Gobion Rowlands is the Chairman and co-founder of Red Redemption Ltd - the very successful Oxford based independent developers of socially positive computer games that brought climate change to the international gaming marketplace. Gobion’s environmental gaming industry expertise has led him to be appointed a “Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts” (FRSA) in 2008, a “Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society” (FRGS) and a "Fellow of the Royal Institution" (FRI) in 2010 and an ‘in demand’ speaker and writer on numerous subjects including serious computer games, social enterprise, climate change and communication. In 2010 he joined the Board of Directors for Games for Change (gamesforchange.org), a non-profit which seeks to harness the extraordinary power of digital games to address the most pressing issues of our day. He also spent a year as an Affiliate Researcher of Sustainability and Communications for the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University and recently lectured at the Skoll School of Social Enterprise and the University of the Creative Arts.
Under Gobion’s guidance Red Redemption has won a number of awards and grants including a UK government Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) "Smart Innovation Award", a UK government Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) "Climate Challenge Award". He was also nominated for a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer award in 2009.
Prior to Red Redemption his career has included senior production and project management roles for Lycos-Bertelsmann as Producer, Gameplay PLC as Senior Producer and Project Manager for Wireplay, and Arena Technik as Senior Producer operating the Wireplay Service. He has consulted on projects for the UK Government e-Envoy’s office, the British Council and the Soros Foundation and the former UK Department of Trade and Industry.
A graduate of the University of Westminster with a BSc in Psychology and currently working on his Masters in Science and Society at the Open University, Gobion is the son of Welsh born music producer, manager and publicist Jonathan Rowlands, and his Swedish model mother, Gunilla. Gobion’s early days were filled with trips back to his mother’s homeland where his grandfather filled his mind with stories of heroic Nordic sagas which fueled his early interests in mythology and creative role playing games.
CEO & Executive Producer: Klaude Thomas
New Zealand born Klaude Thomas took over as Managing Director and CEO of Red Redemption in 2008 following a series of highly accomplished career positions as a Game Designer, Lead Designer, Producer and Managing Director for some of the leading gaming studios in Europe. Prior to joining Red Redemption he was Managing Director (MD) of Eidos Studios (formerly SCi) Hungary - a 40 person studio which he established for Eidos for the purpose of delivering Battlestations to the marketplace. Battlestations, featuring the Battle of Midway, is an action-strategy game played on Xbox360 and PC’s which reached #1 in the United Kingdom game charts selling over 500,000 units.
While at SCi, Klaude worked as Producer on the licensed titles Futurama and Four-Four-Two. This followed working as a Producer with Creative Assembly, contributing design work to Mongol Invasion (a successor to Shogun: Total War) and Medieval: Total War. Earlier in his career he was Lead Designer on Formula One 2000 for Electronic Arts which also reached #1 in Europe and was listed #6 in the Top 10 racing games of all time for Sony’s PlayStation. His first job in the UK was with Sony Psygnosis, heading a design team across multiple products.
Games for which Klaude has been Lead Designer, Producer or MD have sold over 2 million units to-date, conservatively generating an estimated $40m-$50m in gross income. His overall production knowledge coupled with such a financially successful marketing track record make him the ideal catalyst to manage Red Redemption’s “Climate Challenge” series into the 2010 worldwide launch.
Klaude was born on the North Island of New Zealand and is descended from a long line of Welsh and English farmers and like many New Zealanders has some Maori blood in his ancestral tree. He studied history, anthropology and political Science at Auckland University for four years before leaving to pursue his interest in game design and is proud that his native country has committed to specific emissions reduction targets.
Creative Director: Ian Roberts
Ian is the Creative Director on "Fate of the World" and Red Redemption and is one of the UK’s up and coming Creative Directors and Lead Game Designers having successfully designed both “Climate Challenge,” which debuted on the BBC’s web site BBC.com in 2007 and “Operation: Climate Control” which received its debut launch in July 2007 at Britain’s historic House of Commons. Ian is a native of Durham transplanted to Oxford with experience across a wide range of new media forms including award-winning video production and editing to 3D Graphics and website programming. These skills are combined with an in-depth background in media, film, literature and cultural research in the forms of academic study, writing, lectures and teaching. His “Guide to Media Editing” has been highly praised within the industry and is considered a classic resource. Ian is also credited with devising Red Redemption’s brand “Makes You Think.”
