only happening on BBC News.

As for these multiple climate change worlds that I experienced, I was concerned at how little overlap there was, and the antagonism between them. I feel that the people in the grassroots, activist world feel that radical behavioural and social change are required to deal with climate change, and that neither governments nor corporations can really do anything helpful in the process, indeed they are a hindrance and therefore not to be engaged with.

On the other hand, in the corporate, government world, I feel that there's an understandable resistance to radical change in lifestyles, and perhaps an over-optimistic reliance on technological solutions. However, this is where huge amounts of money are being promised, and can be made, through development of technologies. This may not be a bad thing, as the scale is large.

The only world I didn't see, then, was the actual world of the negotiations which was, I suppose, ultimately the least effective one at Copenhagen. I left before the final hours of the negotiations, and could only read about it in the news.

Of course it was disappointing that a new climate change treaty was not agreed at Copenhagen. People are now wondering whether the future of international climate change action is going to be outside the UNFCCC, with countries simply doing their best to reduce emissions without binding targets. Would that allow countries to get on with dealing with climate change without the drag of waiting for all countries to agree, or will it lead to countries not achieving nearly enough emissions reductions because there's no impetus to strive for more? And what does it mean for certain sectors, like forestry, for which the negotiations at Copenhagen did in fact come up with an agreement? Does that agreement have to wait until the new overall treaty exists, if ever, before it can come into force, or can it go ahead on its own?

As for the new treaty, we have to wait for COP16 in Mexico, December 2010. And in the meantime, think of all the carbon dioxide emissions that will continue to be emitted until then.

Talking at Portsmouth University

noreply@blogger.com (Gobion Rowlands) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:33:00 +0000

I was asked to be a speaker at the GamesRoadshow events (http://gamesentroadshow.ning.com/ and www.gemroadshow.co.uk) and first up was Portsmouth University where I spoke on Wednesday to an audience of students and lecturers from the BSc (Hons) Computer Games Techologies, BSc (Hons) Computer Games Enterprise as well as several postgraduate students.

I was asked to give a 30 minute talk about indie games development, and our particular take on making games about climate change and sustainability. As always I've given up trying to have a stage persona, and instead just talk as me, something which can be quite draining, but is usually far more fun and interesting for both me and the audience.

I had no idea how my talk would go down, but they blew me away with their enthusiasm and interest. They reacted well to our approach and upcoming Climate Challenge 2010 game which was nice and even in the session had some very specific questions, some which caught me totally by surprise but pleased me as they had most definitely been paying attention! I spent almost two hours after the talk answering more well thought out questions from a number of students, many of whom were keen to find out what they could do above and beyond their course in order to get into the games industry. From what I heard their lecturers were giving them a good sense of what the games industry is really like once you get beyond the initial excitement and that it demands hard work and is a very competitive field. They also had a keen awareness of the global nature of the industry.

A number of students approached me about possible placements, and from what I saw that is certainly something that would be of interest to us. There is a great pool of talent here and we hope to work with them soon. Their courses touch on a number of areas, and whilst I would like to see more about games design and quality assurance as well as programming, business and graphics, there is a good core of subjects here. That said I would be delighted to talk at Portsmouth University again and hope that perhaps we can build some kind of ongoing industry/academic relationship with them

I have to say if they are the future of UK gaming then I am hopeful about Britain's place in the games industry in the future. Assuming most of them don't get lured to Canada as so many have in the last few years...

Blog Action Day: Global climate change summits in Climate Challenge 2010

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:13:00 +0000

So today is Blog Action Day on Climate Change. Obviously this subject is close to my heart (this is Gobion btw) so I am taking part :)

With the Copenhagen COP-15 climate change negotiations soon upon us, I wanted to write about my first experience with the summits process in Climate Challenge 2010. It is also the first time I will start talking about particular game play elements, as the team are currently putting together the first rough cut of the game and the designers and developers let me loose on this bit of the game (so far). I got a chance to play with some of these rough elements of game play.

Before I go any further, a proviso: I'm not a designer or a developer for Climate Challenge 2010 – my main role is as spokesman for the company, and what I am writing here reflects my personal experience with the game. The game still has many months left of development and no doubt over time very many elements of the experience will change. It is a natural part of the design and testing process. So with that proviso in place, take this as a snap shot of work in progress from my perspective.

Summits are an interesting part of the game for me for several reasons:

They are where I get the 12 regional groups to sign up to global level agreements
They provided me a fun change of pace from regional fire-fighting, shifting my focus to the big picture
They give me the chance to play out what goes on "under the hood" at these international negotiations.

