Monopoly was originally designed to show how rents enrich landlords and impoverish tenants - it was called The Landlords Game. There were 2 sets of rules and it was to be played once under each set, thus demonstrating the terribly damaging unfairness of the prevailing system of accumulating rents to large land/property owners, and to provoke discussions about how to do things more fairly. One set of rules involved taxing the landowners and one did not (I’ll leave you to guess which set of rules became the more aggressively competitive game which wrecks many a family Christmas now…). As originally conceived, one player achieving a Monopoly was the losing scenario. The wiki article says that the game’s creator, Elizabeth Magie “hoped that when played by children the game would provoke their natural suspicion of unfairness, and that they might carry this awareness into adulthood”. Time for someone to reboot that?
Absolutely. It's a really interesting origin for the game. My only issue I take with this is that monopoly is no longer that (as you hinted to in the comment). A lot of people excuse a lot of things about monopoly because of its origins, but now the rights have been bought by hasbro (a very large corporation) and it now actively encourages a lot of the things that the original design may have attempted to critique. It's worth talking about for sure, but the game that everyone knows as monopoly is so far detached from what it was originally conceived to be. Monopoly is a bad game, and a lot of people will use its origins as a dispute for that which isn't helpful. The other issue is that a lot of board game themes in general are entrenched in beating others down to achieve your dominance, so when a board game uses that as a satirical lens, it can often get missed because people assume that's just what board games are about (there's a reason this is a fun fact about monopoly and not just the general view of the game). Imo the best example of a satirical board game is John Company by Cole Wehrle. I would highly recommend checking it out if you haven't already.
You mean like the Government Monopoly skimming 28% of every paycheck, providing NOTHING but terror and compulsory )abs? My landlord skims only 6% of my paycheck and provides me secure shelter and utilities.
@@robertmarmaduke186 Housing Cooperatives! People like you either forget or are otherwise unaware of housing cooperatives! Marxism isn't the only form of Socialism. Mutualism is way better and encourages the use of consumer and worker cooperatives.
As a kickstart supporter of this game, i am so happy it's gaining traction. It is fun and challenging to play, and it fills me with a bit of hope for the future. Making almost all components sustainable in production (not even shrink wrapped when shipped) was a good way to underline their message.
+100 for "we don't want edu games" that term unfortunately has been burned by so many shit attempts. Games have been educational for a long time (civ anyone?) and are the single best tool to affect behavior and learning (theres a reason its the biggest entertainment industry and why we use simulation to train pilots etc.) but the implementation is what matters.
I swear the only reason my kids know which cities belong to which part of the world is from playing Civ. Schools don't teach them that stuff these days, and I've never been able to get them interested in geography at home.
My mom's favourite board game is pandemic (and it isn't even close, she really loves that game!!) so I think I've found a christmas gift for her! She is also on the board of our local community centre and they have board game nights every fortnight so I can totally see her bringing it in to share with them and starting conversations about climate change :)
ya, i think the starting conversations part is the key. i don't think any outright deniers will want to play but those of us who understand global warming is happening may be sitting on our hands and this might be a spur to much needed action
The mechanics convey the information -- like condensed metaphor in poetry that forces you to think in a new way - a new mental picture popping into your head!! IT WORKS!
I notice Daybreak is like a miniature version of the World Game invented by Buckminster Fuller in 1969. The Game was first carried out by Fuller and 26 of his grad students, each playing a diplomat representing a given region of the world, and working on a basketball court-sized Dymaxion world map. There is typically a given goal for the Game-the original was ending energy poverty, but world peace, illiteracy and hunger are others that have been used. The Game’s holders have wide discretion over the format, but one example for a four-hour session might be three 20-minute rounds of trade. The UNEP, UNHRC, UNESCO and WHO and four fictional corporations may also have facilitators. The goal, as with Daybreak, is to encourage cooperation among players, and crucially it relies heavily on real-life and real-time data. It would be nice if multiple people on Twitch or UA-cam streamed a whole World Game, as it would be with Daybreak
Its available on many EU amazon pages and local reseller websites. German amazon has it for 50€ rn. English version was harder to get for less than the 90$ from the manufacturers website. Ironically getting it shipped all the way from the US is much cheaper (75€ with shipping) than from the UK (100€ for the game alone) right now.
I love how geoengineering are gamble cards, it's such a nice touch. though I would love if the game had some competition, it's even an interesting expansion they could make. because while I love cooperative games, I also love the idea of a game with this theme where people are trying to win, but if they try to win too hard everyone loses.
@@tristanridley1601 exactly, there is no better way to show people that competing is not a good idea when it comes to everyone's lives. but it's a fun dynamic for a game though.
Perhaps a semi-cooperative game like Dead of Winter could be an inspiration: everyone fighting zombies and gathering supplies, while also having secret missions. But really I think a mechanic like Terraforming Mars would be more accurate, gathering points while changing up the atmosphere before the end-game is reached. Hmm, but if you really wanted a bit more competition it would feel more artificial. Perhaps the ¨best¨ player by a stretch gets impacted more negatively, is then incentivised to help the others reach that level of progression, and somehow gets an individual win? Thing is that it would turn the game quite a bit darker. If you are aware of the potential future society scenarios that sociologists have come up with (a quadrant that features Green Capitalism, Ecof4scism, Green New Deal and Degrowth or whatever sounds better than that) it could make for an interesting 4+ player experience where every kind of ideology is vying for control. But it certainly wouldn't be a happy-go-light game when you're playing with the lives of billions of people over the profit of a handful of billionaires, if you wanted to be realistic. Going into the real of fantasy and sci-fi can create enough immersive dissonance to ignore the consequences of the most atrocious acts imaginable. Do we know of games like this?
@@NewAge374 I was thinking about something simpler, give an economy tracker, and the cards that improve your economy are either worse at "greenefying" or straight up increase your carbon footprint. meaning if you try to win too hard you could potentially make everyone lose. but it could also have some cool dynamics, like increasing your economy early give you resources to become green faster, but delay the game, potentially increase the number of crisis.
While it would be fun thematically it doesn’t make much sense. What is a scenario in which only one person wins? One country is super clean and carbon neutral and then all the others are smog covered wastelands? Is that a real win?
@@orterves So what good is "value" for shareholders, if there's no civilization (climate change made it impossible to maintain), and thus no use for the "value" (money). As a shareholder myself, predatory capitalism does nothing to serve me, it instead works against my best interests.
Not really true irl, wealth inequality will mean some people will always find ways to win, survive, and maintain an unsustainable lifestyle. It works in this game because you don't play as an individual.