While acting as Lead Games Designer for Red Redemption, Inc, Ian has produced extensive web portals including the ClimateX.org for Oxford University, 3D art and web consultancy for “Dickens World” in Chatham, Kent and directed and edited academic multi-media presentation films for University College London. Ian has a BA in English from Oxford University and has acted as a games industry consultant for the UK Department of Trade and Industry.
Techical Director: Matt Harvey
Matt co-founded Red Redemption. In addition to his Technical Director role and successful completion of the Smart Innovation Award, he was Lead Developer on Steel Law Online, before taking on the technical architect role for the company. Matt has been working with Imperial College London and University College London on several HPC and visualisation resources and computational steering of numerical simulations projects (a Grid computing project). Matt was also a research associate on the combinatorial chemistry project "Discovery of new functional oxides using novel techniques".
Non-Executive Director: Keith Malcouronne MA (Oxon), FCA, CF
Keith joined the Board in June 2009 to provide finance and investor expertise, bringing 10 years’ experience with KPMG and 15 as managing partner of a smaller professional services group. He is a Chartered Accountant, professional company director and active Business Angel investor.
Keith serves on the Boards of several businesses covering information technology, medical devices, product design & manufacturing, management consultancy, marine rescue and professional accountancy. He also provides ongoing strategic and corporate finance advice to other companies involved in bio-technology, software development and sustainable bio-fuels.
Keith is passionate about using business skills to bring physical and social transformation to the world’s poor and serves as a Trustee of World Vision, chairing its Board Finance & Audit Committee. He is also a Director of Transformational Business Network Growth Services Limited, vice-chair of the Audit Committee of the Church of England Archbishops’ Council and serves on several other charity Trustee Boards.
Lead Artist: Carla Rylance
Carla joined Red Redemption in 2009 and as lead artist uses her 2-D and 3-D talents to create the artisitic vision of our games and manage supplemntary assets from external artists around the world. Carla has worked as an artist in the games industry since 2006, producing paper and digital concept art, game assets, user interfaces and level design for titles such as “Micro Machines” and “Emergency Mayhem”.
Scientific Advisor: Hannah Rowlands, MSc (Oxon), MPhys (Oxon)
Hannah Rowlands is a graduate of the Environmental Change and Management Masters Degree program at the University of Oxford. With a broad understanding of environmental and policy issues from local to global level, and an emphasis on communicating these issues to a wider audience, her experience combines commercial, academic and charitable work. Previous projects include climateprediction.net, the world’s largest climate modelling project, in which members of the public download and run a full 3-D climate model on their personal computers, and a study of how people’s attitudes towards climate change are affected by playing computer games such as Red Redemption’s Climate Challenge Game.
Lead Programmer: Sam Morris
Sam Morris is the Lead Programmer for Red Redemption. He joined the company as a student intern in 2002 to work on Steel Law Online, before going on to become Lead Programmeron Climate Challenge, Operation: Climate Control, Spindle and all other Red Redemption projects. Sam is a graduate in Computer Science from Manchester University, and a long time volunteer on numerous open source projects. Sam became Lead Developer on the Spindle Social Networking platform and Fate of the World.
Project Manager & Programmer: Robin Tregaskis
Robin has been on the team since 2007 as a core team developer on our games. He joined us from Broner Metals Solutions Ltd where he was a Senior Software Developer for seven years on a range of international and global software products. Prior to that position, Robin worked for the computer games company Fube Industries as a Playtester and Software Developer. He originally trained as a microbiologist. Robin took on the additional role of Project Manager on Fate of the World in 2010.