The real world process of negotiation is one of convincing the various partners that they want to reach a common agreement, and that can be much trickier than it sounds. National negotiators generally want to add exceptions for elements they do not want, amendments to add in elements they do want, follow the orders they have been given by their governments and to come out of the negotiations looking like they stronger/better/more willing party.

When multiple nations come together with these requirements tend to butt heads. Sometimes that can be worked out, but sometimes a party will just storm off in protest (or mock protest), or threaten to storm off in order to put more weight behind their requirements. International agreements are partly voluntary: unless you're prepared to go to war you can't make a sovereign nation sign something they don't like into law in their country.

The development team let me play with a first “rough cut” of the summits system. I was hoping that this part of the game would reflect the real world negotiation, back room dealing, posturing, and deal making; but of course I also hoped to be the driving force behind successful negotiations!

How did it work for me as a player?
In the game I was given an initial agenda that I could accept or throw out (at the risk of the sponsoring parties leaving the table), and then add in my own issues. I found that some of the nations were especially willing to storm out – and that made me adjust my strategy a bit to try and keep them in, or if I couldn't to ensure that the regions I most wanted involved stayed in. If I couldn't get everyone to agree, maybe I could just satisfy the biggest players?

My draft agenda was haggled over and some of the regions added in riders, which surprised and intrigued me. Hopefully as this system continues to evolve as it made some agenda items I did not like become married to agenda items I did like. This felt a lot like the “real world” to me (though of course I could be wrong – but that was my impression!).

Once that stage was completed I had the chance to adjust the final agenda and put it to the vote. At this stage of production it was really tough: most regions refused to ratify my proposed agreement! (It was pointed out to me several times that this was pre-balancing.)

Overall I like this part of the game, and I plan to follow this post up with some thoughts from the design team themselves soon. In December myself and Hannah, our science advisor, from our team are going to the Copenhagen COP-15 negotiations. There I will get to see how my experiences in the game marry up with the real world which should be exciting. So expect more about summits soon!

Social Entrepreneurship

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:00:00 +0000

So I (Gobion) gave a talk to the MBA students at Saïd Business School at Oxford University as part of a day on "Conversations on Social Innovation and entrepreneurship"

The day was organised by the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, the Institute for Science Innovation and the Oxford University Society and Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and I was fortunate to be invited along as one of the social entrepreneurs. The day was organised by the fantastic Pamela Hartigan.

The keynote speaker was Mel Young, from the excellent Homeless World Cup. His talk was awesome, and until that day I had no idea how Mel is the spitting image of a war criminal - which makes international travel tricky! The Homeless World Cup is a inspiring event and locus of social change and I recommend you check it out.

It was an inspiring day, designed to give the MBA students a feel of what potential there is out there for interesting social innovation, and overall from the feedback I received the event was very successful at achieving those aims. The students felt very fired up by the conversations they had with the social entrepreneurs.

My talk was on my background, our business and structure, our most notable projects and current game Climate Challenge 2010 (I will post up an edited version of my PDF shortly).

My audience was from around the world (USA, Italy, Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia and Bulgaria) and it was really great to get talking to them about their experiences and backgrounds. They asked a lot of smart questions, which I expected, but were also far more switched on about social entrepreneurship that I had thought they would be.

It does seem though that games are a common language that is shared across much of the world and that is exciting to see. We had all played games most of our lives, and even shared a few favourites. My audience was very excited about the possibility of games addressing social issues whilst still remaining fun/challenging commercial games.

I look forward to more opportunities like this.

As an aside, several people asked me what "Social Entrepreneurship" is. My view is that is it regular entrepreneurship but just making sure you include the people you work with, the communities you work in and the planet in your business planning :)

Good Science and Bad Science

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:50:00 +0000

Good Science (hopefully!)
The New Scientist has a good little article on upcoming exciting clean tech - definitely worth a read http://bit.ly/1sWazj

There are so many interesting bits of tech there, and it will be interesting to see how they develop. "Peen-n-Grow" was completely new to me, but I've heard about most of the others along the way. We will have to see how many of them we can get into the game as policy decisions :)

Bad Science
Well actually a nod to the ever excellent Ben Goldacre and his awesome Bad Science blog where he investigates people's misuse of science.

All of his articles are good to read, and it should be pointed out that he is always quick to issue a correction when he makes a mistake (as we all do from time to time), but the article I wanted to post about was this one: http://www.badscience.net/2009/09/house-of-numbers/.