I was at a climate activist camp the other day and we realised there's no website that has a database of all of the many climate/sustainability games that exist and I really want to start one because there are so many like these that are great!
The difference with games compared to other media is that it gives the participants agency over the course of the story. For most people the game's theme elevates the experience from crunching numbers to seeing the impact of their actions. It offers us a chance to take risks that we might not want to take in real life, and only suffer the consequences for the duration of the game. When both groups said it was a stressful experience, that's not something you want to go to sleep with every night, but it does help some people to start thinking about the positive change that comes along with reducing the impact of the climate crisis: if executed reasonably well, other parts of life will become more enjoyable and comfortable.
Very surprised to see Simon namedrop Terra Invicta as an example of a game that looks at solutions to climate change. Mind you, in defence of its lesser implementation of it, it does a LOT of things at once: Geopolitics, colony building, spaceship design, realistic space combat, realistic orbital mechanics, realistic future technologies. It does make sense that some complexities regarding climate change are lost simply by engine limitations. Mind you, I do like this game and would recommend if you're into grand strategy with emphasis on grand.
I still feel that Pandemic should have been played for 3 days straight by any decision-makers in the covid pandemic before any policy decisions were made.
A few years ago, (yeah, that year) Z-Man was getting ready to announce a new Pandemic game (Legacy season 0), but then had concerns about announcing it with a real pandemic actually happening. Then, all of the stock of the main (not rethemed) Pandmic sold out all over.
I don't know... it's not even in the top 1000 on BoardGameGeek. Don't get me wrong, it probably deserves to be higher than that, but it's more of a favorite among more casual players than with hardcore board gamers.
@@DrZaius3141 I think both of you are right! I don't think board game critics are the same subset of hardcore gamers on BGG; I think Daybreak appeals to critics for being such a success at its impossible goal; it appeals to the casual gamer for being fun, accessible, and relevant; but the hardcore BGG user might not reach for this over WS, TM, RftG, etc.
As a gamer and BoardGameGeek regular, this episode had me totally geeking out. 🤓 Pandemic is one of the games in my collection as well as Roll Through The Age: The Late Bronze Age and I’ve also played Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert, so I know how good Matt Leacock’s games are. Looking forward to the full play-through on Nebula when I have the time to watch.
"we'll use the women's empowerment to destroy the youth climate movement" is not a bad summary of the effect of Andrew Tate on youth politics over the last 5 years.
I love this game. I have had it for a few months & played several times each at 2, 3 & 4 players, just not solo. It looks like a very complicated system at first, but once you get into it & play a few rounds, it really does seem to be very streamlined. The action system is very interesting in that you can play an action & then cover that card & do some other action so there is not a set limit that is always the same, but is flexible based on your cards & in some cases, the order in which you play them. I had a situation recently in which I was able to get rid of the rest of my factories & housing and in the same round, I had drawn several cards that would get rid of other emissions, but I had to figure out the optimum order to be able to use all of them after finishing up the action card that had been on top. I ended up with a stack of 13 cards to keep the other 4 stacks as they were & using the tags in that 1 stack to boost the top cards. There are a few tricks to the game like after you found it necessary to cover an action card that you weren't finished using in favor of a higher priority card, but then you are forced to discard from your hand and/or play area so you can get that first action back if the card that you put in front of it is no longer the higher priority. I would love to see some expansions including some wild tags even if there are some requirements and/or limitations put on them & maybe other countries/regions.
We adore this game, we are playing it online and it's honestly so refreshing, can't wait to buy it when it gets translated in Italian. Honestly I know it's early but I would love more expansions with more factions and cards.
Daybreak is such a wonderful game !! I was privileged to get a sneak peak with the Youth Environmental Service and it was a fantastic and intense experience. It's my game of the year for sure! A great video Simon!!!! Boardgames and the climate sphere are so important.
There’s a difficulty setting in the form of challenge cards. So you can increase the difficulty by adding more negative modifiers to the rules and decrease it using positive ones. Or just spice it up by adding neutral modifiers that don’t make the game any more or less difficult but change your goals slightly. I’ve been enjoying playing the game adding more and more difficulty modifiers till it’s all but impossible.
I got to play-test a version of this at a climate games workshop at Winchester School of Art. It was a great event and I really rated the game as well - as well as lots of interesting conversations with Matteo and others… good times.
@@QT5656 ooh there were some others that seemed interesting... I brought one called "Kyoto: money makes the world go down" but haven't managed to play it properly despite it being I think relatively quick and accessible - much simpler to play than this one, and with an interesting twist on ostensibly cooperative mechanics... All the players represent delegates in a climate conference but everyone has a secret hidden agenda representing e.g. a particular industry lobby. I like the idea of modelling some of the more cynical aspects like that in a playful way that could have interesting dynamics in terms of generating stories, getting people to role play etc... Unfortunately the couple of times I've tried to play it was with my family who aren't really gamers and didn't get much into the spirit of it... I remember there being some other interesting seeming ones that went a bit more into the simulation side but I'd need to look back at my notes to remember what they were - and I haven't played any enough to strongly recommend... But I would strongly recommend the game in the video if you have a decent group of gamers to play with, they really did a good job with the design.
I loved the mechanics of daybreak, would love an extended version of the game and/or the same mechanica being put into a competitive game (maybe a world settling game)
This makes me think of the game Photosynthesis in my field of forestry. It's a perfect primer on silviculture and competition in a game that doesn't feel educational. Of course, much of my research is on climate resilience in forest management (like nearly every researcher in forestry for the past 20 years). I am adding this to my list.
Not sure I'd enjoy the game. For example, if I'm playing the "America" character, where's my *Build More Bombs* card? Seems like a strategic omission from the game.
As the America or EU character, it's your job to continually reduce your harmful emissions for decades while other regions increase theirs at a commensurate rate. It's a difficult feat because people begin to ask questions about the fairness of the arrangement
@TheDanEdwards StevieJ just wants their cake and to eat it too. "Only white Western countries are allowed to profit from a fossil fuel economy- no one else!!"
@@firstname405 right? The mechanic of sending the hand of cards around and everyone playing a card simultainiously makes the game feel really smooth. Especially with experienced 7 wonders gamers, an age goes SO fast
I love that you're branching out with your content. Especially covering fun ways to learn about climate change. More of this, please! Also, board games are awesome! Also also, you should add this video to the game's page on BoardGameGeek.
Would you consider playing this with a group of climate sceptics too? It looks like the people in this video already wanted or needed it to be good, even before they opened the box.
