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! :)

Good climate change books

A regular question we get asked is if we can recommend some good books to get to grips with climate change without being too technical. So I asked Hannah in our team to list her favourites.

I've given the links to buy the books from Amazon.co.uk, but they should be available through all good online retailers and in your local library.

1. The Hot Topic by Gabrielle Walker & Sir David King
A very good introduction to the subject, covering the science and the policy options available. Sir David King was the former chief scientific advisor to the UK government and is the Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hot-Topic-Tackle-Global-Warming/dp/0747593957

2. Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air by David Mackay
A no-nonsense look at the numbers behind renewable energy - can we make an energy policy that adds up?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sustainable-Energy-Without-Hot-Air/dp/0954452933

3. A Blueprint for a Safer Planet by Nicholas Stern
Written by Nicholas Stern of the Stern Review into the Economics of Climate Change, this is an update of his conclusions from that report, without the constraints of being a government report. Sir Nicholas Stern was commissioned by Gordon Brown to produce a report on the economics of climate change - his findings were instrumental in underlining the economic case for tackling climate change.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blueprint-Safer-Planet-Progress-Prosperity/dp/1847920373

4. Six Degrees by Mark Lynas
A well-researched look at what climate change might really mean for the world, degree by degree - gets quite scary towards the end! Also winner of the prestigious Royal Society Science Books Prize 2009.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Six-Degrees-Future-Hotter-Planet/dp/0007209045

5. Global Warming by John Houghton
An introduction to the science of climate change by the lead editor of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's first 3 reports.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Global-Warming-Complete-John-Houghton/dp/0521528747

6. The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery
An interesting introduction to climate change by renowned Australian zoologist, Tim Flannery
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Weather-Makers-History-Future-Climate/dp/0713999217

I will follow this up with a selection of good books on socially positive games plating. If there are some books on the subject that have been inspiring and/or helpful to you, tell us about them :)

Our Advisory Board

Dear readers,

It has been a very busy couple of months and thigns are going well. I will be writing lots of updates over the next few months, and wanted to start with our Advisory Board, who they are and what their role is within the overall plan for Climate Challenge 2010.

Our Advisory Board is:
• Professor Diana Liverman: Director of the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) and a member of the National Academy of Sciences committee on Americas Climate Choices
• Dr Cameron Hepburn: A leading environmental economist.
• John Kroeger: Former co-head of the UK Government team of Business Relations Managers to the Computer Games Industry.
• Suzanne Seggerman: President of Games For Change.
• Dr Pamela Hartigan: Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University’s Said Business School

Full biographies for each of the Advisory Board can be found below:
http://red-redemption.com/team/#advisory_board

Each member has been very carefully selected to bring unique skills, experience and contacts to the company and all have been important in helping Red Redemption achieve our objectives for Climate Challenge 2010.

Why is this important?
There are four main reasons:
1. Credibility: The credibility of the game and the team is important to ensure the game reaches more people in the market. Our Advisory Board helps build credibility for the game and team.
2. Marketing: Further press and marketing opportunities open up for us through our mutual association.
3. Advice: We benefit from their advice about the game.
4. Thanks: The people we have involved in our advisory board have been extremely supportive and helpful over the last few years and we want to recognise that.

To follow our progress more closely check out our Facebook Fan Page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Climate-Challenge-2010/125222552491
and a Twitter feed for the development of the game at http://twitter.com/cc2010game

Best,
Gobion

*EDITED: 25-Sept-2009: Corrected Professor Diana Liverman's role at the National Academy of Sciences.

Twitter, and updates

So I finally caved in and got a twitter account. Well 2 actually. The first is for me personally and the second is a live development twitter feed from Climate Challenge 2010.

http://www.twitter.com/cc2010game <--- development Twitter feed.
http://www.twitter.com/gobion <--- feed about me and what I am up to :)

I've been wanting to post much more to the blog but a combination of being insanely busy has kept the number of posts down, and also that while we are getting the look and feel together we are a little wary of showing it too much because undoubtedly things will change a lot as we get closer to release.

Still Carla, our new art lead, is doing some fabulous graphics work and I hope to be able to release a few choice pieces soon!

Conference season begins

Wow lots has been happening - everything is very busy as usual!

A couple of weeks back myself and Klaude (our producer) went to the Develop conference in Brighton. It is one of the UK's leading games conferences and it was great fun. It was really good catching up with friends, meeting cool new people and just keeping up to speed.

Next up is Cologne GamesCom in August. This is one of the major three games events (though previously the event was in Leipzig) and we will be busy there showing everyone some first look info for Climate Challenge 2010 and hopefully lining up a publishing deal for retail.

Back!

I'm back and posting following a short break where I went to visit the Orkneys - fantastic place and highly recommended.

So where are we up to?

Well our new lead artist/art manager has started - her name is Carla and she has hit the ground running. I will start to post some of the concept art and various pieces in the next couple of weeks.

Development of the game is coming along swiftly and I'll be posting to this blog at least weekly with a dev diary.

Anyway more a little later!

