History of Red Redemption, part 2

Part Two: The Climate Changes
Oh that was a terrible pun...

So we were having a rough time of it, but then everything changed around for us.

2005 April +: Things look up
After she recovered, Hannah got a job as Assistant Project Manager on the wonderful ClimatePrediction.net. If you are not familiar with it, I recommend you give it a try. It is the world's largest distributed computer modelling programme focussed on climate change. Think Seti-at-home, but looking at our atmosphere rather than for aliens.

2006: Videos and the BBC
Along the way as we grew, we did what a lot of other small companies do and took on a number of interesting, and tangentally related projects. This included making a fun video about computational modelling called the "SPICE" project for University College London. Excitingly that video helped them win a massive grant at the Super Computing trade show.

We also developed a number of websites for projects that we were interested in, and some for projects that we were not quite so keen on.

Hannah was still working for ClimatePrediction.net, though she was in the process of moving on to the Environmental Change and Management MSc at Oxford University's excellent Environmental Change Institute. The ClimatePrediction.net project was a wonderful inspiration, and as you do, I started hanging out more and more with the team, and especially Dr Myles Allen who is highly motivated, articulate and knowledgeable. I couldn't fail to be impressed by him.

The funny thing was that he was impressed with us, and immediately saw the potential of computer games + climate change.

So it ended up that one evening at the ClimatePrediction.net retreat, he challenged us to go for it, but he did more than that, he put us in touch with a fab group of people in the BBC and told us that we should talk to them. So we did.

Then an amazing thing happened. The BBC team took a big risk and commissioned us, and everything changed. Then on the back of the extensive development process with the BBC (I think I will write a seperate article on that. Suffice it to say for now that the BBC's team were very supportive and gave us access to testing facilities that really helped improve the game immeasureably), we also won a Climate Challenge Fund award (actually two!) from the UK Department of the Environment to develop a multi-player stripped down version of Climate Challenge for schools.

2007: Climate Change
In January of 2007 we launched Climate Challenge with the BBC on BBC Science and Nature. The game took off in a much bigger way that we had ever anticipated. 82, 000 people played the game in the first week ad we received global coverage in the Sunday Times, LA Times, El Pais, Gamasutra, Serious Games Source, Sustainable Industries Journal, and many more. We also received some great blog coverage from Worldchanging, a number of games blogs and even some climate critic blogs.

Even better our research showed that the game was actually having a strong effect.

The user figures just got better and better with the game rapidly passing 500,000 players. It was being used in ways we had never anticipated. For example the World Economic Forum used Climate Challenge in their seminars in the run up to Davos 2007 to train executives in risk management. We were exstatic.

Then in July at the House of Commons we launched the multi-player Operation: Climate Control. This was the DEFRA funded game and was squarely aimed at 14-16 year olds studying climate change in the UK. The launch event had an unusual focus, it used the game to illustrate how serious games / socially conscious games could bring together disperate groups on a common issue. Namely in this case groups of muslim and jewish teenagers to team up and tackle climate change. That was cool :)

The projects kept flowing and we developed the Trouble Shooter game for EDF Energy and also launched the ClimateX website with the Environmental Change Institute.

2008: Socially Conscious Games
At the beginning of the year we were fortunate enough to have Klaude Thomas join us as Managing Director. Klaude has a wealth of experience built up over many years in the games industry and was previously MD for Eidos Hungary as well as being an Exec Producer for Eidos. If his name isn't familiar, his games probably are. Here's a short list:

• Battlestations: Midway
• Shogun Total War
• F1 2000

Klaude brought more than just his experience though. He immediately set to work helping Red Redemption to clearly define its core strategy and to focus even more tightly on socially-conscious games.