Climate Challenge 2010 Progress Bar

To keep everyone up to date with how we are doing on Climate Challenge 2010 we are now including a progress bar on our logos. Its a bit of fun, but we will keep it periodically updated.

Our experiences of the Copenhagen COP-15 Negotiations

Hannah Rowlands, our in-house science advisor attended the Copenhagen COP-15 climate change negotiations in December. Hannah wrote up her experience of the ups and downs of the conference which we wanted to share.

I was lucky enough to be in Copenhagen for a brief visit during the COP15 climate change negotiations in December 2009. My trip was a mix of disappointments and unexpected opportunities, as well as the chance to see several different climate change worlds.

I'd not been to a COP (Conference of the Parties to the 1992 UNFCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change)) before, so didn't really know when, during the two-week process, would be the best time to be there, so we rather arbitrarily decided that I would go during the second week, when hopefully things would be quite tense and interesting.

Oxford University, where I did my Masters degree, were kind enough to let me join their delegation of students and academics, which would allow me entrance to the actual negotiations being held in the Bella Centre.

In the first week, I was following closely the news coming out of Copenhagen as well as the emails going around the Oxford University delegation. At the negotiations, I was hearing about walk-outs by developing nations and harsh police behaviour at protests, and from Oxford University I was hearing about incredibly long queues to get into the cavernous Bella Centre. I wasn't sure what to expect when I finally go there.

On the day of my flight (for the record, we did look into taking the train and it took around 24 hours and cost around 3 times as much as flying, sorry, we're on a budget...) I received an email from the Oxford University delegation organiser saying that rumours were going around about limitations to the number of NGO (Non-Governmental Organisations) people being allowed into the Bella Centre for the rest of the week. However, since I was only there for one full day, Oxford University offered me one of their strictly limited passes for Wednesday. By the time I arrived on Tuesday evening, I was told that they were not allowing any new NGO registrations, which would make that precious pass completely useless.

So, I took the shuttle bus from the airport directly to the Bella Centre in the hope of registering before it was too late. Unfortunately, I arrived just after registration had closed. It just wasn't going to be.

My first event in Copenhagen was a very prestigious reception hosted by the UN Foundation and Deutsche Bank, to which I was kindly invited by Mark Fulton, who is one of our private investors. And so I caught a glimpse of my first climate change world – the corporate, high-level, governmental world. This world involved high security – road blocks and passport checks – and champagne, as well as discussion of enormous sums of money and “game-changing” technologies. From inside this world, climate change can be solved by putting enough money in the right places. I was surprised and impressed by how mainstream this world is now. There was a televised address by Bill Clinton urging delegates at Copenhagen to do their best to solve the problems of climate change. Bankers, representatives of the world's biggest companies, US Senators, all big guns in our society, and all talking about what to do to tackle climate change.

After the reception, I went along to an event called “Canopy Canapés”, a drinks reception to highlight the issues of deforestation, held at the Copenhagen Botanical Gardens in a glorious 19th Century glass hot house. I met with my Oxford University friends, and had been hoping to pick up my pass for the next day, although I now realised that the pass had better go to someone else who had been able to register at the Bella Centre.

This was the second climate change world I saw in Copenhagen. It was made up of passionate academics and NGO folks, working somewhere in between the bottom-up grassroots movement and the top-down government-corporate world.

I had decided to go to the Bella Centre, despite knowing I couldn't get inside. I had heard about another protest happening that morning and I wanted to see it for myself. The Bella Centre is on the metro from central Copenhagen. The night before, I had got the shuttle bus straight up to the Bella Centre but this morning the police had decided, what with the threatened protests, and the arrivals of state leaders, to heighten security. The metro station for the Bella Centre was closed, and delegates had to walk from neighbouring stations, going through police roadblocks placed half-way between those neighbouring stations and the Bella Centre.

Without a pass, I couldn't get through the roadblock, but I could sit on the metro as it shot straight pass the Bella Centre on its overhead tracks. Once again, there were huge queues of delegates waiting to get in, then there was a large gap of empty road, another roadblock, and then a huge crowd of protesters. I knew the protesters were planning to storm the Bella Centre, but it was clear the police weren't going to let them even get close to the building, let alone get inside.