I think as an educational game it is targeted to educating the general population about possible mitigation options and their effects and caveats as well as climate effects caused by nonaction. It's probably less targeted towards conspiracy nutheads living in their alt-right echochambers
Climate skeptics would want it to be bad though, so also wouldn't be a great representation of the game's experience. You really want to be playing it with people who aren't opposed to the idea of climate change, but who also aren't obsessed with it, people who are going to feel it's thematically neutral.
This reminds me of the mobile game Beecarbonize, a singleplayer strategy game in whcih you play as human civilization as a whole and you also use cards in themed fields to produce resources and hopefully cut emissions :o It's definitely not the exact same thing, but the concept is pretty close. :D
So I asked my husband for this game as an early bday gift (yes, I am the kind of person that is clueless on what I want for bday, so he was happy that I suggested it ). Today I played the first game. Loved it! Cant pin it down what I liked the most: the collaboration, the element of surprise, of the crisis cards (ok, that one I liked and hate it hahaha), but also the discussions that it fires up were very nice. And I like how it get me thinking and bring hope-that if we get our act together, we can actually be successful in getting out of the climate crisis ❤. Thanks Simon!
Looks better than Monopoly for family holidays, but I think your friend's criticism that it stopped too soon is a key point. Climate change doesn't stop when global warming gets to 1 or 1.5 or 2 or 5 degrees above baseline. People are still going to have to try to live their lives in those conditions.
I think its actualy a more "gamer-y" point of a design. Because in general this is a more "new way" of design that want to cut unnecessary time out of game, why spend 30+ minutes wrapping up game that you won? Like how modern games usually doesn't do player eliminations etc. So... while I agree that most of the time I want to play a little more, but it is kinda interesting how engine builders now try to over on a "high note" and this is one of them.
Would be interesting to have an expansion that focuses on that "endgame" - unlocks new cards, but also new problems. And the new goal is to get back to net zero
This is so cool. I have a million positive comments BUT the comments are flooded with that so I wanna drop a constructive criticism. I think it's wildly unfair to Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia etc. to not be included beyond "rest of world" and there's a very specific reason for this, because obviously Brazil and South Africa and Nigeria etc. deserve shoutouts too. China should be "Asia-Pacific", because I think it's very American to assume that these countries can't cooperate with China. If Canada, Mexico, Atlantic Europe can co-operate with the great power that is America, so can the South China Sea. It just doesn't feel that way right now, but as a visionary game I think this is a bit of a blind spot.
I have played this about a dozen times and lost every time. This game is awesome but brutally difficult, so thematically it is pretty accurate lol. For those who want to play but find the shipping costs too high/find it too hard to find a hard copy, you can play this online on Board Game Arena. You can play multiplayer.
omg i love thissssss im in my sabbatical slash gap year and wowwww i love this video hahaa thanks human, inspired from this maybe im going to create a art project about my struggles with bipolar manic episodes [which have been very painful for the last 10+ years or so hahaha
Now get a bunch of politicians or ceos to sit around the table and time how long it takes for them to get bored and put it away. Bonus points if they start arguing who gets to play the fossil fuel cards
It feels like there has been a gap in the market for a comprehensive but enjoyable climate boardgame for ages. I'm very pleased to hear that there now seems to be one but I am concerned it will be a bit close to the bone. Playing Pandemic during the pandemic felt a bit gross.
Not exactly related to the game but one of the main flaws or issues with how the world is tackling climate change now I think, is the "washing hands" effect, of how the first world is clearly responsible for most of the emissions, for obvious reasons either directly or indirectly through outsourcing. They are far more able than underdeveloped countries to tackle the change because they can afford to. They have mature economies, societies and infrastructure, and yet many seem to want developing countries to stop theirs, which, sadly, it is not realistic. Even taking the best methods available a country can reasonable do, it is not always possible to both develop a country to a point on which they can go greener, and do it so in a green way. Development inevitable increase emissions, and that will remain true as long the methods of remediation dont get significantly better; and more afordable. Take for example electric cars... even if oyu consider them better carbon wise, they are far more expensive to buy, and it requires massive infrastructure to allow them to hit the streets without running out of power, as well as reeducating mechanics It is just not feasible That doesnt mean undeveloped countries should just blast up coal energy to the stratosphere, but rather that an assymetric leeway in a carbon quota or anything of the sort should be agreed on. So it is not just awareness, people ARE aware of the issues, most either don't care or have no say in it because the methods used by industry vastly outpaces That said, I do think education is necessary, opinions matters politically (though countries need to make direct participation better in many cases, same with voting systems, or it becomes irrelevant. Ish)
I would 100% buy this game if I didn't already buy so many games recently It looks like a more complicated board-game version of beecarbonize, which I really liked as you literally see the pollution meter go up on the screen while you wait for more resources and there can be a feeling of stress and helplessness which is very true to my feelings from real-life climate change
Awesome video as always, I definitely will be getting this game! Btw, what happened to your elbow? Update: I got the game about two weeks ago, and I absolutely love it! Iv'e won like... 4 times now.
@@willvgo2950 Fair point, i guess the risk of a Legacy approach is that there's a risk you lose and then lose all hope for a solution to the climate crisis. 🤔
5 minutes set up 10 per round. Though this is faster with familiar players. I've had adults really stuck on the concept of discarding cards making it far slower.
As with most games, count on it taking longer the first few times you play it & expect it to get faster after you have played a few times. All players take their local actions simultaneously which will usually save time, but sometimes, you will need to discuss to see if a player that can pas cards can spare one that you need, or to determine which card with a certain tag to stop a crisis or activate a global project has the lowest value otherwise.
I come from a family that plays Ludo as a serious intellectual competition , yes there is a winner , and many loosers. I think I will introduce this game at the Christmas holidays and try a more cooperative dynamic.
This game sounds challenging and fun. Unfortunately, I think it's going to have the same barrier to entry as Pandemic for me adding it to my collection: my friends are going to tell me it's "too real." =\
@@jamesphillips2285 It is usually somewhere in the middle, not the quickest , but also not the longest play time of the games I have played. As with any game, expect the first few plays or any time you are bringing in a new player to take longer than when everyone playing knows the game well. I have had gaming sessions in which we played, reset & passed the player boards & cards either right or left & played again & still had time for something else.
I would argue the contrary. In this game you have 4 human beings cooperate to literally save the future of humanity, and have a chance of success! We're a long ways away from reaching that point of agreement in climate politics.
