Fate of the World available now!
Fate of the World is available to buy. Here is what the press has to say about Fate of the World:
- "Its brilliance is in its simplicity" - RockPaperShotgun.com
- "Already being hailed by gaming experts as a potential breakthrough for social change titles" - The Guardian
- "In playing it, I’m struck by how potentially powerful Fate of the World is" - PC Gamer
- "A compelling video game" - Treehugger.com
- "While ‘Fate of the World’ arms you with environmental data and renewable energy policies rather than grenades and rocket launchers, the result is still compelling" - New York Times
State of the World
It's been an amazing few weeks here. We've been working all hours to get Fate of the World launched and finally it's out there. Not the smoothest of launches, I admit, we're contacting distributors with issues as they appear and responding to bug reports as they come in.
Much has changed since Beta: new cards, new impacts, new stats interfaces, improved fuel modelling, new graphics, new music. Playing the game in the last few days, though, we feel the game has lost some of its bite. Recent revisions have given the player a bit more spending cash than we think they should be allowed to have so we're going to patch soon to fix that and also fix a few cards that were misbehaving.
Fate of the World is released!
Today, we cross the finish line. Today, Red Redemption releases Fate of the World, our new turn-based, global strategy game for PC.
If you like baby seals and long walks along the fjords of Finland (thanks, Slartibartfast!), you should probably purchase it now fateoftheworld.net.
That aside, I must say, it's a brilliant feeling to release a game, even if I know our real mission -- to fight climate change -- has hardly begun.
Many people have a cause -- money, themselves, poodles, the baby seals I mentioned earlier. Our cause is the environment. Everyone here at Red Redemption is incredibly, ridiculously passionate about saving the Earth from almost certain environmental collapse... so we made a computer game about it.
When you look at the science -- and rest assured, our scientific advisors (from Oxford!) have looked at more scientific data and analysis than you can shake a polar bear at -- climate change is already here, and it's going to get worse. With that reality, we must accept the responsibility to do something.
Who should pay?
Gobion and I were interviewed for Al-Jazeera TV (English) last night. One question they asked in particular struck me. That was 'Q: The global economy is in bad shape: who should be paying the price of tackling climate change? Developed countries (who arguably caused the problem) or developing countries?' Who should pay?
I answered in a way that I later realised was really incomplete. I said that developed countries should pay because they are the only ones who can afford to pay, now and into the foreseeable future. You see that in Fate of the World, where we provide the Tobin Tax as a mechanism to charge wealthy regions, while very clearly the developing regions have highly constrained wealth while also suffering the most harm, as they are in the worst position for impacts caused by climate change. Developing regions have limited capacity to contribute.
Fate of the World visits NOAA
As part of the trip to the USA to meet distributors (more on that soon!) and promote the upcoming beta of Fate of the World I was invited to visit the lovely city of Asheville in North Carolina by NOAA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (www.climate.gov). My trip was sponsored by Mack Pearsall, who in many ways is the patron of the town of Asheville and committed to creating a sustainable community there.
Interview on Green Patriot Radio
Gobion from Red Redemption was interviewed on Green Patriot Radio with David Steinman – “The Fate of the World, Halloween Costume Swaps, and the Founder of Earth Friendly Products”
David Steinman interviews Randy Rieland, Washington, D.C. based reporter for Grist.org; Gobion Rowlands, chairman of video game publisher Red Redemption; Lynn Colwell, co-founder of GreenHalloween.org; and Van Vlahakis, CEO of Earth Friendly Products.
Why Africa Matters
Today's blog post is by Klaude Thomas, executive producer on Fate of the World.
I'm going to discuss something that may be hard to understand outside the context of a game. Outside of a game, I wish to avert harm to people just because they are people. I have a moral position on averting harm to others. In a game, I can become ruthless; these are, after all, only digits. That imposes an unfamiliar mental discipline.
If Africa, or indeed any region, matters, it matters to my game self only to the extent that it affects my game objectives. This makes my game self the strictest of utilitarian philosophers: and I find myself asking why Africa matters?
In early versions of Fate of the World I could not answer that question. In our current versions I can.
Launch date for Fate of the World: 29th October 2010
We are pleased to announce the launch date for our upcoming global warming strategy game, Fate of the World: 29th October 2010
What is this a launch date for?
As a self-funded indie developer we want to get our game out to our players as soon as possible, but also being games developers we want to make the best game we can. The best way to do both is to get you playing Fate of the World when it is as good as we can make it and get your feedback and comments so we can make it even better.
So that is what we are going to do.
You will be able to pre-order the game and all pre-orders will give you immediate access to the beta version for you to play and a bunch of awesome goodies.
We will put up more information on the pre-orders and where you can get them very soon! In the meantime if you want to keep up to date with the release schedule email us, follow us on tweets, follow us on Facebook or subscribe to our website!
New website for Red Redemption
Welcome to the streamlined new website for Red Redemption indie developers of Fate of the World and Climate Challenge.
As games developers we are often overwhelmed with ideas, but we are always so short on time and we wanted to focus down on the things that are most important to us in a website and use bullet points to emphasise them:
- Writing blogs posts to tell you about how we get on developing Fate of the World
- Giving us an opportunity to share the interesting/scary/surprising things we uncover making the game
- Making it easier for you to get in touch with us whether it be by email, post, phone twitter or facebook.
- Shouting loud about what we believe in - good games, real subjects :)
So unlike our last site which was a bit clunky, we can now get Gobion, Klaude, Ian, Matt, Hannah and the rest to directly post to our site.
We hope you like it!