After travelling up and down the metro past the Bella Centre a few times, I continued into central Copenhagen to meet Mark Fulton for lunch. He generously gave me two hours of his time to discuss ideas for the game (as well as a delicious lunch at his hotel's restaurant). I came away from the lunch buzzing with ideas for the game to work on in January.

The central square in Copenhagen was filled with climate change-related posters, sculptures and booths. The whole city really had gone climate change mad! Various well-known companies seemed to be vying for advertising space on billboards, telling us how much they were doing to tackle climate change.

Copenhagen Business School had offered a lecture theatre with a webcam showing the live feed of the negotiations for those who didn't have passes for the Bella Centre. I tried watching the negotiations for a while, but, I confess, it was incredibly boring and, with another Oxford University student friend, I decided instead to check out the Klima Forum. This was a civil society parallel conference, hosted by the Danish Government in a central Copenhagen leisure centre, with talks and films about climate change, as well as – and this was crucial in the increasingly cold, snowy weather – a warm building with food and hot drinks.

And so I saw the third climate change world – the civil society, grassroots, activist world. I briefly bumped into a friend from Oxford who had been at the protests earlier in the day, had been very nearly arrested earlier in the week, and had spent the afternoon doing press interviews about the unreasonable (in his opinion) behaviour of the Danish police. The Klima Forum was full of slightly scruffy-looking students sitting in hallways, hats and scarves and gloves strewn around the floor. I found myself in a nice, warm room watching the most appallingly awful film about completely nonsense technological solutions to climate change. This was a shame, as I want to believe that unexpected solutions might crop up and help humanity out, but the suggestion to help home-inventors come up with zero-point energy on the off-chance that it might solve climate change was so out of keeping with the enormity of the problems being addressed at Copenhagen that it just annoyed me.


On Thursday, my last day in Copenhagen, I had only one appointment, which was to take a test drive in an electric car in Copenhagen but, before heading back over the bridge for the last time, I took an hour to walk around Malmö and buy some pretty Swedish Christmas decorations. And now, finally, on the train going over the Oresund Bridge, I could see the view of the straits between the two countries. I also saw the wind farm in the middle of the sea, lines of turbines vanishing into the distance.

Both Malmö and Copenhagen were, by this point, covered in snow, and this was providing one cause of disruption to transport. The second disruption was due to “protesters on the tracks”, as the announcement on the train informed us. I wasn't sure, however, what was actually happening to cause these protesters to be on the tracks. I can imagine perhaps they were deliberately causing disruptions, or maybe they were being chased by police and accidentally ended up on the tracks? Thirdly, the arrival of more heads of state was causing closures of roads and stations. Luckily, from this point of view, I was leaving before Barack Obama was due to arrive, which was going to cause the closure of the Oresund Bridge to road traffic for several hours.

All of these disruptions unfortunately also caused my electric car test drive to be cancelled, as the roads were too slippery. Nevertheless, I went along to the venue to have a look at the car and chat with the engineers. As it turns out, the electric car company in question had hired out the lobby of the Radisson Hotel in central Copenhagen to display their electric cars. I had to show my passport and have my bag searched before I was allowed into the hotel. Being told that the Chinese delegation were staying at this hotel helped explain this heightened security. The hotel was, inevitably, a nice, warm place, so I spent quite some time finding out all about electric cars and the systems that are being put in place to make them more affordable, such as car owners leasing the batteries rather than purchasing them, and how they can be integrated into renewable electricity systems to help deal with the issues of intermittency (car batteries can be told by the grid to charge during the night at times of greatest wind speed, for example).

By this point, I only had a handful of hours left before my flight, so I took myself back into central Copenhagen to the main shopping street to get some lunch. After that, I got the metro to airport and, after a slightly tedious but not so bad given the weather conditions delay of two hours, was on my flight back to the UK.

I was very pleased to have been in Copenhagen, even though I never actually saw the negotiations at first hand. In some ways, arriving as late as I did without any real hope of getting in, I was saved the horrendous queues that other delegates endured. But just being in the city, talking with people about the negotiations, it became a real, immediate thing, rather than a distant process that was only happening on BBC News.

