Ever since I first heard about a new game, called Fate of the World I've been trying to find someone who could review it for this blog. I don't play computer games myself and consequently know nothing about them, so I needed someone else . . . and then Oliver Robertson asked if I'd be interested in a review . . . so of course I said, "yes, please". Oliver is currently Programme Officer at the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in Geneva.
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‘The world really needs a reload function.’
This is a quote from one player of
Fate of the World, a computer game about climate change released earlier this year. It places you in the role of President of the Global Environmental Organisation (GEO), a kind of proto-world government, or a United Nations with more clout. You have a range of policies available to achieve your goals (chiefly, curbing global temperature increases) and a limited amount of money with which to do it.
There are
various reviews on the web of how the game plays, the merits of its mechanics and its educational value (the game’s designers have made much of the fact that they used real climate modelling in designing it).
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But here, I want to look at the messages it gives out, the attitudes it promotes in responding to climate change.
First, the game helped me see more clearly how difficult it will be to keep people and planet happy and healthy. Not only do you have to deal with reducing emissions and keeping global temperatures to less than 3ºC above the pre-industrial average - that's because from the starting point of a ‘business-as-usual’ 2020, keeping to 2ºC is considered impossible; you also have to deal with peak oil, peak coal and peak gas. If you fail to keep supplying the world’s farmers, factories and businesses with the resources they need (either because you ban their use, without developing alternatives, or because they run out), you'll plunge the planet into recession, famine and war. In many ways peak oil is scarier than temperature rises. But if you fail to curb emissions quickly enough (which more or less means from turn one of the game), then global warming will grow unstoppably. Even with a 3ºC limit, you have little room for error.
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However, the second message of the game is almost diametrically opposed: keep growth and innovation going and we’ll be alright. As with many games, the far future is a glorious place. You can have a world that is richer and more highly populated, despite being 3ºC hotter. The game falls squarely into the ‘techno-fix’ camp, with future technologies (all of them already predicted) allowing CO2 to be sucked from the atmosphere by artificial trees, energy needs met almost exclusively from fusion power and endangered species kept safely within purpose-built biomes. But for your people to invent and deploy these technologies, you need to keep the economy growing, which means supplying them with resources and energy. These resources can be largely renewables-based, but the need to maintain the economy is paramount for any victory strategy.
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Two less visible issues are to do with what
isn’t in the game. First is 'peak everything else'. Yes, you can run out of oil or uranium, but the game doesn’t code for for soil exhaustion or for 'peak
rare metal' (needed, for example, for current wind turbines). Incidentally, one of the most interesting discussions on the main
Fate of the World forum is about just this, and about the merits of different agricultural approaches. You can have games where everyone in China
does have an American (though low-carbon) lifestyle. Maybe this is possible, maybe we will again go beyond what we currently think is feasible with the resources we have, but the absence of game limits on other resources means they get ignored.
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The other problem is one common to all statistics, that we forget about the person behind the number. When I am told that South Asia has experienced severe flooding but that the region’s overall population and standard of living have grown, I regard it as a good turn for South Asia. I don’t think about the people who have died or seen their life’s work washed away; I don’t think about the people who will never again be able to visit the fields they played in or the place their parents are buried. But it shouldn’t be okay to say that some don’t matter because overall things are getting better – things should be getting better for everyone.
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Similarly, if the Amazon rainforest is destroyed through global temperature rise, the impact in the game is huge emission rises and news reports; the emotional and spiritual horror of such destruction is dampened. There is no string of computer code for indigenous forest peoples whose whole world literally dies around them.
So what have I learned from playing
Fate of the World? Chiefly, I think, the importance of reducing emissions
now, because the negative effects are
so bad later on. One of the hot topics among players currently is whether it’s ever possible to complete a game without using
geoengineering (primarily
sulphate aerosols) to directly reduce the temperature. The only way people in the game have managed it is through sustained economic collapse. Nobody has reported successfully keeping emissions under 3ºC through emission reductions alone from 2020 onwards, unless they use technologies that are untried in the real world.
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I have also had my ideas challenged on where to focus our limited resources. Principles of justice, including climate justice, say that people shouldn’t suffer because of the wrongs of others, which in this case would mean that low emitters don’t lose out. But in the game, as in reality, there is the pressing need to reduce emissions as much and as quickly as possible, which means focusing on the big emitters: the developed world and the large, rapidly developing regions. Which prompts the question: how much do we want to sacrifice justice for survival?
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The third thing I learned is that we need to change, not just for ourselves but also for our political leaders. In the game you are reluctant to undertake some emissions-reducing projects until people have adopted a greener outlook, because too many unpopular moves will get you thrown out of office and lose you the game. You will sacrifice some things that you ought to do so that you can stay in power and then try to do the right thing later. But as the game shows, we can’t wait for later. So we need to change our attitudes
now to empower those in power to take the big steps they are currently reluctant to take. We need to do what we can, so that they can do what we can’t.
You can view these images (and more) and watch a
trailer of the game.
Fate of the World costs
$9.99 / £9.99 / €9.99 and is
currently available for Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista, 7), with MAC version coming soon. You can buy it for someone else as a
gift certificate. And you can
buy it plus donate to Oxfam at the same time.
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Many thanks to Oliver for this post.
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