Loved it! I've been looking for such a game like pandemic, collaborative against the crisis on the theme of climate change - this was an instant buy for me after watching. Can't wait to play it with some of the people in my life, who are difficult to talk climate action with!! 🤞🤞
My board game group live spread across 3 different states and 2 additional non-us countries. Our normal method of playing games is tabletop simulator. does anyone know of anything that exists for being able to play this game digitally? Even if it's not tabletop sim specifically. I see the rules and cards are visible on their website so I might just have to manually re-create it in tabletop sim myself (I have never made anything in tabletop sim before.)
There are roughly 1,200 people worldwide, a few dozen in each of the four dozen petrostates that contribute to 99.75% of fossil emissions, who issue all fossil trade licenses. Maybe get a set of this game for each of them.
This (the boardgame) is brilliant edutainment! It reminded me of Power Grid which I thought was going to be so boring, ended up being one of my favourite boardgames!
I played it once, (over new years eve because I am cool like that). We finally reached drawdown.... and immedaitely hit a crisis and lost. I am looking to buy it retail when available. I really want to make a Compedative/ Co-op game about keeping a river healthy but I am too dumb to make it.
Looking at the title and the thumbnail, I imagine that this video may not get so many views (Don't ask me for advice, you know better than me I'm sure, youtube is hard!) but this video was really really good. Comment comment for the algo!
Terra Invicta's climate change is absolutely brutal. It's so hard to manage while still waging a successful war against the aliens and other factions that it feels like it's impossible to do anything about it until it's too late to stop it. Maybe that's just a skill issue on my end, but the most successful approach seems to be plunging the world into a nuclear winter to offset the warming.... lmao. Still seems easier than half-earth socialism. That game has no winning strategy as far as I could tell when I tried it, while Terra Invicta is at least possible if you can get control over most of the world, have the tech to undo climate change, and have the necessary resources to start investing heavily in welfare instead of having to build out your power base.
Can we get world leaders to play this game with each other, or maybe just UN representatives break into small groups and play, maybe they will learn something.
I certainly hope this game is successful, becaue them it will get translated and ill be able to play it with my family. Perhaps then it will be easier to explain certain climate concepts to them
That sounds like it's probably mechanically OK, but it has the same problem that a lot of these cooperative games have, which is a lack of motivation to win - and therefore play - the game. Competitive games rarely struggle with that because players are naturally motivated to try to beat other players, but many cooperative games feel more like pre-set optimisation puzzles, where the cooperative nature just becomes a hindrance. This is especially common for games that lack adversarial relationships between player and NPC actors, or that lack player elimination, because they then have to set win conditions that usually feel arbitrary - we all win if we have 30 points when the game ends. Why 30, why not 29, or 31? Why does the game end when it does, and not a round earlier or later? The game doesn't promise a significant sense of satisfaction upon victory, because you're not really going to overcome a tangible challenge. At the end of the day, it's hard to care about a cooperative game about climate change. People looking to spread awareness via games would probably have more widespread success by making competitive games in which you unleash climate disasters on your foes by spending some kind of pollution resource, and protect yourself from theirs by building relevant defenses.
I can appreciate and enjoy purely cooperative games. My problem with this is that IRL there are absolutely competitive factors that work against global unity to resolve climate issues. If that competition and lack of cooperation isn't actually factored into the game, if feels like it's missing the _actual_ challenges of fixing our climate.
Monopoly was originally designed to show how rents enrich landlords and impoverish tenants - it was called The Landlords Game. There were 2 sets of rules and it was to be played once under each set, thus demonstrating the terribly damaging unfairness of the prevailing system of accumulating rents to large land/property owners, and to provoke discussions about how to do things more fairly. One set of rules involved taxing the landowners and one did not (I’ll leave you to guess which set of rules became the more aggressively competitive game which wrecks many a family Christmas now…).
As originally conceived, one player achieving a Monopoly was the losing scenario. The wiki article says that the game’s creator, Elizabeth Magie “hoped that when played by children the game would provoke their natural suspicion of unfairness, and that they might carry this awareness into adulthood”.
Time for someone to reboot that?
Absolutely. It's a really interesting origin for the game. My only issue I take with this is that monopoly is no longer that (as you hinted to in the comment). A lot of people excuse a lot of things about monopoly because of its origins, but now the rights have been bought by hasbro (a very large corporation) and it now actively encourages a lot of the things that the original design may have attempted to critique.
It's worth talking about for sure, but the game that everyone knows as monopoly is so far detached from what it was originally conceived to be. Monopoly is a bad game, and a lot of people will use its origins as a dispute for that which isn't helpful.
The other issue is that a lot of board game themes in general are entrenched in beating others down to achieve your dominance, so when a board game uses that as a satirical lens, it can often get missed because people assume that's just what board games are about (there's a reason this is a fun fact about monopoly and not just the general view of the game). Imo the best example of a satirical board game is John Company by Cole Wehrle. I would highly recommend checking it out if you haven't already.
You mean like the Government Monopoly skimming 28% of every paycheck, providing NOTHING but terror and compulsory )abs? My landlord skims only 6% of my paycheck and provides me secure shelter and utilities.
@@wesabii exactly, the origins are irrelevant if they have no cultural or practical significance. That's not the game we play today.
@@robertmarmaduke186 where are you living that you only pay 6% of your income as rent?! Most people I know are paying 30-50%!
@@robertmarmaduke186 Housing Cooperatives! People like you either forget or are otherwise unaware of housing cooperatives! Marxism isn't the only form of Socialism. Mutualism is way better and encourages the use of consumer and worker cooperatives.
As a kickstart supporter of this game, i am so happy it's gaining traction. It is fun and challenging to play, and it fills me with a bit of hope for the future.
Making almost all components sustainable in production (not even shrink wrapped when shipped) was a good way to underline their message.
We need software version.
@@davidarvingumazon5024 We have one. The BGA adaptation is phenomenal. I think you can join games without a subscription but can't remember.
@@davidarvingumazon5024 boardgamearena has a software version of daybreak!
+100 for "we don't want edu games" that term unfortunately has been burned by so many shit attempts. Games have been educational for a long time (civ anyone?) and are the single best tool to affect behavior and learning (theres a reason its the biggest entertainment industry and why we use simulation to train pilots etc.) but the implementation is what matters.
I swear the only reason my kids know which cities belong to which part of the world is from playing Civ. Schools don't teach them that stuff these days, and I've never been able to get them interested in geography at home.
Civ is also not exactly totally acurate either!
@@ChristianDall-p2j I know .. but when kids don't see how this information is relevant or interesting, we do the best we can.
The trick is to make a game educational, and not try to gamify a lesson.