The article has nothing to do with our favourite science subject, climate change, but it is all about the attempts of AIDS denialists to blame the horrible virus on the poor, on the treatments, on everything except the actual virus itself. I won't repeat what he said here - but do check it and the other awesome pieces out.

Even though the focus is on climate change with Climate Challenge 2010, we are including pandemics in the game in some form - though hopefully in more detail with future releases.

Guardian Newspaper's guide to Copenhagen

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:52:00 +0000

The Guardian newspaper has a good piece on a beginner's guide to the Copenhagen Climate Change negotiations, and they want to get you involved on helping translate the jargon-heavy bits! http://bit.ly/4buUqe

Blog Action Day

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:21:00 +0000

We have signed up with Blog Action Day (http://bit.ly/n7jpJ). This year the theme of the day is climate change, which is obviously a theme close to our own hearts.

It is great to see grass-roots action like this and the whole team at Red Redemption support the day and wish it the best of luck.

Blog Action Day is vital in helping to spread awareness of the vital importance of climate change to everyone. Climate change is happening, right now, to you and you need to know about it.

And you can quote me on that :)

Serious Games Book Recommendations

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:26:00 +0000

Following on to our short list of good books on climate change, we wanted to give a couple about the topic of games, and serious games.

1. Power Up by Rebecca Mileham
An excellent introduction to the topic of serious games, this book examines the latest evidence into how computer games affect our health, thinking, learning, identity, beliefs, and propensity for violence or addiction. Features an interview with Gobion and Hannah from Red Redemption.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Powering-Up-Computer-Changing-TechKnow/dp/0470723106

You can see Rebecca's blog here http://www.rebecca.mileham.net/

2. Digital Game-Based Learning by Marc Prensky
An explanation of what serious games are and might be, by serious games advocate, Marc Prensky

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Game-based-Learning-Marc-Prensky/dp/0071363440

Check out his blog at http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/

Relaunching the blog

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:44:00 +0000

So now we are getting up to full speed with things on the "telling people about what we do" front it was time to relaunch the blog and do a proper job :)

So I hope you like the new design. The little fella in the banner is Nahual, a character we made for one of our games based on pre-Hispanic Mexican mythology.

So who, or what is a nahual? To quote the fascinating Pantheon.org "A nahual, also called nagual, is a spirit being or animistic entity closely associated with a human being. Among some groups, each person has his or her own nahual which acts a double, a shadow, or as a protective spirit. They are often animals such as dogs, jaguars, or opossums, but they can also be natural forces such as lightning or meteors.

"If one harms another person's nahual, one may harm the person who belongs to that nahual. During sleep, the nahual can go wondering, something that can be seen in the dream. Nahuals can also be sent out to perform tasks, use it as an adviser, or a person can change his shape to that of the nahual.

"The origin of the nahuals lies far back in pre-Hispanic times. Many patron deities of towns have their own nahuals to help them guard their towns, just like their pre-Hispanic forebears. These nahuallies make nocturnal patrols, giving off evil airs to ward off rival nahuallies. In ancient times, each day sign of the divinatory calender had its own personal nahual or deity, which corresponds to the present-day beliefs that each sign of the zodiac has its own nahual. Among the Quiché Maya (K'iche') the day a child is born determines its nahual, but the child is only told when it has reached a responsible age so that they may not blame bad deeds on the nahual."

"Nahual." Encyclopedia Mythica from Encyclopedia Mythica Online.
<http://www.pantheon.org/articles/n/nahual.html>
[Accessed September 17, 2009].

... so there you go.

Consider him the guide to what we get up to! :)

Good climate change books

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:59:00 +0000

A regular question we get asked is if we can recommend some good books to get to grips with climate change without being too technical. So I asked Hannah in our team to list her favourites.

I've given the links to buy the books from Amazon.co.uk, but they should be available through all good online retailers and in your local library.

