Climate change, peak oil – the video game

The global economy is headed toward collapse, revolutions are breaking out across the Middle East, famine is ravaging Africa and the world is approaching a peak oil crisis. No, these are not headlines ripped from the news; these are the challenges facing Windows and Mac gamers in Fate of the World: Tipping Point from Red Redemption.

This next entry into Red Redemption’s Fate of the World series is a hardcore strategy game that puts players in hypothetical situations within a realistic world, with threatening scenarios based on the latest science and modeling technologies covering the next two centuries. Players must balance economic, political and environmental needs in order to save the world (or destroy it).

The game’s engine recreates the incredibly complicated interactions and unanticipated consequences caused as players make governmental policy changes to address major tipping points (such as the collapse of the Antarctic ice shelf). As global crises spread, players have to decide what is worth saving and what is an acceptable sacrifice.

“Most gamers might think, ‘Oh, I can just switch to electric cars, get rid of fossil fuels and make everyone a vegan’ and that will make me win. The real world doesn’t work that way and neither will that let you conquer our game,” said Ian Roberts, Creative Director, Red Redemption. “Switch land use to growing biofuels and you may start a famine. Drastically reduce fossil fuel use in favor of solar and you can drive economies into depressions. There are no perfect solutions in Tipping Point to address things like global warming.”

Tipping Point incorporates all the elements of the original game and adds new features, missions, achievements and UI enhancements. Major new additions include:

• Easy Game Mode — Saving the world seem impossible? Easy mode makes it merely improbable
• New Cards — Brings an even bigger arsenal of actions that players can take to change political, social, technology, energy and environmental policies
• The Flood — Wars and famine force millions of refugees to flee their native lands. How will you deal with this mass migration?
• Denial — Think the world would be easy to manage if people in industrial nations believe in/complain about climate change? Think again.
• Supporting Materials Pack — Designer notes and music

Fate of the World: Tipping Point was created by Red Redemption, a UK-based studio that also produced Climate Challenge for the BBC.

Fate of the World required two years of research with groups like United Nations, World Health Organization, Central Intelligence Agency, International Energy Agency, and The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to get the content. Red Redemption also worked with the National Climate Data Center, Asheville-Buncombe Sustainable Communities Initiative, Climate Interactive and multiple other organizations in Washington DC including the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies and Oxfam.

This data was used to make a number of models to simulate real world outcomes such as carbon emissions, economic change, resource depletion and population growth. The carbon emissions in the game were converted into temperature changes with a peer-reviewed gas climate model by Dr. Myles Allen of Oxford University (the ‘trillionth tonne’ model as published in Nature).

Allen, a former member of the United Nations Environment Program in Kenya, former director of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute and a former member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, has been a key advisor on the project. Allen currently heads the Climate Dynamics Group in the Department of Physics at Oxford University where his research focuses on how human and natural influences on climate contribute to observed climate change and extreme weather risk.

Find Fate of the World: Tipping Point on Steam and http://fateoftheworld.net at launch for $18.99. Steam is running a special 20 percent sale during launch week.

Red Redemption