Future Imperative

Today I was back at the University of Stirling playing another serious game run by Socialudo.  This one was 'Future Imperative' and all about the response to climate change.  There were teams representing countries all over the world - Chin, Russia, the EU, India, Brazil and South Africa, two groups of climate activisits - the direct action type and the pressure type then three teams playing industry - manufacturing, big tech and energy.

We all had to work to achieve the goals set for our teams, but then also try and monitor the impact on temperature increases and pollution.  This time I was on the EU team where we reacted to climate disasters,  tried to mediate differences between member states, whilst increasing citizen wellbeing and income whislt also supporting Brazil with their wildfires, hosting climate summits and being continually asked by the Americans to spy on the Russians "We're spying on China, so why can't you spy on Russia?".  We turned algae into clothing to save the Baltic sea with the help of a fashion designer, held out against a huge tech corporation that wanted buy our exoskeleton company (to build terminators) and who also wante to buy Ireland from us,  completely got rid of fossil fuels, hosted a climate summit and mitigated an assasination attempt on corporate lobbyists.

However we were unaware of the increasing militisation of the activist group which led to an attack on a green technology summit, missed that Brazil were building a nuclear arsenal on Mars, and missed Chins slaughtering their citizens with military robots following riots after they sold Hong Kong to the tech giants.  All of this was pieced together in the pub after the game ended! We also took our eye off the ball and whilst our country emissions were all dwon, the tech companies carried on polluting, so although our citizens were happy and wealthy, it wasn't looking good for the rest of the world.

Again I was struck about how gaming a situation can give you an insight into the more complex issues at play.  You learn things that you might know intellectually, but having the experience of them brings them a lot closer to home.  In the juggling of cometing priorities and by focusing on your own goals, it can be really easy to miss what is happening in the bigger picture, and can feel very difficult to stop. Although some of our scenarios may have ended up being a bit far-fetched in terms of creative interpretation, there were lots of real world parallels that we all picked apart in the pub aftewards. 

Blip is of the EU team scorecard towards the end of the game.  You can see the Colins that were needed to keep us going throughout the day.