Programmer: Richard Falconer
Production Assistant: Amy O'Neil
Originally from Omaha, Nebraska, Amy emigrated to the UK in 2006 to study towards an MA in International Relations at Oxford Brookes University, graduating with merit in 2007. Her background also includes film and new media, language, and global strategic studies. Amy joined Red Redemption in May 2008 and in late 2009 became Junior Designer on Fate of the World and more recently has become Production Assistant - aiding the launch of Fate of the World: Tipping Point.
Office Manager & PA to the CEO and Chairman: Eva Roza
Eva joined Red Redemption in 2010 as PA to the CEO & Chairman, and Office Manager. Awaiting full biography and team photo.
Publicist: Rebecca Ladbury, Ladbury PR
Ladbury PR is a dynamic public relations consultancy headed by Rebecca Ladbury. Ladbury PR has over 15 years experience delivering creative, intelligent campaigns for a range of clients including broadcasters, charities and international development agencies generating coverage in print, TV, radio and new media to promote and raise the profile of its clients and their services.
Public Relations: Stuart Rowlands
For the past 30 years Stuart Rowlands has managed national and international public relations, publicity and marketing campaigns for such clients as the Nobel Peace Institute (Peace Prize, Concert & Symposium), the Quebec Tourist Board, the Government of Ghana, Anheuser Busch, Bridgestone, Chevrolet, Colgate Palmolive, Honda (both US and international), Island Records, Philip Morris, J&B Scotch; and ITT.
Based in Los Angeles he is a veteran of more than 500 events in 22 countries. In addition to public relations he also produced the “Motorsports Explained” TV series which aired on ESPN and sold in 17 countries and produced, directed and wrote the syndicated weekly series “Pacific Sportsworld”. He was formerly Vice President in charge of global Public Relations for IMG, the world’s largest sports management company.
Game Evangelist: Brett McCall
With more than 20 years in computers, a degree in Community Leadership, and a habit for gamification, and a recently completed Documentary Film, Brett brings a powerfully optimistic perspective about how playing the games give a new context to the stories we tell about our present, future and past. These stories can and will change the way we play our collective realities. Brett currently lives in Asheville, North Carolina where he is part of the founding production teams for TEDxAsheville, LEAF, the Adventure Film Fesitval and HATCH. Brett has been a mentor, panelist and workshop facilitator at HATCH and SXSW in 2011.
Game Director: Matt Miles Griffiths
Matt is a veteran games designer with 15 years experience, working for companies such as Electronic Arts, Codemasters, SCi and Eidos. He has senior design credits on numerous high profile games, including the Number 1 hits Conflict: Desert Storm 1 & 2 and Battlestations: Midway, as well as successful mass-market titles such as Futurama, Rogue Trooper, Cannon Fodder GBC and Thunderbirds GBA.
Since 2006, he has been running his own design consultancy, and is currently working full-time with Red Redemption as gameplay designer on Fate Of The World.
Programmer: Steve Allen
Steve first joined Red Redemption in 2002, working on Steel Law Online. After working in Codemasters' QA department and a short attempt at training as a teacher, he was seduced by a return to development and landed at Sony Liverpool! Since then he has worked on F1 2006 & Championship Edition, Motorstorm:Pacific Rift and the critically acclaimed Wipeout HD. He will one day visit space
Climate Model: Professor Myles Allen
Dr Myles Allen graduated in Physics and Philosophy in 1987, and after working for the United Nations Environment Programme in Kenya, returned to complete a D.Phil. in Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics in 1992. Following Research Fellowships in the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he returned as a University Lecturer in 2001 and currently leads the Climate Dynamics Group in the Department of Physics. His research focuses on how human and natural influences on climate contribute to observed climate change and extreme weather risk. He served on successive Assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 (undergraduate training in philosophy proved invaluable in the IPCC process).
