Fate of the World (thoughts on the game)

Fate of the World is a game where you take on the roll of president of the fictional Global Climate Organization. Your job varies by mission (of which there are 9), but most of the time you're required to reach a certain year (such as 2120) with total global warming under a certain degree. There's other objectives as well, such as keeping climate change-related casualties under a certain number, making the most money possible by a certain year, etc.

You play the game by playing cards in certain regions of the globe. Each card does something different, such as implementing emissions taxes, starting vegetarian revolutions, committing to renewable energy sources, establish research centers, etc. To play these cards, you have to first recruit agents for each region (North America, China, South Asia, Southern Africa, Europe, etc.). Both recruiting agents and playing cards costs money, which you have a limited amount of during each turn. You have to manage your resources and prioritize; at the same time, you have to choose which particular cards you should play in each region, in order to achieve your goals.

At the end of each turn, you skip ahead 5 years and get to see some statistics about increases in Co2 levels during that time, number of climate change-related deaths, whether each region's expected emissions rate is above or below average, etc. You are also shown news about recent developments in each nation, such as civil unrest, drilling breakthroughs, major milestones in global warming, etc. When you start the next turn, you have more funding and are able to recruit more agents and play more cards.

The actual interface of Fate of the World looks kind of like Google Earth, except there's a lot of different buttons and menus to look through. You can read news about what's developing in each particular region, see statistics about various things (annual emissions, agriculture GDP, # of climate refugees, etc). You can also see each region's "technology tree" and see what technologies that region has been developing, and what it will develop in the future (if you play certain cards). You also can see global statistics such as population change, temperature change, changes in the earth's geography (such as melting ice caps), etc.

I know the game sounds super simple, but there's actually a lot of strategy you have to think through if you want to complete any of the missions without failing any objectives. Every single card you play can have a huge impact on how things turn out down the line. You have to be very careful to analyze each country and determine what's the best action for you to take in each region. For example, setting up your headquarters in a particular region will make that region more accepting of the GCO. That's actually another thing you have to worry about - if you do too many things to a region that it doesn't like, it can withdraw from your control.

Decisions that you make have a drastic impact on what new decisions you'll have to make for the rest of the game. For example: if you commit North Africa to nuclear power at the beginning of the game, everything might seem like it's working well until later on there's a major uranium shortage and entire regions are losing power. There's side effects that are difficult to truly predict so you're constantly cleaning up after yourself and trying to understand what problems you can expect and how you should avoid them.

Whether you realize it or not, when you play this game, you learn a lot about climate change. The thing that makes this kind of educational game work so well is that the learning is hidden within the mechanics of the game. It's not just demonstrating a concept to the player, it's requiring you to learn as much as you can if you want to succeed. You get personally invested in the game, which encourages you to try to understand more about what effects certain climate initiatives can have on the world. Instead of leaving you wondering what we can possibly do, Fate of the World puts you in a position of supreme authority and lets you find out for yourself. This game doesn't try to make learning fun; it makes learning the core of the game.

Fate of the World is probably one of the deepest climate change video game out right now in 2016, with a high possibility for actually learning things from it. It's reasonably complicated, but once you spend some time with it and learn how it works, it's honestly pretty easy to understand. I'd definitely recommend this game for college students, and possibly even advanced high school students.