@@ChristianDall-p2j tbf most things historical rarely are, but at least things like the names of cities are
Wait a minute, this game is trying to trick us into learning stuff! Haha, you're always welcome down here Simon :)
My mom's favourite board game is pandemic (and it isn't even close, she really loves that game!!) so I think I've found a christmas gift for her! She is also on the board of our local community centre and they have board game nights every fortnight so I can totally see her bringing it in to share with them and starting conversations about climate change :)
Fortnite🤖
ya, i think the starting conversations part is the key. i don't think any outright deniers will want to play but those of us who understand global warming is happening may be sitting on our hands and this might be a spur to much needed action
That is such a great idea!
The mechanics convey the information -- like condensed metaphor in poetry that forces you to think in a new way - a new mental picture popping into your head!! IT WORKS!
I notice Daybreak is like a miniature version of the World Game invented by Buckminster Fuller in 1969.
The Game was first carried out by Fuller and 26 of his grad students, each playing a diplomat representing a given region of the world, and working on a basketball court-sized Dymaxion world map. There is typically a given goal for the Game-the original was ending energy poverty, but world peace, illiteracy and hunger are others that have been used. The Game’s holders have wide discretion over the format, but one example for a four-hour session might be three 20-minute rounds of trade. The UNEP, UNHRC, UNESCO and WHO and four fictional corporations may also have facilitators.
The goal, as with Daybreak, is to encourage cooperation among players, and crucially it relies heavily on real-life and real-time data. It would be nice if multiple people on Twitch or UA-cam streamed a whole World Game, as it would be with Daybreak
I was so ready to get it, and it's a 40€ delivery to Europe. Please consider more distribution! The idea is fantastic.
It is officially available for free on Boardgame Arena!
More localized versions are coming!
Its available on many EU amazon pages and local reseller websites.
German amazon has it for 50€ rn.
English version was harder to get for less than the 90$ from the manufacturers website.
Ironically getting it shipped all the way from the US is much cheaper (75€ with shipping) than from the UK (100€ for the game alone) right now.
I love how geoengineering are gamble cards, it's such a nice touch. though I would love if the game had some competition, it's even an interesting expansion they could make. because while I love cooperative games, I also love the idea of a game with this theme where people are trying to win, but if they try to win too hard everyone loses.
That would be accurate politically. That's how everyone IRL is playing...
@@tristanridley1601 exactly, there is no better way to show people that competing is not a good idea when it comes to everyone's lives. but it's a fun dynamic for a game though.
Perhaps a semi-cooperative game like Dead of Winter could be an inspiration: everyone fighting zombies and gathering supplies, while also having secret missions.
But really I think a mechanic like Terraforming Mars would be more accurate, gathering points while changing up the atmosphere before the end-game is reached.
Hmm, but if you really wanted a bit more competition it would feel more artificial. Perhaps the ¨best¨ player by a stretch gets impacted more negatively, is then incentivised to help the others reach that level of progression, and somehow gets an individual win?
Thing is that it would turn the game quite a bit darker. If you are aware of the potential future society scenarios that sociologists have come up with (a quadrant that features Green Capitalism, Ecof4scism, Green New Deal and Degrowth or whatever sounds better than that) it could make for an interesting 4+ player experience where every kind of ideology is vying for control. But it certainly wouldn't be a happy-go-light game when you're playing with the lives of billions of people over the profit of a handful of billionaires, if you wanted to be realistic.
Going into the real of fantasy and sci-fi can create enough immersive dissonance to ignore the consequences of the most atrocious acts imaginable. Do we know of games like this?
@@NewAge374 I was thinking about something simpler, give an economy tracker, and the cards that improve your economy are either worse at "greenefying" or straight up increase your carbon footprint. meaning if you try to win too hard you could potentially make everyone lose. but it could also have some cool dynamics, like increasing your economy early give you resources to become green faster, but delay the game, potentially increase the number of crisis.
While it would be fun thematically it doesn’t make much sense. What is a scenario in which only one person wins? One country is super clean and carbon neutral and then all the others are smog covered wastelands? Is that a real win?
We DO have to all win, OR WE WILL ALL LOSE....
But for a brief period we will have created so much value for shareholders
@@orterves
So what good is "value" for shareholders, if there's no civilization (climate change made it impossible to maintain), and thus no use for the "value" (money).
As a shareholder myself, predatory capitalism does nothing to serve me, it instead works against my best interests.
@@jimthain8777 that's the joke
Not really true irl, wealth inequality will mean some people will always find ways to win, survive, and maintain an unsustainable lifestyle. It works in this game because you don't play as an individual.
@@jimthain8777 Sarcasm 😮
I was at a climate activist camp the other day and we realised there's no website that has a database of all of the many climate/sustainability games that exist and I really want to start one because there are so many like these that are great!
Board Game Geek
The difference with games compared to other media is that it gives the participants agency over the course of the story. For most people the game's theme elevates the experience from crunching numbers to seeing the impact of their actions. It offers us a chance to take risks that we might not want to take in real life, and only suffer the consequences for the duration of the game.
When both groups said it was a stressful experience, that's not something you want to go to sleep with every night, but it does help some people to start thinking about the positive change that comes along with reducing the impact of the climate crisis: if executed reasonably well, other parts of life will become more enjoyable and comfortable.
Very surprised to see Simon namedrop Terra Invicta as an example of a game that looks at solutions to climate change.
Mind you, in defence of its lesser implementation of it, it does a LOT of things at once: Geopolitics, colony building, spaceship design, realistic space combat, realistic orbital mechanics, realistic future technologies. It does make sense that some complexities regarding climate change are lost simply by engine limitations.
Mind you, I do like this game and would recommend if you're into grand strategy with emphasis on grand.
Pandemic was surprisingly joyful and fun to play (I know, strange considering the topic) so I expect this game to be equally hopeful.
I still feel that Pandemic should have been played for 3 days straight by any decision-makers in the covid pandemic before any policy decisions were made.
A few years ago, (yeah, that year) Z-Man was getting ready to announce a new Pandemic game (Legacy season 0), but then had concerns about announcing it with a real pandemic actually happening. Then, all of the stock of the main (not rethemed) Pandmic sold out all over.
@@creativeartsadminteamvirtu9452 The administration at the time was already quite busy trying to stop windmill cancer.
Daybreak is an absolute darling amongst us board game critics. It's close to perfection.
I don't know... it's not even in the top 1000 on BoardGameGeek. Don't get me wrong, it probably deserves to be higher than that, but it's more of a favorite among more casual players than with hardcore board gamers.