As for these multiple climate change worlds that I experienced, I was concerned at how little overlap there was, and the antagonism between them. I feel that the people in the grassroots, activist world feel that radical behavioural and social change are required to deal with climate change, and that neither governments nor corporations can really do anything helpful in the process, indeed they are a hindrance and therefore not to be engaged with.

On the other hand, in the corporate, government world, I feel that there's an understandable resistance to radical change in lifestyles, and perhaps an over-optimistic reliance on technological solutions. However, this is where huge amounts of money are being promised, and can be made, through development of technologies. This may not be a bad thing, as the scale is large.

The only world I didn't see, then, was the actual world of the negotiations which was, I suppose, ultimately the least effective one at Copenhagen. I left before the final hours of the negotiations, and could only read about it in the news.

Of course it was disappointing that a new climate change treaty was not agreed at Copenhagen. People are now wondering whether the future of international climate change action is going to be outside the UNFCCC, with countries simply doing their best to reduce emissions without binding targets. Would that allow countries to get on with dealing with climate change without the drag of waiting for all countries to agree, or will it lead to countries not achieving nearly enough emissions reductions because there's no impetus to strive for more? And what does it mean for certain sectors, like forestry, for which the negotiations at Copenhagen did in fact come up with an agreement? Does that agreement have to wait until the new overall treaty exists, if ever, before it can come into force, or can it go ahead on its own?

As for the new treaty, we have to wait for COP16 in Mexico, December 2010. And in the meantime, think of all the carbon dioxide emissions that will continue to be emitted until then.

Talking at Portsmouth University

I was asked to be a speaker at the GamesRoadshow events (http://gamesentroadshow.ning.com/ and www.gemroadshow.co.uk) and first up was Portsmouth University where I spoke on Wednesday to an audience of students and lecturers from the BSc (Hons) Computer Games Techologies, BSc (Hons) Computer Games Enterprise as well as several postgraduate students.

I was asked to give a 30 minute talk about indie games development, and our particular take on making games about climate change and sustainability. As always I've given up trying to have a stage persona, and instead just talk as me, something which can be quite draining, but is usually far more fun and interesting for both me and the audience.

I had no idea how my talk would go down, but they blew me away with their enthusiasm and interest. They reacted well to our approach and upcoming Climate Challenge 2010 game which was nice and even in the session had some very specific questions, some which caught me totally by surprise but pleased me as they had most definitely been paying attention! I spent almost two hours after the talk answering more well thought out questions from a number of students, many of whom were keen to find out what they could do above and beyond their course in order to get into the games industry. From what I heard their lecturers were giving them a good sense of what the games industry is really like once you get beyond the initial excitement and that it demands hard work and is a very competitive field. They also had a keen awareness of the global nature of the industry.

A number of students approached me about possible placements, and from what I saw that is certainly something that would be of interest to us. There is a great pool of talent here and we hope to work with them soon. Their courses touch on a number of areas, and whilst I would like to see more about games design and quality assurance as well as programming, business and graphics, there is a good core of subjects here. That said I would be delighted to talk at Portsmouth University again and hope that perhaps we can build some kind of ongoing industry/academic relationship with them

I have to say if they are the future of UK gaming then I am hopeful about Britain's place in the games industry in the future. Assuming most of them don't get lured to Canada as so many have in the last few years...

Blog Action Day: Global climate change summits in Climate Challenge 2010

So today is Blog Action Day on Climate Change. Obviously this subject is close to my heart (this is Gobion btw) so I am taking part :)

With the Copenhagen COP-15 climate change negotiations soon upon us, I wanted to write about my first experience with the summits process in Climate Challenge 2010. It is also the first time I will start talking about particular game play elements, as the team are currently putting together the first rough cut of the game and the designers and developers let me loose on this bit of the game (so far). I got a chance to play with some of these rough elements of game play.

Before I go any further, a proviso: I'm not a designer or a developer for Climate Challenge 2010 – my main role is as spokesman for the company, and what I am writing here reflects my personal experience with the game. The game still has many months left of development and no doubt over time very many elements of the experience will change. It is a natural part of the design and testing process. So with that proviso in place, take this as a snap shot of work in progress from my perspective.