1. The Hot Topic by Gabrielle Walker & Sir David King
A very good introduction to the subject, covering the science and the policy options available. Sir David King was the former chief scientific advisor to the UK government and is the Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hot-Topic-Tackle-Global-Warming/dp/0747593957

2. Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air by David Mackay
A no-nonsense look at the numbers behind renewable energy - can we make an energy policy that adds up?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sustainable-Energy-Without-Hot-Air/dp/0954452933

3. A Blueprint for a Safer Planet by Nicholas Stern
Written by Nicholas Stern of the Stern Review into the Economics of Climate Change, this is an update of his conclusions from that report, without the constraints of being a government report. Sir Nicholas Stern was commissioned by Gordon Brown to produce a report on the economics of climate change - his findings were instrumental in underlining the economic case for tackling climate change.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blueprint-Safer-Planet-Progress-Prosperity/dp/1847920373

4. Six Degrees by Mark Lynas
A well-researched look at what climate change might really mean for the world, degree by degree - gets quite scary towards the end! Also winner of the prestigious Royal Society Science Books Prize 2009.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Six-Degrees-Future-Hotter-Planet/dp/0007209045

5. Global Warming by John Houghton
An introduction to the science of climate change by the lead editor of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's first 3 reports.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Global-Warming-Complete-John-Houghton/dp/0521528747

6. The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery
An interesting introduction to climate change by renowned Australian zoologist, Tim Flannery
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Weather-Makers-History-Future-Climate/dp/0713999217

I will follow this up with a selection of good books on socially positive games plating. If there are some books on the subject that have been inspiring and/or helpful to you, tell us about them :)

Our Advisory Board

noreply@blogger.com (Gobion Rowlands) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:01:00 +0000

Dear readers,

It has been a very busy couple of months and thigns are going well. I will be writing lots of updates over the next few months, and wanted to start with our Advisory Board, who they are and what their role is within the overall plan for Climate Challenge 2010.

Our Advisory Board is:
• Professor Diana Liverman: Director of the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) and a member of the National Academy of Sciences committee on Americas Climate Choices
• Dr Cameron Hepburn: A leading environmental economist.
• John Kroeger: Former co-head of the UK Government team of Business Relations Managers to the Computer Games Industry.
• Suzanne Seggerman: President of Games For Change.
• Dr Pamela Hartigan: Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University’s Said Business School

Full biographies for each of the Advisory Board can be found below:
http://red-redemption.com/team/#advisory_board

Each member has been very carefully selected to bring unique skills, experience and contacts to the company and all have been important in helping Red Redemption achieve our objectives for Climate Challenge 2010.

Why is this important?
There are four main reasons:
1. Credibility: The credibility of the game and the team is important to ensure the game reaches more people in the market. Our Advisory Board helps build credibility for the game and team.
2. Marketing: Further press and marketing opportunities open up for us through our mutual association.
3. Advice: We benefit from their advice about the game.
4. Thanks: The people we have involved in our advisory board have been extremely supportive and helpful over the last few years and we want to recognise that.

To follow our progress more closely check out our Facebook Fan Page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Climate-Challenge-2010/125222552491
and a Twitter feed for the development of the game at http://twitter.com/cc2010 game

Best,
Gobion

*EDITED: 25-Sept-2009: Corrected Professor Diana Liverman's role at the National Academy of Sciences.

Twitter, and updates

noreply@blogger.com (Gobion Rowlands) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:47:00 +0000

So I finally caved in and got a twitter account. Well 2 actually. The first is for me personally and the second is a live development twitter feed from Climate Challenge 2010.

http://www.twitter.com/cc2010game <--- development Twitter feed.
http://www.twitter.com/gobion <--- feed about me and what I am up to :)

I've been wanting to post much more to the blog but a combination of being insanely busy has kept the number of posts down, and also that while we are getting the look and feel together we are a little wary of showing it too much because undoubtedly things will change a lot as we get closer to release.

Still Carla, our new art lead, is doing some fabulous graphics work and I hope to be able to release a few choice pieces soon!

Conference season begins

noreply@blogger.com (Gobion Rowlands) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:43:00 +0000

Wow lots has been happening - everything is very busy as usual!

A couple of weeks back myself and Klaude (our producer) went to the Develop conference in Brighton. It is one of the UK's leading games conferences and it was great fun. It was really good catching up with friends, meeting cool new people and just keeping up to speed.

Next up is Cologne GamesCom in August. This is one of the major three games events (though previously the event was in Leipzig) and we will be busy there showing everyone some first look info for Climate Challenge 2010 and hopefully lining up a publishing deal for retail.

Back!

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:41:00 +0000

I'm back and posting following a short break where I went to visit the Orkneys - fantastic place and highly recommended.

So where are we up to?

Well our new lead artist/art manager has started - her name is Carla and she has hit the ground running. I will start to post some of the concept art and various pieces in the next couple of weeks.

Development of the game is coming along swiftly and I'll be posting to this blog at least weekly with a dev diary.

Anyway more a little later!