Interview with our games designer

April 16 2009

Ian Roberts,
Creative Director and Lead Games Designer on Climate Challenge 2010

Ian Roberts is the lead games designer on Climate Challenge 2010. He designs the game experience and mechanics that the developers then programme and the artists bring to life visually. In many ways he is the heart of the game. Ian came to us with experience across a wide range of new media forms, ranging from award-winning video production and editing to 3D Graphics and website programming. These skills are combined with a background in media, film, literature and cultural research in the forms of academic study, writing, lectures and teaching which gives him a unique outlook on games design.

While working for Red Redemption he has been lead games designer on all of our games (including Climate Challenge and Operation: Climate Control), has produced extensive web portals including the ClimateX.org for Oxford University, directed and edited academic multi-media presentation films for University College London, and was an games industry consultant for the UK Department of Trade and Industry.

I wanted to interview him about his influences...

GR: What was the first game you ever played?
IR: Almost certainly something very simple like Pong as we had one of those old Atari boxes where you had this clunky selector with one of those joysticks with one of those big satisfying button. The first game I became obsessed with as a computer game was "Elite" I played religiously on the Spectrum 128k which was all swish and fancy with a tape deck.

GR: What is your favourite game and why?
IR: That's a really tricky question as there are lots of different kinds of games and they are difficult to compare - like apples and oranges. So I think a game which really captured me first time I played it was Ron Gibert's original "The Secret of Monkey Island" it was probably the first of its kind [adventure game] that I had played and it was so incredibly well put together, witty and all the things that make it a classic so that is definitely something I have very fond memories of. Modern games that hearken back to that such as Psychonauts work very well for me.

GR: What games influence your design of socially conscious games?
IR: Well I can think of a couple of examples in games where I've really felt that the game as a medium and an art form surprised me in terms of how it conveyed my awareness of something I already knew but never really understood, so for example a very early point of realisations for me was in the early 1990s. It was the game Cannon Fodder weirdly. You wouldn't think of Cannon Fodder as a socially-aware game it is a war game, it had a poppy on the front cover and was asked to remove the poppy by the Haig(?) foundation because they felt it was offensive to have a game which trivialises war, but in fact I found that to be the first computer game which didn't trivialise war, but whilst it had bright sprites and look and feel it was completely ruthless. Your little soldiers that die will die normally by being hit by a single bullet or single piece of debris, and while you play the game you see a memorial hill and you see a list of the fallen and it gets longer and longer and longer and longer. And it is very shocking as it happens where you would normally have a victorius transition. There is this really stark reminder that all of these people have died, and they have died because you are controlling them. And that made me understand casualties of war to a much great extent than reading about historical battles ever could. You had a direct relationship with what was going on, and whilst it was a fun shooter game it had this serious war message which I thought was excellent.

Deus Ex is another very good example in the level of immersion in the world and the freedom it gave you. and it was unique at the time for granting you this freedom allowed you to not only uncover the intricacies of this conspiracy in this dystopian future, but also to allow you to take control over which way it goes and allow yon to be part of its resolution in a much more active way than other games. You could make a decision to change sides or to choose how society would end up at the end of the game. It gives this feeling of great scope and made you think a great deal about the issues that the game posed.

Why? The reason why is that these were games of traditional entertainment value targeted at teen and young men that rather than just relying on sensationalism of the genre decided to do something with the genre to allow the player to discover something about the human condition within the structure that they have been given and that is the ultimate goal of a socially conscious game. which is to be both considerate of a games relationship to the world we live in and to take that next step and actually do something interesting with it, to make and experience that the player can take home with them which makes them more aware and helps them understand the world we live in a bit better.

GR: You have a strong eye for design - you were central to the design of the original Climate Challenge, Operation: Climate Control and Trouble Shooter - what drives that part of you?
IR: I'm a very cross-media person, and I'll describe what that means. A lot of people would describe themselves as being very textually focussed or visually focussed or respond well to music or so on. For me it is the combination of two or more types of media and the new experience that is made from the combination that interests me the most. So I find for example film more interesting than just music because you have the combination of lots of different elements, and with game and games design you have the combination of the aesthetics, the gameplay, the music and the emergent experience and it is in being able to create that emergent experience both in a way that you want to convey but also in a discoverable way that people could feel a variety of different responses depending on the person and all of which would be valid game experiences. That is what really drives me about game design.

GR: You were a teacher before becoming a games designer. What impact has that had on your games design?
IR: So people have short attention spans so you need to engross students or the audience or players in your world as quickly as possible for them to understand where you are and where things are going so they are never lost or feel it is an effort to follow you on this journey. The other part is that the best knowledge in terms of retention and comprehension is knowledge which is gained through personal experience and experimentation that there is only so much you can learn from reading the same page in a book again and again, or reading off the board or copying what a teacher is saying that without trying something out or creating something and seeing the results of your creation your understanding of the theory can never be fully solid. That means in games design you have to propose the theory, not necessarily in its entirety, then allow the player to discover it and discover how that theory works through their own experimentation.

Note: This interview is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales License so do feel free to reprint. If you would like to reprint without attribution, please drop me an email to gobion at red hyphen redemption dot com.