@@DrZaius3141 I think both of you are right! I don't think board game critics are the same subset of hardcore gamers on BGG; I think Daybreak appeals to critics for being such a success at its impossible goal; it appeals to the casual gamer for being fun, accessible, and relevant; but the hardcore BGG user might not reach for this over WS, TM, RftG, etc.
As a gamer and BoardGameGeek regular, this episode had me totally geeking out. 🤓 Pandemic is one of the games in my collection as well as Roll Through The Age: The Late Bronze Age and I’ve also played Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert, so I know how good Matt Leacock’s games are. Looking forward to the full play-through on Nebula when I have the time to watch.
Cooperative is the commonly used term which is funnily enough the type of firm we should encourage.
"we'll use the women's empowerment to destroy the youth climate movement" is not a bad summary of the effect of Andrew Tate on youth politics over the last 5 years.
I love this game. I have had it for a few months & played several times each at 2, 3 & 4 players, just not solo. It looks like a very complicated system at first, but once you get into it & play a few rounds, it really does seem to be very streamlined.
The action system is very interesting in that you can play an action & then cover that card & do some other action so there is not a set limit that is always the same, but is flexible based on your cards & in some cases, the order in which you play them. I had a situation recently in which I was able to get rid of the rest of my factories & housing and in the same round, I had drawn several cards that would get rid of other emissions, but I had to figure out the optimum order to be able to use all of them after finishing up the action card that had been on top. I ended up with a stack of 13 cards to keep the other 4 stacks as they were & using the tags in that 1 stack to boost the top cards.
There are a few tricks to the game like after you found it necessary to cover an action card that you weren't finished using in favor of a higher priority card, but then you are forced to discard from your hand and/or play area so you can get that first action back if the card that you put in front of it is no longer the higher priority. I would love to see some expansions including some wild tags even if there are some requirements and/or limitations put on them & maybe other countries/regions.
lets force billionaires to play it and televise it so we can all see them squirm in discomfort at the problem they created
Is there somewhere to watch the whole game with the Yogscast? I'm really interested.
Hi really interested
another interested body here
Also interested
It's on Nebula
@@pretzelbomb6105 the climate scientist game is and it is a great watch but not the Yogscast game
We adore this game, we are playing it online and it's honestly so refreshing, can't wait to buy it when it gets translated in Italian. Honestly I know it's early but I would love more expansions with more factions and cards.
I want to see a group of bankers,corporate CEOs and politicians playing this ..😊
Daybreak is such a wonderful game !! I was privileged to get a sneak peak with the Youth Environmental Service and it was a fantastic and intense experience. It's my game of the year for sure!
A great video Simon!!!! Boardgames and the climate sphere are so important.
You mean to say "implausible".
Like stopping climate change, it may be possible after all.
Clever way of getting more systems thinking into the population.
I’ve been wanting to buy Daybreak so thanks for the perfectly timed video!
Is there a score? I find that helps a lot with replayability of collab games so we can try to get new high scores.
There’s a difficulty setting in the form of challenge cards. So you can increase the difficulty by adding more negative modifiers to the rules and decrease it using positive ones. Or just spice it up by adding neutral modifiers that don’t make the game any more or less difficult but change your goals slightly.
I’ve been enjoying playing the game adding more and more difficulty modifiers till it’s all but impossible.
I got to play-test a version of this at a climate games workshop at Winchester School of Art. It was a great event and I really rated the game as well - as well as lots of interesting conversations with Matteo and others… good times.
What other climate games would you recommend?
@@QT5656 ooh there were some others that seemed interesting... I brought one called "Kyoto: money makes the world go down" but haven't managed to play it properly despite it being I think relatively quick and accessible - much simpler to play than this one, and with an interesting twist on ostensibly cooperative mechanics... All the players represent delegates in a climate conference but everyone has a secret hidden agenda representing e.g. a particular industry lobby. I like the idea of modelling some of the more cynical aspects like that in a playful way that could have interesting dynamics in terms of generating stories, getting people to role play etc... Unfortunately the couple of times I've tried to play it was with my family who aren't really gamers and didn't get much into the spirit of it... I remember there being some other interesting seeming ones that went a bit more into the simulation side but I'd need to look back at my notes to remember what they were - and I haven't played any enough to strongly recommend... But I would strongly recommend the game in the video if you have a decent group of gamers to play with, they really did a good job with the design.
"climate games workshop" sounds like a good time.
I loved the mechanics of daybreak, would love an extended version of the game and/or the same mechanica being put into a competitive game (maybe a world settling game)
This makes me think of the game Photosynthesis in my field of forestry. It's a perfect primer on silviculture and competition in a game that doesn't feel educational. Of course, much of my research is on climate resilience in forest management (like nearly every researcher in forestry for the past 20 years). I am adding this to my list.
Love seeing some board game / climate science crossover content!
Not sure I'd enjoy the game. For example, if I'm playing the "America" character, where's my *Build More Bombs* card? Seems like a strategic omission from the game.
As the America or EU character, it's your job to continually reduce your harmful emissions for decades while other regions increase theirs at a commensurate rate. It's a difficult feat because people begin to ask questions about the fairness of the arrangement
@@Stevie-J "while other regions increase theirs at a commensurate rate"
@TheDanEdwards StevieJ just wants their cake and to eat it too. "Only white Western countries are allowed to profit from a fossil fuel economy- no one else!!"
The designers of the game realized that nukes are not a good way to stop hurricanes.
@@willvgo2950 You don't say! But they would help against heatwaves right? Water shortage?
I love boardgames! Root and 7 Wonders are my favorite. I recently tried Pandemic, great game and easy to learn:)
Daybreak seems pretty cool! Really nice video as well. Thank you!!
A froend just introduced me to 7 Wonders recently and it is GOOD
@@firstname405 right? The mechanic of sending the hand of cards around and everyone playing a card simultainiously makes the game feel really smooth. Especially with experienced 7 wonders gamers, an age goes SO fast
I love that you're branching out with your content. Especially covering fun ways to learn about climate change. More of this, please!
Also, board games are awesome!
Also also, you should add this video to the game's page on BoardGameGeek.
Someone else has just done that!
I saw the dice and was happy to see someone talking about this game
Would you consider playing this with a group of climate sceptics too? It looks like the people in this video already wanted or needed it to be good, even before they opened the box.
I think as an educational game it is targeted to educating the general population about possible mitigation options and their effects and caveats as well as climate effects caused by nonaction. It's probably less targeted towards conspiracy nutheads living in their alt-right echochambers
Climate skeptics would want it to be bad though, so also wouldn't be a great representation of the game's experience. You really want to be playing it with people who aren't opposed to the idea of climate change, but who also aren't obsessed with it, people who are going to feel it's thematically neutral.