Summits are an interesting part of the game for me for several reasons:

• They are where I get the 12 regional groups to sign up to global level agreements
  
• They provided me a fun change of pace from regional fire-fighting, shifting my focus to the big picture
  
• They give me the chance to play out what goes on "under the hood" at these international negotiations.
  

The real world process of negotiation is one of convincing the various partners that they want to reach a common agreement, and that can be much trickier than it sounds. National negotiators generally want to add exceptions for elements they do not want, amendments to add in elements they do want, follow the orders they have been given by their governments and to come out of the negotiations looking like they stronger/better/more willing party.

When multiple nations come together with these requirements tend to butt heads. Sometimes that can be worked out, but sometimes a party will just storm off in protest (or mock protest), or threaten to storm off in order to put more weight behind their requirements. International agreements are partly voluntary: unless you're prepared to go to war you can't make a sovereign nation sign something they don't like into law in their country.

The development team let me play with a first “rough cut” of the summits system. I was hoping that this part of the game would reflect the real world negotiation, back room dealing, posturing, and deal making; but of course I also hoped to be the driving force behind successful negotiations!

How did it work for me as a player?
In the game I was given an initial agenda that I could accept or throw out (at the risk of the sponsoring parties leaving the table), and then add in my own issues. I found that some of the nations were especially willing to storm out – and that made me adjust my strategy a bit to try and keep them in, or if I couldn't to ensure that the regions I most wanted involved stayed in. If I couldn't get everyone to agree, maybe I could just satisfy the biggest players?

My draft agenda was haggled over and some of the regions added in riders, which surprised and intrigued me. Hopefully as this system continues to evolve as it made some agenda items I did not like become married to agenda items I did like. This felt a lot like the “real world” to me (though of course I could be wrong – but that was my impression!).

Once that stage was completed I had the chance to adjust the final agenda and put it to the vote. At this stage of production it was really tough: most regions refused to ratify my proposed agreement! (It was pointed out to me several times that this was pre-balancing.)

Overall I like this part of the game, and I plan to follow this post up with some thoughts from the design team themselves soon. In December myself and Hannah, our science advisor, from our team are going to the Copenhagen COP-15 negotiations. There I will get to see how my experiences in the game marry up with the real world which should be exciting. So expect more about summits soon!

Social Entrepreneurship

So I (Gobion) gave a talk to the MBA students at Saïd Business School at Oxford University as part of a day on "Conversations on Social Innovation and entrepreneurship"

The day was organised by the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, the Institute for Science Innovation and the Oxford University Society and Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and I was fortunate to be invited along as one of the social entrepreneurs. The day was organised by the fantastic Pamela Hartigan.

The keynote speaker was Mel Young, from the excellent Homeless World Cup. His talk was awesome, and until that day I had no idea how Mel is the spitting image of a war criminal - which makes international travel tricky! The Homeless World Cup is a inspiring event and locus of social change and I recommend you check it out.

It was an inspiring day, designed to give the MBA students a feel of what potential there is out there for interesting social innovation, and overall from the feedback I received the event was very successful at achieving those aims. The students felt very fired up by the conversations they had with the social entrepreneurs.

My talk was on my background, our business and structure, our most notable projects and current game Climate Challenge 2010 (I will post up an edited version of my PDF shortly).

My audience was from around the world (USA, Italy, Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia and Bulgaria) and it was really great to get talking to them about their experiences and backgrounds. They asked a lot of smart questions, which I expected, but were also far more switched on about social entrepreneurship that I had thought they would be.

It does seem though that games are a common language that is shared across much of the world and that is exciting to see. We had all played games most of our lives, and even shared a few favourites. My audience was very excited about the possibility of games addressing social issues whilst still remaining fun/challenging commercial games.

I look forward to more opportunities like this.

