Nintendo Authorised Developers

Red Redemption have been accepted as Authorised Nintendo Developers, initially for the DS but also for the Wii.

This is really exciting for us, as one of the issues of being such a small company was achieving this status independently as for most developers it happens via their publisher. The process took some 5 months, but we had assumed it would and so it has not delayed our development at all.

Things are really taking shape with our plans and I shall now be able to start talking a bit more about our experiences in this field. One of the frustrations is always about how open to be when talking about our plans, but things have been going really well and it is high time I started telling people about the ups and downs.

Also in related news we have successfully trademarked Climate Challenge in the UK, EU and US.

Cheers,
Gobion

Korean Games

I had the delight of entertaining a group of visiting Koreans today who were in the UK visiting sustainable businesses via the British Council, which as well as Red Redemption, included Marks and Spencer and the excellent Futerra.

The visit was at quite short notice, so I was not sure what would happen, but as it turned out I need not have worried.

They were all very familiar with the computer games industry, but were very keen to hear about how computer games could be brought to socially conscious themes, such as climate change.

It was intriguing for me to deliver a presentation via a translator, but I definitely learned quite a bit as well, which is one of the things I like most about lecturing. The Korean games industry is very sophisticated, but I was surprised to learn that there are no companies working in the socially conscious arena. From our side I said that I would love to partner up with one or more Korean games companies as I think the Koreans would really enjoy a sufficiently sophisticated and deep gaming experience.

I look forward to following the discussions up anon.

Change of Creative Commons License

Just a quick post to say that this blog is now licensed under the even less restrictive Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK License.


Behind The Iron Mask by Gobion Rowlands is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

ECI Lecture Video

I've now uploaded the video of my recent lecture on Climate Change and Computer Games at the Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University.

You can watch the video [ HERE ] it is about an hour long and is an AVI file.

This video is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK License.

ECI Lecture on Climate Change and Computer Games

I gave a lecture today at the Environmental Change Institute as part of my role as an Associate Lecturer in Climate Change Communications.

The lecture was entitled "The Role of Video Games in Climate Change Communications" and was for the 2008/9 year of the Environmental Change and Management MSc students.

The lecture went really well and I will post a more detailed review of the interesting dialogue that came out of the meeting, but in the meantime I have also uploaded the lecture itself as a PDF in advance of a video of the lecture that I hope to have uploaded in a couple of days with the help of Ian.

The presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Licence

Download the PDF [ HERE ] (PDF, 2864KB).

Leipzig Roundup

Well it is my final day at the Leipzig Games Convention before heading back to the UK tomorrow. This is my first time at Leipzig and my first time at a convention in my role as Chairman, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

So how has it been?

We had meetings with four publishers and all the meetings went well and we have a clear follow up with all of them, so that's good. At least one unexpected angle came out of the meetings which I am interested in pursuing. Really interested... :)

I learned a lot from the experience of doing short pitching meetings. We have some truly unique features as a games developer and I think I did a good job of putting that all across. What would have been good would have been to get a few more NDAs in place before the event so I could talk more freely about our various prototypes. The life of a small developer is often tough, but it is good to have our approach reinforced. Switching our primary business focus to the traditional developer/publisher model over the more business-to-business games is making the whole process much more straightforward. We are innovating the product rather than the business model.

I also want to send a big thank you to Chris for all his help - you are a star :)

I am definitely planning on coming along next year, though the rumour is the event is moving to Cologne. That is a shame as the Leipzig conference centre is really good, though I think Leipzig as a city might be a bit short of accommodation. We ended up staying some 25km outside of town, which though very pretty, was also in the middle of nowhere :

As for the games, two at the show stood out for me and neither were in our field.

• Fallout 3 was very interesting. I have a horrible suspicion that it will have been console-ised, as the demo didn't show any dialogue. The original Fallout games taught me a lot about how cool it is to have real consequences to your actions in a game. You were never constrained by a polarised good/evil approach - you had to pick your won way through a minefield of shades of behaviour in a world that was damn tough. As for this version - we will have to wait and see, but I am hoping that it will be good.
• Call of Duty: World At War. The original Call of Duty games taught me a lot about how horrific WW2 was, it was like living through the Band of Brothers tv series. That gave me a new level of empathy for my grandfather and his experiences as a paratrooper in the war. This game continues that approach, but excitingly for me, it now offers a 4 player co-operative approach. Co-operative games are one of my most loved forms of gaming, so that's rather exciting.

