By Lars Olsen
The end is near! Earth is facing rapidly increasing global temperatures, human overpopulation, natural disasters, and much more. In Fate of the World (FotW), it is your mission to save the planet from impending doom through a series of strategic decisions. You must guide civilization safely into the future while balancing environmental, social, and political strife. This climate change simulation game provides a convincing and elaborate look at the future of humanity.
In the introduction of FotW at the 2020 Climate Summit, the Global Environmental Organization (GEO) is formed because individual nations can no longer be entrusted with environmental protection. As the president of the GEO, you must make tough decisions in a time of economic uncertainty and civil unrest. The game consists of several missions with various objectives that include limiting global warming, increasing GDP, or simply surviving. Your only tools for fighting the apocalypse are cards, which do things like expand renewable energy, instill a one child policy, or ban the use of coal across a region. You can determine which cards are beneficial to your mission by tracking an extensive web of depressing data. Success will only come to those who persevere, which helps players learn through trial and error.
Fate of the World provides an intensely complex model on the most challenging global issues of the 21st century: climate change, population growth, famine, poverty, politics, etc. This complexity is portrayed through unfiltered data sets on global emissions, population size, fossil fuel production, deforestation, GDP, food production, and everything in between. Such intricate data enables you to delve deep into strategizing for each region, which builds tension as every decision is a compromise and no strategy is perfect. For example, you may be forced to ban fossil fuels to slow climate change, but in exchange for destroying the fragile economy of developing regions. Ethical dilemmas and tough decisions inform players of the nuances of both the threats of and potential solutions for climate change. The emphasis on data and real world technologies demonstrates the benefits of evidence-based science in a changing world.
Despite the game’s wealth of data, FotW lacks simple cause and effect relationships to give the player feedback on their actions. This flaw may detract from the learning experience, but perhaps the developers intended their game to be cryptic in order to demonstrate how complicated these issues are. The sheer amount of numbers to sort through each turn is honestly overwhelming, so it would take a dedicated player to uncover every secret of the simulation. Unfortunately, the emphasis on quantitative analysis could easily be a turnoff for a casual gamer or younger player.
Fate of the World is more simulation than video game. It is cruel and provides a bleak outlook on global issues, yet it has enormous potential for educating about climate change and offers a challenging puzzle for everyone. Perhaps the best takeaway from FotW is its focus on portraying the interconnectedness of human activity around the world. There may not be a perfect solution for climate change, but we can survive with a little bit of compromise and a whole lot of data analysis.
Summary
Gameplay/Fun: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Educational: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Scientific Rigor: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Accessibility: Ages 13+
Platform: Steam ($19)
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