As an aside, several people asked me what "Social Entrepreneurship" is. My view is that is it regular entrepreneurship but just making sure you include the people you work with, the communities you work in and the planet in your business planning :)

Good Science and Bad Science

Good Science (hopefully!)
The New Scientist has a good little article on upcoming exciting clean tech - definitely worth a read http://bit.ly/1sWazj

There are so many interesting bits of tech there, and it will be interesting to see how they develop. "Peen-n-Grow" was completely new to me, but I've heard about most of the others along the way. We will have to see how many of them we can get into the game as policy decisions :)

Bad Science
Well actually a nod to the ever excellent Ben Goldacre and his awesome Bad Science blog where he investigates people's misuse of science.

All of his articles are good to read, and it should be pointed out that he is always quick to issue a correction when he makes a mistake (as we all do from time to time), but the article I wanted to post about was this one: http://www.badscience.net/2009/09/house-of-numbers/.

The article has nothing to do with our favourite science subject, climate change, but it is all about the attempts of AIDS denialists to blame the horrible virus on the poor, on the treatments, on everything except the actual virus itself. I won't repeat what he said here - but do check it and the other awesome pieces out.

Even though the focus is on climate change with Climate Challenge 2010, we are including pandemics in the game in some form - though hopefully in more detail with future releases.

Guardian Newspaper's guide to Copenhagen

The Guardian newspaper has a good piece on a beginner's guide to the Copenhagen Climate Change negotiations, and they want to get you involved on helping translate the jargon-heavy bits! http://bit.ly/4buUqe

Blog Action Day

We have signed up with Blog Action Day (http://bit.ly/n7jpJ). This year the theme of the day is climate change, which is obviously a theme close to our own hearts.

It is great to see grass-roots action like this and the whole team at Red Redemption support the day and wish it the best of luck.

Blog Action Day is vital in helping to spread awareness of the vital importance of climate change to everyone. Climate change is happening, right now, to you and you need to know about it.

And you can quote me on that :)

Serious Games Book Recommendations

Following on to our short list of good books on climate change, we wanted to give a couple about the topic of games, and serious games.

1. Power Up by Rebecca Mileham
An excellent introduction to the topic of serious games, this book examines the latest evidence into how computer games affect our health, thinking, learning, identity, beliefs, and propensity for violence or addiction. Features an interview with Gobion and Hannah from Red Redemption.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Powering-Up-Computer-Changing-TechKnow/dp/0470723106

You can see Rebecca's blog here http://www.rebecca.mileham.net/

2. Digital Game-Based Learning by Marc Prensky
An explanation of what serious games are and might be, by serious games advocate, Marc Prensky

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Game-based-Learning-Marc-Prensky/dp/0071363440

Check out his blog at http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/

Relaunching the blog

So now we are getting up to full speed with things on the "telling people about what we do" front it was time to relaunch the blog and do a proper job :)

So I hope you like the new design. The little fella in the banner is Nahual, a character we made for one of our games based on pre-Hispanic Mexican mythology.

So who, or what is a nahual? To quote the fascinating Pantheon.org "A nahual, also called nagual, is a spirit being or animistic entity closely associated with a human being. Among some groups, each person has his or her own nahual which acts a double, a shadow, or as a protective spirit. They are often animals such as dogs, jaguars, or opossums, but they can also be natural forces such as lightning or meteors.

"If one harms another person's nahual, one may harm the person who belongs to that nahual. During sleep, the nahual can go wondering, something that can be seen in the dream. Nahuals can also be sent out to perform tasks, use it as an adviser, or a person can change his shape to that of the nahual.

"The origin of the nahuals lies far back in pre-Hispanic times. Many patron deities of towns have their own nahuals to help them guard their towns, just like their pre-Hispanic forebears. These nahuallies make nocturnal patrols, giving off evil airs to ward off rival nahuallies. In ancient times, each day sign of the divinatory calender had its own personal nahual or deity, which corresponds to the present-day beliefs that each sign of the zodiac has its own nahual. Among the Quiché Maya (K'iche') the day a child is born determines its nahual, but the child is only told when it has reached a responsible age so that they may not blame bad deeds on the nahual."

"Nahual." Encyclopedia Mythica from Encyclopedia Mythica Online.
<http://www.pantheon.org/articles/n/nahual.html>
[Accessed September 17, 2009].

... so there you go.

Consider him the guide to what we get up to! :)