December 28 2018
DoomCity: will you save the world - or end it?

I was chatting with some folks online recently when the topic turned to
"gaming", aka video games.  While I dabbled some with video games back in
the days of Zork and SimCity I never really took to gaming, could never
seem to muster the commitment necessary to learn all the rules and master
the winning strategies.  And then there is the shear amount of power
consumed [0] by the gaming; seems hard to justify in my opinion. That
said, clearly games have value, both in exploring situations that have
many inputs and possible outcomes, and simply because they're fun.

Anyway, the game being discussed was something called "Fortnite".  The
game apparently has several "modes"; the "Save the World" [1] mode is
premised on "after a fluke storm appears across Earth, causing 98%
of the population to disappear, and the survivors to be attacked by
zombie-like husks".  Of course, being a first-person shooter (FPS), all
this has already happened and all that's left to do is blast zombies.
No wonder the FPS genre is hugely popular and a solid money maker.

But it got me thinking: what if the point of the game is to engineer
a soft landing for a revved up advanced civilization on the brink of
multiple planet-spanning disasters, sort of like SimCity but played
backwards with climate, resource, environmental, population and economic
feedbacks?  If realistic enough such a game could possibly be a test-bed
for exploring the feasibility of some of the proposals [2,3] put forth
by groups trying to effect meaningful action on climate change and a
transition to more sustainable ways of living.

As it turns out, my idea is not so original.  A game developer by
the name of Chris Crawford [4] came up with such a game back in the
1990s called "Balance of the Planet" [5,6].  It was well-received but,
being a "serious game" it was apparently more educational than fun -
perhaps not enough zombies to blast.  Nonetheless, in 2012 Crawford
tried, unsuccessfully, to fund a remake of "Balance of the Planet" on
KickStarter, a crowd-fund platform.  Failing to get the funding, the
project is indefinitely on hold.  It's a shame; his KickStarter goal
was only $150,000 (he only raised $13,594) which doesn't seem like all
that much, certainly well within the realm of a small project groups
like The Sierra Club or World Wildlife Fund could easily fund.

After learning more about Chris [7] and the failed KickStarter project [8]
I think Chris is still quite interested in the project and actually the
right person.  He clearly thinks in big picture terms [9] and doesn't appear
to be wedded to any particular technology (wind/solar vs nuclear for
example) or political position other than advocating for fairness [10];
both are prerequisites for minimizing bias in a game where the stakes
could hardly be higher.

 --

References:
[0] https://grist.org/article/video-games-consume-more-electricity-than-25-power-plants-can-produce/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortnite:_Save_the_World
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Climate_Mobilization
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Crawford_(game_designer)
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_the_Planet
[6] https://www.mobygames.com/game/balance-of-the-planet
[7] http://www.erasmatazz.com/index.html
[8] https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/176458/Chris_Crawford_reflects_on_a_Kickstarter_gone_wrong.php
[9] https://youtu.be/W7p1nOd7QTU
[10] http://www.erasmatazz.com/personal/politics/a-new-economy.html