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.