Now... do I get an XBox 360, or a gaming PC?

Also word to the wise: German wasps are nasty! One crawled into my shirt and stung me 5 times on the arm. I am typing this with my whole upper right arm wrapped in bandages! The German for "I've been stung by a wasp" is: ich bin von einer Wespe gestochen worden.

At the Leipzig Games Convention

I am at the Leipzig Games Convention this week - will post updates as I write them If you are also here and want to meet up, post a comment :D

Saw Fallout 3 demo - not convinced yet... may be great, but I will need to see more.

Why so quiet?

I've been a bit quiet this week. Well I haven't, rather my blogging has.

And why is this?

Well a few reasons. Firstly work has been very busy and my mountain of todos has just grown and grown. But that is ok as it is all good stuff. Lots of exciting stuff (more on that soon).

Secondly, I have totally given into my geeky side and bought myself an Eee PC 901 20GB. Not only that but I practiced geekfu and immediately wiped Xandros Linux from it and installed Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron and even compiled my own driver modules for the networking. As Ian remarked yesterday this is me... a cautionary tale. It is true I am a geek. But ther is a method in my madness. Switching to the smaller Eees (I also have a 701) has made a substantial difference in my life.

How so? Well given that I have suffered from back and shoulder injuries caused (or at least exacerbated) by my luggable laptop, and that I recently snapped (yes... snapped!) one of the tendons in my right arm (following my recently campylobacta encounter) it became clear that if I didn't want to wheelchair myself in the near future then the likes of the Eee PC are the only way to go. The nature of my role is that I spend a lot of time on trains and occasionally in cars travelling from meeting to meeting, and I am always accompanied by a laptop of some description.

And it has worked - my back has never been better and I can at least, in part, attribute that to the lovely 1.2kg Eee 901 and 1kg Eee 701.

Anyway back to my actual blog purpose... I've been organising my thoughts and should hoepfully have a post or two this afternoon.

Game Theory

I am currently carrying out some research creating elements of discrete game play from real world research and decision making, and this has meant a refresher in some of the toy games of Game Theory and wondering if in certain fields, such as climate change, there can be a Nash Equilibrium? Anyway, I reckon there may be a paper or two in the work we are currently carrying out, so we will see. Certainly in traditional climate change negotiation there has been a strong undercurrent of the most famous of toy games the "Prisoner's Dilemma" with politicians viewing climate change as antithetical to a strong economy, something which I think Sir Nicholas Stern pulled apart nicely in the Stern Report on the Economics of Climate Change.

Ian and I had a great debate with Dr Cameron Hepburn a while back on the application of Big Pig Little Pig (otherwise known as Boxed Pigs) in negotiations. Now I am not an expert on Game Theory, so hopefully I can get this right!

If you are not familiar with the toy game then I quote the following extract from an Economics exam question (http://www.kevinhinde.com/Micro2/ec425test2002.pdf):

Big Pig and Little Pig are put in a box with a button at one end and a shute that dispenses food into a trough at the other. The pigs have two possible strategies, Press Button and Wait at the trough. If both pigs choose Wait they each get 4 units of food. If both pigs press the button then they each get 5 units of food. If Little Pig presses the button and Big Pig waits at the trough, then Big Pig gets 10 units of food and Little Pig gets 0. Finally, if Big Pig presses the button and Little Pig waits, then Big Pig gets 4 units of food and Little Pig gets 2.

How does this related to international climate change negotiations? Well Big Pig is a highly industrialised nation (e.g. the USA, UK, Germany) and little pig is a developing nation. And the trough in this case is "reducing carbon emissions". "Press" in this case means "Act to reduce carbon emissions" and "Wait" in this case means "Do nothing". The units of food are units of economic growth.

Each pig wants to reduce their carbon emissions, but preferably only after the other pig has done so because any reduction of emissions is viewed as being in opposition to that holy grail of modern capitalism, the economy. So what does the big pig do? Well the big pig's strategy is entirely dependent on what he thinks the little pig will do and in effect that decision is based on another toy game, that of Chicken. In this case is who will blink first and cut emissions as they approach the cliff of climate change?.