I am not sold on being so concerned about the climate crisis that I'm playing a board game about it.
Terraforming Mars but it's Earth. Awesome!
Just bought it on your recommendation - hopefully if enough of us do then you'll get some boardgame makers sending you free stuff to review!
Was wondering when you'd FINALLY do this one! Awesome game.
This reminds me of the mobile game Beecarbonize, a singleplayer strategy game in whcih you play as human civilization as a whole and you also use cards in themed fields to produce resources and hopefully cut emissions :o
It's definitely not the exact same thing, but the concept is pretty close. :D
Would love a multiplayer RTS style video game version!
Hi! Will you be publishing the playthrough at the game night studio? I watched the one with the climate scientists and it was great!
Reminds me of "Fate of the World" which also did this 13 years ago digitally.
So I asked my husband for this game as an early bday gift (yes, I am the kind of person that is clueless on what I want for bday, so he was happy that I suggested it ). Today I played the first game. Loved it! Cant pin it down what I liked the most: the collaboration, the element of surprise, of the crisis cards (ok, that one I liked and hate it hahaha), but also the discussions that it fires up were very nice. And I like how it get me thinking and bring hope-that if we get our act together, we can actually be successful in getting out of the climate crisis ❤. Thanks Simon!
Neat cross of gaming, science and awareness. Hell yeah
Yeah, I want to do a theme night with Endangered & Daybreak.
Looks better than Monopoly for family holidays, but I think your friend's criticism that it stopped too soon is a key point. Climate change doesn't stop when global warming gets to 1 or 1.5 or 2 or 5 degrees above baseline. People are still going to have to try to live their lives in those conditions.
I think its actualy a more "gamer-y" point of a design. Because in general this is a more "new way" of design that want to cut unnecessary time out of game, why spend 30+ minutes wrapping up game that you won? Like how modern games usually doesn't do player eliminations etc.
So... while I agree that most of the time I want to play a little more, but it is kinda interesting how engine builders now try to over on a "high note" and this is one of them.
Would be interesting to have an expansion that focuses on that "endgame" - unlocks new cards, but also new problems. And the new goal is to get back to net zero
@@HalNordmann Not just net zero. The goal is to get global atmospheric carbon back to
@@tealkerberus748 I meant net zero temperature increase - should've been clearer
@@HalNordmann That could be harder. Get carbon back down to historical norms and then see what the temperature does?
This is so cool. I have a million positive comments BUT the comments are flooded with that so I wanna drop a constructive criticism. I think it's wildly unfair to Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia etc. to not be included beyond "rest of world" and there's a very specific reason for this, because obviously Brazil and South Africa and Nigeria etc. deserve shoutouts too.
China should be "Asia-Pacific", because I think it's very American to assume that these countries can't cooperate with China. If Canada, Mexico, Atlantic Europe can co-operate with the great power that is America, so can the South China Sea. It just doesn't feel that way right now, but as a visionary game I think this is a bit of a blind spot.
They’re likely saving more countries for future expansions. Would be nice to have more for sure
I have played this about a dozen times and lost every time. This game is awesome but brutally difficult, so thematically it is pretty accurate lol.
For those who want to play but find the shipping costs too high/find it too hard to find a hard copy, you can play this online on Board Game Arena. You can play multiplayer.
I would love to play this, i dont think ik anyone that would tho.
19:28 "passion projects, like... this video"
**like button gets highlighted** 😆
My dad loves Collaboration in Board Games. I might get this for him.
Lol briony at 14:39 "aw we get dessert!"
Love your channel, love board games, love this video!
omg i love thissssss im in my sabbatical slash gap year and wowwww i love this video hahaa thanks human, inspired from this maybe im going to create a art project about my struggles with bipolar manic episodes [which have been very painful for the last 10+ years or so hahaha
Now get a bunch of politicians or ceos to sit around the table and time how long it takes for them to get bored and put it away. Bonus points if they start arguing who gets to play the fossil fuel cards
Or the need for build-more-bombs cards.
It feels like there has been a gap in the market for a comprehensive but enjoyable climate boardgame for ages. I'm very pleased to hear that there now seems to be one but I am concerned it will be a bit close to the bone. Playing Pandemic during the pandemic felt a bit gross.
Beecarbonize! Very similar smartphone game to this board game.
Not exactly related to the game but one of the main flaws or issues with how the world is tackling climate change now I think, is the "washing hands" effect, of how the first world is clearly responsible for most of the emissions, for obvious reasons either directly or indirectly through outsourcing. They are far more able than underdeveloped countries to tackle the change because they can afford to. They have mature economies, societies and infrastructure, and yet many seem to want developing countries to stop theirs, which, sadly, it is not realistic. Even taking the best methods available a country can reasonable do, it is not always possible to both develop a country to a point on which they can go greener, and do it so in a green way. Development inevitable increase emissions, and that will remain true as long the methods of remediation dont get significantly better; and more afordable. Take for example electric cars... even if oyu consider them better carbon wise, they are far more expensive to buy, and it requires massive infrastructure to allow them to hit the streets without running out of power, as well as reeducating mechanics It is just not feasible That doesnt mean undeveloped countries should just blast up coal energy to the stratosphere, but rather that an assymetric leeway in a carbon quota or anything of the sort should be agreed on. So it is not just awareness, people ARE aware of the issues, most either don't care or have no say in it because the methods used by industry vastly outpaces
That said, I do think education is necessary, opinions matters politically (though countries need to make direct participation better in many cases, same with voting systems, or it becomes irrelevant. Ish)
I would 100% buy this game if I didn't already buy so many games recently
It looks like a more complicated board-game version of beecarbonize, which I really liked as you literally see the pollution meter go up on the screen while you wait for more resources and there can be a feeling of stress and helplessness which is very true to my feelings from real-life climate change
Awesome video as always, I definitely will be getting this game! Btw, what happened to your elbow?
Update: I got the game about two weeks ago, and I absolutely love it! Iv'e won like... 4 times now.
Of all the board games worthy of a "Legacy" game, this has got to be one, hasn't it?
A campaign game that can be reset would be more appropriate.
@@willvgo2950 Fair point, i guess the risk of a Legacy approach is that there's a risk you lose and then lose all hope for a solution to the climate crisis. 🤔
We might get this game to play with our teenagers as a family date night.
WOW. So how long does it take to play a round??
How long does it take to set up?
5 minutes set up 10 per round. Though this is faster with familiar players. I've had adults really stuck on the concept of discarding cards making it far slower.