A collaboration with the Met Office in the late 1990s provided some of the core evidence that most of the warming over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities and, in 2004, first quantified the role of human influence in a specific damaging weather event – the European summer heat-wave of 2003. Alongside this work on attribution, the Climate Dynamics Group has a long-standing interest in using the evidence for human influence on climate to constrain climate forecasts. One of the highest profile applications of this work is the climateprediction.net experiment, running Monte Carlo climate model simulations on personal computers signed up by the general public. This ongoing project has been the subject of two BBC television documentaries, winning the 2007 Prix Europa Internet Project of the Year.
Dr. Allen’s latest research addresses the question of how scientific evidence can best be used to inform climate policy. This work has shown that limiting cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide may be a more robust approach to climate change mitigation policy than attempting to define a “safe” stabilization level for atmospheric greenhouse gases.
In 2011 he was appointed Statutory Professor at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford.
Writing: David Bishop
David Bishop is an award-winning screenwriter and author. Born in New Zealand, he was a UK comics editor during the 1990s, running such titles as the Judge Dredd Megazine and 2000 AD, the latter between 1995 and the summer of 2000. He has written for a number of TV series including Dr Who and Doctors.
Visit David's blog for more information: http://viciousimagery.blogspot.com/
Music: Richard Jacques
Richard Jacques is an award-winning composer for video games, film and television whose scoring credits include both critically acclaimed and blockbuster franchises such as MASS EFFECT (BioWare), ALICE IN WONDERLAND (Disney), HEADHUNTER (Amuze/Sega) and STARSHIP TROOPERS (Empire/Sony Pictures). He is internationally recognized as one of the A-list composers in interactive entertainment, described by PLAY Magazine (US) as "One of the truly distinctive music composers in the industry today." Excelling in cinematic scoring Jacques was the first composer to secure a major budget for a live symphony orchestra in a video game soundtrack (HEADHUNTER), the first to record a live orchestra for a Sony PSP handheld title (PURSUIT FORCE), the first to have his music featured in art exhibitions as well as live concerts in Japan, Europe and North America ("Games Convention" concert series & "Video Games Live" world tour), and the first western composer to have his game scores released commercially in Japan, Europe and North America.
To find out more please visit Richard's website: http://www.richardjacques.com/
Art: Kalen Chock
Awaiting biography and photo.
Art: Jake Denham
Jake has Bachelor of Arts in Game Art and Design from De Montfort University and a Master of Arts in Digital Design from the University of the Creative Arts. The focus of his Masters was socially positive video games. Jake is a keen artist in both traditional and digital art and recently won Best Game in the Creative Innovation Awards. His success in the awards lead to his involvement with Red Redemption. Work for Red Redemption has included 3D assets, user interfaces and digital paintings. Jake is now a freelance artist and is looking forward to a bright future in the games industry.
QA Tester: Calum Stephenson
Calum has a masters degree in Physics and Meteorology from the University of Reading and has joined the team to lead the QA Testing on Fate of the World. A lifelong gamer, Calum has previously worked as a tester for Wizards of the Coast and is making his way into the gaming industry. Calum is also an amateur games designer who has represented his country on the international stage for the fantasy card game Magic: the Gathering.
Prof. Diana Liverman is the Co-Director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona and is the former director of Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute where she is now visiting Professor of Environmental Policy and Development. Diana is a geographer with longstanding interests in the impacts of climate change on society, especially the vulnerability of the developing world and the challenges of climate adaptation. Her national and international advisory roles include membership of committees of the US National Academy of Sciences, including the recent committee on America's Climate Choices, and leadership roles in the Inter American Institute for Global Change Research, the international Global Environmental Change and Food Systems programme, and the new Earth Systems Governance project. She also works with arts and cultural organizations to foster conversations about climate change.
Advisory Board Member: Dr Cameron Hepburn
Dr Cameron Hepburn is an environmental economist specialising in climate policy and long-term decision-making. He holds first class degrees in Law and Chemical Engineering from Melbourne University, an MPhil in Economics from Magdalen College, Oxford and a DPhil in Economics from Nuffield College (as a Rhodes Scholar)In addition to his teaching and research fellowships at Oxford, he is actively involved in public policy as a member of the DEFRA Academic Panel and as a founder of Vivid Economics. He contributed two background research papers to the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.