The problem with many of these games is that they assume there is an equilibrium and that equilibrium might be to do nothing, or at least do nothing until the last possible moment after your competitor has acted.

But that is to deny the fundamental reality that there is no Nash Equilibrium here and that "no action" is actually an actively destructive response.

First March Complete! Onward Legion!

The team completed the First March of development on our new title, and yesterday was review time. The team did an excellent job of completing all the tasks and objectives for March 1 and in simple terms it means that we actually saw several basic elements of interaction on an entirely new platform (for us) and some testable code.

Now we take forward the good bits, and learn from the experiences of the march and push into March 2, which will produce some exciting developments with basic game elements taking shape.

I also get to commission more concept art which is always fun.

Games and Education

I was a speaker at the recent Visual Web Conference along with Lord Puttnam, Margaret Robertson, and Dan Hon on Games and Education. Lord Puttnam's speech was really very good and I was impressed by the depth of his understanding on climate change, games and learning, and his passion for all three. Damn, but it was uplifting.

Dan and I gave short talks on our particular areas (you can download my presentation below) followed by a panel session, chaired by Margaret.

One speaker asked "what gave games developers the right to interfere in education". The question was a good one, and I thought it raised an interesting point. Do we, as games developers, have a right to get involved in the educational debate. After all every 4-5 years a new generation of politicians wade into education and then the teachers often have to spend the next few years adjusting to these changes. Are games companies any different?

My personal take on it is that we want to help, but that to do so we need to be able to justify our claims about the efficacy of serious games. So in our case, a vital part of this is that we have an inhouse educational team (Ian, our creative director, was a teacher for many years, and Hannah and Matt are both experienced scientific researchers). But he is right, games companies wading into the educational debate could be problematic.

But the truth is, the teachers we have worked with have welcomed our input. We have given them tools to engage the pupils which let the teachers get on with their jobs and build on that interest that we have sparked. The teachers we interact with are used to games, and just like me, have grown up with them and understand the uses and the pitfalls.

What also really inspired me was that many of the pupils who most engaged with our games were the ones typically described as "struggling", yet they were very active, and able to help and more importantly, teach their fellow class members.

Perhaps the focus of the question should be: how can games help break down the archaic divide between being taught at, and actually being part of the teaching process yourself.

Which brings me round to another point: Over the last few years Red Redemption has gradually shifted from being a regular games company making games purely for entertainment and profit (a perfectly reasonable goal itself) to making socially conscious, persuasive games for fun and hopefully to help people learn more about important issues like climate change.

One of the most interesting parts about this evolution has been that a set of very clear goals have emerged and become core to our games development. These goals are:

1. Socially-responsible: Consider the end use.
2. Fun to play: Obvious, but essential and too often missed Its a game not a simulation.
3. Focus on real-world: Even if you do so via the metaphor of a virtual world.
4. Scientifically accurate: Source the data!
5. Transparent: You have to build trust. Be open about limitations.
6. Scoring Techniques: You’ll learn while you play by scoring players based on demonstrable knowledge gain.
7. Non-Didactic: Don't preach!

I think that these goals provide a strong basis for discussion, but that is just a start, we need better communication with the education establishment, and more head teachers (like the group I met late last year in Southwark) who can take a practical and positive approach to using games where they can help, but not viewing them as a panacea for poor teaching.

You can download/view my presentation here (PDF, 1066KB).

Agile March 1

When I first heard that term "Agile March 1" I was confused - what is so Agile about the 1st of March? Can it cunningly dodge the bullet every 4 years due to the appearance of February 29th?

In the context of games development, it is the first push (or march) of an Agile development methodology. A methodology that emphasises rapid short development cycles with frequent evaluations. An approach that works best for small teams (which we are).

The team at Red Redemption are busily coming to the end of the first March of development on the first of the prototypes that we recently secured funding for. These developments are on the Nintendo DS, a platform we feel very excited about (everyone in the team has one) and that we also feel hasn't reached its full potential yet.

So the first March is about basics - getting to grips with the platform and ensuring it can do what we want it to do. Pushing it and seeing where it gives, and tackling some tricky issues at an early stage to avoide pitfalls later.

