Climate Challenge is a Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...

-based global warming game

Global warming game

A global warming game, also known as a climate game or a climate change game, is a type of serious game. As a serious game, it attempts to simulate and explore real life issues to educate players through an interactive experience...

 produced by the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 and developed by Red Redemption

Red Redemption

Red Redemption is a serious game developer based in Oxford, UK. , Red Redemption produced two global warming games: Climate Challenge and Fate of the World.- Games :...

. Players manage the economy and resources of the 'European Nations' as its president, while reducing emissions of

Carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom...

 to combat climate change

Climate change

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

 and managing crises. Climate Challenge is an environmental serious game

Serious game

A serious game is a game designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment. The "serious" adjective is generally prepended to refer to products used by industries like defense, education, scientific exploration, health care, emergency management, city planning, engineering, religion,...

, designed to give players an understanding of the science behind climate change

Climate change

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

, as well as the options available to policy makers and the difficulties in their implementation.

Policy cards

The game begins in 1990 and ends in 2100(although the last turn is in 2090). This time is divided into turns for every 10 years. Every turn, players may choose up to six policy cards to implement. Policy cards come from five different categories: National, Trade, Industry, Local, and Household. National policies are strategies that are implemented on the scale of entire countries, like hosting the Olympics, sending a shuttle to Mars

Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...

, and creating the carbon police. Trade policies are either import or export policies of different resources and technologies, and also includes sending aid to developing countries. Industry policies include different agricultural methods and switching coal to oil. Local policies include things like rainwater use, housing regulations, and landfill

Landfill

A landfill site , is a site for the disposal of waste materials by burial and is the oldest form of waste treatment...

power plants. Finally, household policies deal with the everyday lives of the populace, like setting emissions standards, regulating efficiency standards of household appliances, and promoting energy efficient light bulbs.

Climate Challenge is also the first and only media program in the U.S. to focus exclusively on climate change and related issues. You can find multiple episodes of the show on Vimeo at: http://vimeo.com/user4640499/videos

Resources

The four resources of the game are money, power, food, and water. Each is measured by a meter in the upper-left corner of the screen and by clicking on any individual item, a graph of the resource over time is displayed. Each turn, a red section on the grey bar shows the estimated amount by which that resource will be reduced, and a green section shows the estimated growth. These bars adjust themselves to the selected policies as they are affected. Most policy cards deplete or grow different resources, and if any of the resource bars are reduced to nothing or are entirely in the red, policy cards requiring that resource become unavailable. When a resource is exhausted by the end of the turn, the player must manage a corresponding disaster the following turn.

Criticisms

Many players have complained that the mechanism the game uses to measure wealth, or the health of the economy, is very faulty and is not very realistic.. According to developers, the game was meant to have a different system of measuring the health of the economy, but deadlines prevented the final version from including the more accurate system.

See Also

• Climate Challenge, direct link to the game.