Reply To: Fate of the World

[Rezwan]

Does it have a way to insert your own assumption? If you have x coal plants running with certain parameters, that’s going into the calculation for emissions. so if you have a template to fill out with a different physics surprise (like working aneutronic fusion reactors by 2015), that would affect those emissions or what have you. But you won’t know the effect on population. That has more to do with women’s education, anyway.

Is it compelling to play? Do you find it absorbing? It seems like an earnest game that’s trying to be constructive and get you to think about global issues.

Is it a good representation of reality and is it fun – the two key questions.

Of course, it’s strange what passes for fun these days. Have you guys seen this game trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZqrG1bdGtg For Dead Island, in which you are a vacationing family attacked by zombies.

I think our culture’s current obsession with zombies is a metaphor for class war and dealing with global poverty. A happy vacationing family in a far off land is attacked by needy ravenous mobs of subhumans. Unfortunately, it’s not a very useful metaphor. Very zero sum. Once you’re a zombie, death is the only solution non-zombies can imagine. Like poverty and unemployment – those who have just want those who don’t to “go away.”

It’s this particular video that made me think of class warfare. All the expensive resorts going up in places and tourist economies that don’t really trickle much down to the poor.

My friend says zombies are about the overpopulation thing, but “overpopulation thing” is really “too many people of the class, race, ethnicity we don’t want” – or at least don’t want to share with. Have you read Amy Chua’s “World on Fire”? http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385721862/ajaban-20

I wouldn’t play the zombie game (too depressing), but yearn for a post-disaster game like a post katrina where you have to fix up the ravaged city. Multi player. Triage. Trucks with ice. Incarcerating looters. Getting trapped people off of roofs. Securing hospitals, rebuilding homes. It would be a useful game in that it gets people to develop a checklist of things to do in an emergency. Good preparation.

I had a dentist in LA (Toluca lake – Dr. Ricci – great guy!). A few weeks after Katrina, he took his whole office down to N. Orleans for a week and they went around fixing people’s teeth. I don’t suppose there are many dental post-apocalyptic video games. I think I’ve heard of some medical emergency games. First person healer stuff.