What is exciting about this is not necessarily the software development approach we are using, rather it is how the team has really pulled together on the project. They have a clear set of goals, nicely defined by Klaude our MD/Producer, and a clear strategic vision of what we are trying to achieve, and boy have they launched into it. As my role has changed from a day to day operational role to a more strategic and communications role, this has been an interesting experience for me as I am not directly involved in the March.

I feel like a proud father watching his baby (the company) grow up. There is a real sense of achievement over how the team has become a well oiled machine over the last few years. There is none of the politically charged motivations I have seen in other companies, rather there is a desire to problem solve as a team.

The newest members of the team Klaude (MD), Amy (my PA and Office Manager) and Robin (Developer) have all meshed really well with the existing team members (me, Hannah, Ian, Sam and Matt), but also brought some really creative new energy into the projects.

So next week is going to be interesting as the team complete the First March and then push on to the second. But so far things are looking good. They hit some obstacles last week, but were able to solve them in a very professional and robust way and that is exactly what the first March is all about.

Back in Blighty

I'm back from my holidays, and boy did I have a good time. Spent most of my time either in Sweden, though I did have a quick trip to Bristol where I picked up some more games.

Bad bits of Bristol: Oh no! Travelling Man has gone! It was lovely shop that encouraged me to walk up and down Park Street, but it is no more.

Good bits of Bristol: Bought a whole stack of games at Area 51 including second hand copies of the original Games Workshop Dungeonquest (plus Catacombs) ad GW Blood Royale. I love Dungeon Quest and already had a copy, but my rules got heavily damaged plus the box got totalled, so I shall combined the two sets to form an uberset!

A typical Dungeonquest game goes like this: Run into dungeon to get ot the Dragon's chamber to steal lots of gold. Die. Horribly. Second attempt: Run into the dungeon, then run around in a small area searching for a trinket worth 10gp. Find one. Escape. Win. It is not quite as simple as that, but you get the drift.

Blood Royale is a great game. It might have been better entitled "Nob Breeding" as the essential core of the game is breeding up nobility like cattle and trading them for power. Fantastic.

I also picked up Last Night on Earth boardgame (not tried it yet), the two expansions for Arkham Horror I didn't already have (Kingsport and Dark Pharoah) and more roleplaying games including the lovely Sundered Skies.

As you might have ascertained, I am a big boardgame and RPG collector. I have I think, over 2,000 RPG books. They are what drives my love for gaming, and the essential fun of a roleplaying game experience shared with friends is something I am hoping to one day see in a computer game. Many computer games capture the mechanistic part of roleplaying, but nothing has quite capture the part that makes roleplaying a fun experience for me. Neverwinter nights in multiplayer seems to come close.

Anyone got any other games they would recommend I try out? No MMOGs please - been there, done that, not been convinced. Which reminds me that I must post my essay on why MMOGs so far haven't worked. It is something I wrote before embarking on Steel Law Online, and somethings are out of date, but there are many points which I am surprised to say still have relevance.

One of my life's tasks is to catalogue and create a full roleplaying library and then when it is complete, to probably donate it in its entirety to the Bodlean Library here in Oxford as a whole collection. Which means that sooner or later I will have to start collecting D&D, something I've thus far avoided as it isn't my thing.

As for Sweden it was fab, went back to my Viking roots... more on that another time when I cover Games and Religion.

Next post: Agile March 1

I'm on holiday!

Just a short post to say that I am having a few days off and will post when I get back. But while I am away, in case anyone is reading this, I have a few topics that I might cover. Let me know via comments which (if any) are of interest:

1. Religion and Games: I did a session at GameCamp recently along with the always excellent Margaret Robertson (read her fab blog here: http://lookspring.co.uk/ ) and there were some interesting thoughts on games and god(s).
2. Games and Science: I will certainly write something on this subject soon, after all it is what we do for a living... :D
3. Games and Addiction: Rebecca Mileham raised some very interesting points in her new book, Powering Up (http://red-redemption.com/news/powering/) and they got me thinking...
4. Games and Piracy: Arr Me Mateys! Erm...actually I was more thinking about piracy and the intentional misconceptions that get floated around from time to time... here is a quote from something I wrote previously:

"I buy games from Stardock, which I personally feel is the best of the online games sires - no DRM, work all the time, and frankly they sell the kinds of games I like playing (especially on a day like today when I am stuck in bed with a nasty sinus thingie). Anyway Brad Wardell, Stardock CEO (the guy who runs Stardock) made a very interesting post on games and piracy that I wanted to point people in the direction of. He specifically addresses the falicy of blaming pircy for poor games sales. If you are a strategy fan - I highly recommend Sins of a Solar Empire, RPS has a good review on it."