Interview with our games designer

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:24:00 +0000

April 16 2009

Ian Roberts,
Creative Director and Lead Games Designer on Climate Challenge 2010

Ian Roberts is the lead games designer on Climate Challenge 2010. He designs the game experience and mechanics that the developers then programme and the artists bring to life visually. In many ways he is the heart of the game. Ian came to us with experience across a wide range of new media forms, ranging from award-winning video production and editing to 3D Graphics and website programming. These skills are combined with a background in media, film, literature and cultural research in the forms of academic study, writing, lectures and teaching which gives him a unique outlook on games design.

While working for Red Redemption he has been lead games designer on all of our games (including Climate Challenge and Operation: Climate Control), has produced extensive web portals including the ClimateX.org for Oxford University, directed and edited academic multi-media presentation films for University College London, and was an games industry consultant for the UK Department of Trade and Industry.

I wanted to interview him about his influences...

GR: What was the first game you ever played?
IR: Almost certainly something very simple like Pong as we had one of those old Atari boxes where you had this clunky selector with one of those joysticks with one of those big satisfying button. The first game I became obsessed with as a computer game was "Elite" I played religiously on the Spectrum 128k which was all swish and fancy with a tape deck.

GR: What is your favourite game and why?
IR: That's a really tricky question as there are lots of different kinds of games and they are difficult to compare - like apples and oranges. So I think a game which really captured me first time I played it was Ron Gibert's original "The Secret of Monkey Island" it was probably the first of its kind [adventure game] that I had played and it was so incredibly well put together, witty and all the things that make it a classic so that is definitely something I have very fond memories of. Modern games that hearken back to that such as Psychonauts work very well for me.

GR: What games influence your design of socially conscious games?
IR: Well I can think of a couple of examples in games where I've really felt that the game as a medium and an art form surprised me in terms of how it conveyed my awareness of something I already knew but never really understood, so for example a very early point of realisations for me was in the early 1990s. It was the game Cannon Fodder weirdly. You wouldn't think of Cannon Fodder as a socially-aware game it is a war game, it had a poppy on the front cover and was asked to remove the poppy by the Haig(?) foundation because they felt it was offensive to have a game which trivialises war, but in fact I found that to be the first computer game which didn't trivialise war, but whilst it had bright sprites and look and feel it was completely ruthless. Your little soldiers that die will die normally by being hit by a single bullet or single piece of debris, and while you play the game you see a memorial hill and you see a list of the fallen and it gets longer and longer and longer and longer. And it is very shocking as it happens where you would normally have a victorius transition. There is this really stark reminder that all of these people have died, and they have died because you are controlling them. And that made me understand casualties of war to a much great extent than reading about historical battles ever could. You had a direct relationship with what was going on, and whilst it was a fun shooter game it had this serious war message which I thought was excellent.

Deus Ex is another very good example in the level of immersion in the world and the freedom it gave you. and it was unique at the time for granting you this freedom allowed you to not only uncover the intricacies of this conspiracy in this dystopian future, but also to allow you to take control over which way it goes and allow yon to be part of its resolution in a much more active way than other games. You could make a decision to change sides or to choose how society would end up at the end of the game. It gives this feeling of great scope and made you think a great deal about the issues that the game posed.

Why? The reason why is that these were games of traditional entertainment value targeted at teen and young men that rather than just relying on sensationalism of the genre decided to do something with the genre to allow the player to discover something about the human condition within the structure that they have been given and that is the ultimate goal of a socially conscious game. which is to be both considerate of a games relationship to the world we live in and to take that next step and actually do something interesting with it, to make and experience that the player can take home with them which makes them more aware and helps them understand the world we live in a bit better.

GR: You have a strong eye for design - you were central to the design of the original Climate Challenge, Operation: Climate Control and Trouble Shooter - what drives that part of you?
IR: I'm a very cross-media person, and I'll describe what that means. A lot of people would describe themselves as being very textually focussed or visually focussed or respond well to music or so on. For me it is the combination of two or more types of media and the new experience that is made from the combination that interests me the most. So I find for example film more interesting than just music because you have the combination of lots of different elements, and with game and games design you have the combination of the aesthetics, the gameplay, the music and the emergent experience and it is in being able to create that emergent experience both in a way that you want to convey but also in a discoverable way that people could feel a variety of different responses depending on the person and all of which would be valid game experiences. That is what really drives me about game design.

