Introducing "Survive the Century: A Cli-Fi Game of Choice and Consequences"

[simon.nicholson13]

Hello Friends and Colleagues, I hope you're well!

I'm emailing to share a climate change choose-your-own adventure game I co-created, called Survive the Century.

The game launched last week. I'm sharing it in hopes that your students and you might find this an engaging way of thinking about the choices that humanity faces on the pathways to possible climate futures. Please share it with others, if you like it.

click to watch a short promo for the game

In this game, you get to play the editor of a popular newspaper. Your decisions on how to talk about climate change dictate how the world adapts (or doesn't) to a warming planet from 2021 to 2100. Along the way, you get to read headlines and news stories about the future you've created, contributed by some of my all-time favourite science fiction writers: Lauren Beukes, Rajat Chaudhuri, Maria Turtschaninoff and Sophia Al-Maria.

Survive the Century is a work of fiction, but it is informed by real science. At the end of the game you get to see a climate model realization of the storyline you chose.

The game grew out of a workshop between climate scientists and sci-fi authors at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center in Maryland.

A key aim of the game is to communicate that climate change is made and experienced by people. How the future will play out is going to be shaped by choices taken by people today, and tomorrow, and the day after.

Our choices matter. It's not over. There are many choices still ahead of us.

A branching narrative game felt like the perfect way to engage more people in exploring climate futures, because it is a playful way to think about our choices. The ones we need to make now, but also the choices that still lie ahead of us.

Thanks to Sam Beckbessinger who led the writing of the game and Chris Trisos who co-led with me on the science side of things.

Sam's tweet launching the game is here. 

I hope you find Survive the Century a fun way to engage more people in thinking about our climate change futures and how the choices we make today matter.

Best, 

Simon

  --

Simon Nicholson, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of International Relations

Co-Director of the Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy

Director of the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment

School of International Service

American University

4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW

Washington DC 20016 // +1.202.885.1614 

Links: Homepage // GEP Program // Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment // Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy // Google Scholar

SOME RECENT ARTICLES etc:

New climate game: "Survive the Century"

"Carbon Removal and the Dangers of Extractivism" (2021) in Shapiro and McNeish, Our Extractive Age

"Splitting Climate Engineering Governance" (2021) Global Policy

"Solar Radiation Management" (2020) 21st Century Diplomacy 

"Taking Technology Seriously" (2020) Global Environmental Politics

"Anticipatory Governance of Solar Geoengineering" (2020) Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability