Saturday, January 7, 2012

Al Gore, Gaming For Good, and a game suggestion for Climategate fans

From some random radio station's website:

Former Presidential candidate Al Gore is known for everything from inventing the Internet to alerting the world to the harsh realities (sic) of global warming. Now he’s collaborating with the creatives of PSFK on "Gaming For Good", challenging companies to create new games that address the same issues facing his Climate Reality Project – and also being fun to play.



After receiving 60 game proposals from around the world, the entries have been narrowed down to the 10 top finalists, which was then whittled down to four by Gore himself. Among the finalists are Greensquare, “a gaming platform that gives you and your friends a new, greener way to explore local retail stores, restaurants and businesses”. Gore was particularly taken with REALiTREE, “a digital representation of our local environment and the role we are playing in sustaining its wellbeing.”

You can go here to see some screen shots from a few of the games, most of which make me want to purchase and drive a new gas-guzzling Ford F-350 for the sole purpose of driving it from Fort Worth to Dallas to purchase a cheeseburger made from Polar Bear flesh.  Lord have mercy, what a bunch of sanctimonious crap. 

This one - Reality Drop - got my attention.  It was developed by an outfit called Arnold Worldwide. 
Climate change deniers show up anywhere. Finding them and fighting them requires easy access to complex arguments. This site makes it simple to spread science and destroy doubt. Climate news is prioritized by ‘heat:’ hostility, reach, sentiment and timeliness. Players can earn points by grabbing related scientific articles, videos, and data points, and pasting them into hot articles to blast climate denial into oblivion.


That sounds boring as hell.  I have a few twists to make the Reality Drop game more interesting. 



Make it into a board game like the one shown above. 

Then add some more media.  Here goes....

Someone named Tom Nelson has been slogging through the latest batch of ClimateGate emails (the treasure trove of embarrassing correspondence between the East Anglia University scientists who are doing their best to prove that the planet is warming and that it is all your fault.) 

Mr. Nelson has provided us with links to 250 of the most interesting, horrible, criminal, fraudulent, and in a few cases, pretty damn funny of the bunch.  Let's tie these in to Mr. Gore's game.

Here are the improved rules for "Reality Drop" the game for the whole family !!!!

The goal of "Reality Drop" is to move your token from "Gullible" to "Dumbass" to "Sheep" to "Victim" before any of the other players. 

Hit one of Tom Nelson's links below and read a Climategate email to all the other players. 

Any player who can still claim that Anthropogenic Global Warming is not a con job gets to move his token one step closer to the goal of "Victim". 

Younger children may need help with the concepts of "Lying", "Subsidies", "Grants", "Bullshit" and "Fraud". 

Here are the emails that will give you and your family hours and hours of Climate Change enjoyment !!!!  Have fun, gang !!!
For players who intend to play this game for the rest of their lives, the ClimateGate search engines are located here and here.


And for more pure, undiluted greatness, you can go here: All in one place, all ClimateGate I and II files, along with source code files, HARRY_READ_ME files, email attachments, documents, etc.

We can only hope that the generous hackers who gave us Climategate I and Climategate II will drop another batch of emails into our laps before the current goldmine of gaming material is exhausted. 

1 comment:

Hot Sam said...

What can we expect to see from Space Cadet? Will it be a linkstorm or a fliipant dismissal?

Lots of great stuff recently on Antarctic research of the last time the ice melted, you know, when Fred Flintstone caused global warming. Somehow, mankind survived it.

Let's just transport all that freshwater ice and deposit it in barren deserts. Let the terraforming begin!