GR: You were a teacher before becoming a games designer. What impact has that had on your games design?
IR: So people have short attention spans so you need to engross students or the audience or players in your world as quickly as possible for them to understand where you are and where things are going so they are never lost or feel it is an effort to follow you on this journey. The other part is that the best knowledge in terms of retention and comprehension is knowledge which is gained through personal experience and experimentation that there is only so much you can learn from reading the same page in a book again and again, or reading off the board or copying what a teacher is saying that without trying something out or creating something and seeing the results of your creation your understanding of the theory can never be fully solid. That means in games design you have to propose the theory, not necessarily in its entirety, then allow the player to discover it and discover how that theory works through their own experimentation.

Note: This interview is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales License so do feel free to reprint. If you would like to reprint without attribution, please drop me an email to gobion at red hyphen redemption dot com.

Back from Easter

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Ah what a fine break we had for Easter.

The last few months have been intense to say the least. One of the truisms about being an Indie games developer is that you spend a lot of the time dealing with two competing pressures: Can we make the game awesome, and can we carry on paying ourselves!

Luckily we have a fantastic group of supporters in our investors. They share our vision to produce a really fab game about climate change that picks up where the original Climate Challenge left off and builds on the concept massively. The new game is on a global scale and should offer a very satisfying game playing experience. Like the original it won't be preachy. We all feel climate change is an incredibly important issue, but like you we don't like being preached to. Our agenda, if we have one, is to let you the player play with the options and make up your own mind on the best ways to tackle climate change.

And what about the science? Well this time we will have even more science in the game, but lots will be behind the scenes. That said however, there will be areas of data that for whatever reason we cannot get hold of - maybe it is not available to us gamer types, or perhaps it doesn't even exist. In those cases we will "guesstimate" from the probable data and will note in our science notes that the data is "iffy".

Climate Challenge 2010 is a game first and a science simulation a distant second. I hope that when you play our game it will get you thinking so you can go off and learn more, but what I really hope is that you have a damn good time and a lot of enjoyment from it :)

P.s. If you haven't yet - do join our Facebook group :)
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=92217565125

We are hiring!

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 10:36:00 +0000

Lead Artist / Art Manager

This is a senior role directing the creative vision, creating art assets and managing outsource artists for serious games at Red Redemption. Salary up to £34,000 + benefits and completion related bonuses.

The Role is based in Oxford, UK.

Must have

Ability to flesh out basic concepts into full, distinctive, artistic visions that fit our games.
Digital art capabilities, particularly for mock-ups and user interfaces.
Knowledge of Photoshop and Illustrator.
Experience doing art production for interactive games on at least one, preferably multiple, of the following platforms: Console, PC, Mobile, Online.
Ability to produce work within and replicate a variety of art styles.
Some 3D technical experience, preferably in 3D Studio Max or Blender.
Strong portfolio of work, mostly digital.
Ability to direct art and assure quality.
Good communication skills with confidence in giving detailed useful instructions via email.

Desirable

Adobe Flash knowledge is useful but not essential.
Working relationships with a number of freelance artists.

Our ideal person will

Provide creative direction and enforcement of look, feel and UI.
Design and create product-related sales and marketing materials.
Help find, review, and direct external art resources.
Perform quality assurance on received art
Manage and oversee the on-time completion and receipt of art assets
Consistently deliver high-quality results on-time and on-budget.
Help create concept documents and assets.

Contact: Please send your CV and work samples to ian at red-redemption dot com
2009-04-09T12:00:00Z

Join our Facebook group!

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:47:00 +0000

YOUR PLANET NEEDS YOU!

As I mentioned yesterday we are developing "Climate Challenge 2010" an exciting new global climate strategy game being launched in early 2010.

Well we are a small independent games company funding this game through our own hard work and the money from a small group of investors who believe as we do that exciting and engaging games should tackle real issues yet still be fun we are doing this without the support of a publisher - so the support from every single person really matters and can make a difference.

To help us get people involved we have set up a Facebook group for friends and fans of Climate Challenge 2010 and we want you to join!

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=92217565125

Come join us there and get involved in the discussions, get early access to the game and possibly get a chance to have your feedback included in the final product!

Able to talk!

noreply@blogger.com (G) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:01:00 +0000

Finally after months of hard work behind the scenes I am finally able to talk publically about our announced title "Climate Challenge 2010"(r).

Now that everything is out in the open I will posting regularly in a developer's diary and will also be posting interviews with each of the team. All content on this site will continue to be Creative Commons Attribution licensed, so if you would like to syndicate anything (or if you would like your own interview or behind-the-scenes) go for it!