It’s fair to say that never has global warming been given the centre stage as much as in recent days.
With all eyes on the aftermath of superstorm Sandy, which wreaked havoc on the north-eastern coast of USA, story after story in major newspapers have come out to discuss global warming.
Politicians like mayor Bloomberg have come out strongly saying that he endorses Obama for a second presidential term because he believes Obama will do something about global warming.
About time.
Global warming is definitely one of the biggest problems humanity faces, and if we don’t deal with it in some way or other, it will lead to major misery on this planet we call home.
So given all the spotlight on global warming, I thought I would jump on the topic bandwagon to recommend this indie gem of a game I bought last year off Steam called Fate of the World.
I first heard of it from Games for Change, a non-profit organization devoted to championing games to change the world for social good.
It’s an educational game on global warming released just last year.
What makes it unique is that it is based on real science and climatic models of Prof. Myles Allen of Oxford University on what could possibly happen in the future.
In it, you play the head of the fictional GEO (Global Earth Organization), which was formed in 2020 after super hurricane Sanyu devastated Tokyo in 2018, galvanizing people around the world that they need to do something on global warming. It’s life imitating art — huge storms are needed to jolt people out of our apathy.
The turn-based game is played in five-year rounds, in which you decide what social, economic and political policies to enact in different parts of the world.
Here’s the launch trailer for the game:
Make no mistake: This deep game is punishingly hard and can be frustrating to play.
The interface is obtuse, you often have no idea what each of the policies does exactly, and the information being presented to you is a mess in terms of information overload. This is not one game that holds your hand in anyway whatsoever, and will throw you right into the deep end.
I didn’t really enjoy this game because staring at panes of information is not my idea of fun in general, but I walked away from Fate of the World with respect after tussling with it for a while.
It’s one thing to read about growing bio fuel, but another to see how enacting this as a policy creates food problems. To really play the game well, you have to read tons of charts, and in it, you will learn a ton of things: why China is such a big coal polluter, how an oil shock will depress the world’s economy, etc.
Good luck trying to prevent a 3-degree rise in temperature by 2100 in your first few playthroughs. I walked away from this game pretty depressed, yet it was one which I felt I actually learnt the most real-world knowledge from, and it got me interested in reading up more on global warming.
For this alone, it’s worth a look.
On first glance, looks like Civ