@davyhotch that's pretty standard timing
As with most games, count on it taking longer the first few times you play it & expect it to get faster after you have played a few times. All players take their local actions simultaneously which will usually save time, but sometimes, you will need to discuss to see if a player that can pas cards can spare one that you need, or to determine which card with a certain tag to stop a crisis or activate a global project has the lowest value otherwise.
being cooperative game I can still be a saboteur if I try hard enough.
Everyone I've put this game in front of has really enjoyed it - even when we got destroyed
I come from a family that plays Ludo as a serious intellectual competition , yes there is a winner , and many loosers. I think I will introduce this game at the Christmas holidays and try a more cooperative dynamic.
This game sounds challenging and fun.
Unfortunately, I think it's going to have the same barrier to entry as Pandemic for me adding it to my collection: my friends are going to tell me it's "too real." =\
Also seems like the game takes hours to play.
@@jamesphillips2285 It is usually somewhere in the middle, not the quickest , but also not the longest play time of the games I have played. As with any game, expect the first few plays or any time you are bringing in a new player to take longer than when everyone playing knows the game well. I have had gaming sessions in which we played, reset & passed the player boards & cards either right or left & played again & still had time for something else.
@@jamesphillips2285my friends and I play a game of Daybreak online in 10 minutes 🤷🏻♂️
I would argue the contrary. In this game you have 4 human beings cooperate to literally save the future of humanity, and have a chance of success! We're a long ways away from reaching that point of agreement in climate politics.
Great vid, looks fun!
If this game makes accidental connections in peoples minds of the complex topic of climate change so much the better. But primarily, it should be fun.
You're right, Terra Invicta does have climate change in it... It also has nuclear winter so you don't need to worry about climate change too much
fate of the world is still my fav game in this genre
Loved it! I've been looking for such a game like pandemic, collaborative against the crisis on the theme of climate change - this was an instant buy for me after watching. Can't wait to play it with some of the people in my life, who are difficult to talk climate action with!! 🤞🤞
My board game group live spread across 3 different states and 2 additional non-us countries. Our normal method of playing games is tabletop simulator.
does anyone know of anything that exists for being able to play this game digitally? Even if it's not tabletop sim specifically. I see the rules and cards are visible on their website so I might just have to manually re-create it in tabletop sim myself (I have never made anything in tabletop sim before.)
I imagine the Pandemic card triggers a game of Pandemic that you have to beat before going back to this game
There are roughly 1,200 people worldwide, a few dozen in each of the four dozen petrostates that contribute to 99.75% of fossil emissions, who issue all fossil trade licenses.
Maybe get a set of this game for each of them.
This (the boardgame) is brilliant edutainment! It reminded me of Power Grid which I thought was going to be so boring, ended up being one of my favourite boardgames!
How did I not hear about this?
Ordered from my LGS!
Looks amazing! Purchased!
I played it once, (over new years eve because I am cool like that). We finally reached drawdown.... and immedaitely hit a crisis and lost. I am looking to buy it retail when available. I really want to make a Compedative/ Co-op game about keeping a river healthy but I am too dumb to make it.
I found it very hopeful.
I didn't know feminism was against youth climate movements
It seems like it's assuming everyone is purely motivated to address climate change, with no profit motives to conflict with that goal
Is this game called e-mission in Germany? I can't seem to find it under the name Daybreak, and e-mission uses the same cover image.
it is, yes
Looking at the title and the thumbnail, I imagine that this video may not get so many views (Don't ask me for advice, you know better than me I'm sure, youtube is hard!) but this video was really really good. Comment comment for the algo!
Is your elbow ok????!! The cost of decarbonisation is higher than I thought !
Simon - I wonder if you heard about Climate Fresk education project?
It's a bit similar to a game - perhaps a good idea to review it?
Terra Invicta's climate change is absolutely brutal. It's so hard to manage while still waging a successful war against the aliens and other factions that it feels like it's impossible to do anything about it until it's too late to stop it. Maybe that's just a skill issue on my end, but the most successful approach seems to be plunging the world into a nuclear winter to offset the warming.... lmao.
Still seems easier than half-earth socialism. That game has no winning strategy as far as I could tell when I tried it, while Terra Invicta is at least possible if you can get control over most of the world, have the tech to undo climate change, and have the necessary resources to start investing heavily in welfare instead of having to build out your power base.
Can we get world leaders to play this game with each other, or maybe just UN representatives break into small groups and play, maybe they will learn something.
This is genius. A group should attend COP and have delegates play this! I bet it would open eyes!
I'd love to see you play the board game Hegemony and maybe with some people in political science!
I certainly hope this game is successful, becaue them it will get translated and ill be able to play it with my family. Perhaps then it will be easier to explain certain climate concepts to them
That sounds like it's probably mechanically OK, but it has the same problem that a lot of these cooperative games have, which is a lack of motivation to win - and therefore play - the game. Competitive games rarely struggle with that because players are naturally motivated to try to beat other players, but many cooperative games feel more like pre-set optimisation puzzles, where the cooperative nature just becomes a hindrance. This is especially common for games that lack adversarial relationships between player and NPC actors, or that lack player elimination, because they then have to set win conditions that usually feel arbitrary - we all win if we have 30 points when the game ends. Why 30, why not 29, or 31? Why does the game end when it does, and not a round earlier or later? The game doesn't promise a significant sense of satisfaction upon victory, because you're not really going to overcome a tangible challenge.
At the end of the day, it's hard to care about a cooperative game about climate change. People looking to spread awareness via games would probably have more widespread success by making competitive games in which you unleash climate disasters on your foes by spending some kind of pollution resource, and protect yourself from theirs by building relevant defenses.
I can appreciate and enjoy purely cooperative games. My problem with this is that IRL there are absolutely competitive factors that work against global unity to resolve climate issues. If that competition and lack of cooperation isn't actually factored into the game, if feels like it's missing the _actual_ challenges of fixing our climate.
Full price its $60 USD and £86 GPB (which currently converts to $113 USD as of commenting).... so I totally can't afford this living in the UK😅
Board games + climate change solutions? Sign me up!
Seriously going to buy this right now
@@vlogbrotherdaveAwesome! I hope you enjoy it. I might get it someday too. As of right now I already have a bunch of games I could play forever hehe
It's like the board game from the Disney movie Strange World :O
Is there going to be a phone App?
that's still great, but i really wonder if i could get the people i know who needs the most to learn about it, to try playing it 😅.
Wait, this isn't Shut Up and Sit Down! Where am I?