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.

Red Redemption has its 8th birthday!

This is a little late...but I am proud to announce that Red Redemption has had its 8th anniversary of founding and its 6th anniversary of actual operations beginning.

So given that, I thought I'd write a short potted history of our little company in two parts:

Part One: MMO Dreams

2001: Kindred Spirits
Whilst working at Gameplay I realised that I wanted to work for myself, and when Hannah introduced me to Matt Harvey I knew I had found someone I shared my work dreams with. So around the middle of the year the ideas began to coalesce into Steel Law Online.

Steel Law Online was based on the roleplaying game called Steel Law (later Broken Shield), authored by me. Its a gritty science fiction setting that deals with issues like consequence, power and the perception of truth. That sounds grandiose, and it is, but mostly the game is about playing cops in a future London, or Agents in the wider universe.

Anyway, we decided that Steel Law would make a great MMO. I had written a long piece, which if I can find I will repost here, about the failings of MMOs, and we thought that we could address a lot of those failings. Anyway... I digress...

Suffice it to say we wanted to make fun games, for adults.

2002-2003: Awards and Bedroom Coding
Matt and I apply, successfully for a Department of Trade and Industry Smart Innovation Award. The purpose of that award? To develop an Adpative Client and Server using Steel Law Online as a test bed.

Matt and I spent a memorable Christmas period 2001-2002 creating the prototype for the game in good old fashioned bedroom coder style. Over a two week period the first iteration of Steel Law Online was created. It was certainly rough around the edges, but it worked!

We made terrific progress on the game, and the Smart Innovation Award allowed us to devote the time it took to really flesh out the complex technical elements of the game. After all we were making the entire game in Java and there were more than a few technical bumps in the road.

We grew as a team, taking on some fabuous people and things progressed.

Oh and along the way I got married :)

2004: Steel Law Online reached beta.
We were all scared t death the day we finally went beta with Steel Law Online. Within minutes we had many players in the game, and also many bugs that needed fixing, but that was okay, because basically it worked!

Over the next few months, we improved the game, taking it through countless revisions, and the team grew to add to that capacity as all of us were working flat out all the time developing and running the game.

2005: Everything went pear-shaped!
Now with a beta and everything we went out looking for investment, but several horrible things happened all at once that made sure that we were going to have to change plans:

1. My wife, Hannah, became very ill. Very ill. We were a very small team (~4) so this hit us all hard.
   
2. Two of the UKs biggest games developers, Argonaut and Elixir, both closed their doors. Neither of those closed because the games industry was in trouble, rather both closed for internal reasons, but you try explaining that to investors who have never even played a game. Totally understandably, they were spooked, and were I in their shoes, I would have been spooked too :)
   

But that was not the end for Red Redemption, oh no. In fact we were just about to embark on a path of relentless growth and success, and everything was going to change.

You could say that the whole environment was about to change...

Welcome to my musings

So I've decided to set up this blog to comment on my experiences in and around being Chairman and Founder of a small ethical games company, Red Redemption, being in the games industry, being in the academic world and other environments that I journey through. I will also most likely comment on roleplaying games and boardgames too as they are also something that is of interest to me given that I've been roleplaying now for 24 of my 33 years :)

Expect some rambling, many diversions and some insight from someone who has spent many years at the coalface. In my time I have been a graphic artist, a producer, a senior producer, a games designer, a managing director, a script writer, a forensic psychologist, a cocktail barman, a security consultant, a civil rights campaigner, a privacy campaigner, a lecturer and a social entrepreneur to name but a few of the roles I have fulfilled over the years. You can see my official short biog here: http://red-redemption.com/team/#gobion

If you are looking for some behind the scenes stuff, then hopefully I can oblige (NDAs and corporate confidentiality permitting!).