- 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).
- Games and Science: I will certainly write something on this subject soon, after all it is what we do for a living... :D
- 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...
- 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:
Saturday, June 21, 2008
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:
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
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:
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.
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.
Monday, June 16, 2008
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:
You could say that the whole environment was about to change...
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:
- My wife, Hannah, became very ill. Very ill. We were a very small team (~4) so this hit us all hard.
- 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 :)
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!).
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!).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