Advisory Board Member: John Kroeger
John Kroeger was co-head of the UK Government team of Business Relations Managers to the Computer Games Industry for the then Department of Trade and Industry, until June 2008. He was a senior executive for Reuters Ltd in variously Denmark, Sweden and the UK for nearly twenty tears, including a period of secondment to the DTI during which he produced an Action Plan for Growth for the Digital Content Sector which led to the creation of the Digital Content Forum. It was during the creation of this plan that Mr Kroeger was also able to convince the UK government of the importance of the UK games sector and to develop ways for the government to engage with that sector.
Advisory Board Member: Alan Gershenfeld
Alan is President of Eline Media. Alan has spent the last twenty years at the intersection of entertainment, technology and social entrepreneurship.
Prior to E-Line, Alan spent seven years as CEO and Co-Founder of netomat, a leader in mobile-web community solutions. As CEO, Alan helped to transform a network-based art project into a pioneering software company, raising funding from VCs, strategic investors (Motorola, WPP, Forbes), foundations (Rockefeller's ProVenEx double bottom line fund) and securing clients and partnerships with leading technology and content providers such as Electronic Arts, Warner Brothers, Motorola and Miramax. netomat was selected as a Technology Pioneer at the 2007 World Economic Forum at Davos.
Before netomat, Alan spent six years at Activision, a global leader in entertainment software. He was a member of the executive management team that rebuilt Activision from bankruptcy into a profitable industry leader with more than a billion dollars in revenue. At Activision, Alan served as Senior Vice President of Activision Studios where he supervised all product development at the company's Los Angeles studios. Titles released under Alan's leadership include Civilization: Call to Power, Asteroids, Muppet Treasure Island, Spycraft, Pitfall, Zork and Tony Hawk Skateboarding.
Before Activision, Alan spent nearly ten years in the film industry where he worked in development, production and post-production with credits on numerous feature films and documentaries. As a writer, Alan was a film critic for the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and co-author of Game Plan, a book about the computer and video game business published by St. Martin's Press. His articles and photographs have been published in numerous magazines and newspapers including the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Filmmaker Magazine, Cinema India-International and Bowler's Journal.
As a speaker, Alan has presented at a wide variety of conferences throughout the world including PC Forum, Sundance Film Festival, Games for Change, CTIA, Mobile Imaging Summit, Game Developers Conference, Milia/Cannes, LAX Conference, ICE/Toronto, Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, SoCap and the World Economic Forum at Davos.
Alan served as Chairman of the Board of Games for Change until mid 2010, a nonprofit that helps to rise the sector of computer and video games for social change. He also serves on the Board of Directors of FilmAid International, a nonprofit that uses film and video to empower refugees throughout the world. Alan serves on the Advisory Board of Scenarios USA, Creative Capital, SplashLife, We Are Family Foundation and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center For Educational Media and Research (Sesame Workshop).
Advisory Board Member: Dr Pamela Hartigan
Pamela Hartigan is the Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University’s Said Business School. She is also a Volans Founding Partner and Non Executive Director. From 2001 to 2008 she was the Managing Director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, a Swiss-based organization focused on advancing the practice of social entrepreneurship nationally, regionally and globally. The Foundation is the second organization started by Klaus Schwab, the first being the World Economic Forum. Dr. Hartigan is the first Managing Director of the Foundation and has been responsible for shaping the strategy and operations pursued by the Foundation to achieve its mission.
Dr. Hartigan is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, holds a Masters degree in International Economics, a Masters in Education and a PhD in Cognitive Psychology. Her new book, entitled The Power of Unreasonable People: How Entrepreneurs Create Markets that change the World and co-authored with John Elkington, will be released in February 2008 by Harvard Business Press. She is a frequent lecturer on social entrepreneurship and innovation at graduate schools of business in the USA, Europe and Asia, and is an Adjunct Professor at the Columbia School of Business in New York City. She serves on the Board of five social enterprises and advises many more.