Last week saw us hard at work, trying to complete the current development “sprint” on schedule. We have only a few weeks to pull together the first working game code if we’re to make the September launch date for our Kickstarter.
The main focus of the sprint has been on what we call the Main screen, the top-level of the interface, which summarises all the economic, demographic, political, and environmental data of the player nation into a single place.
The goal is an interface that informs the player, clearly and precisely, of the nation’s current situation, allowing them to assess with a single glance what the key issues are that the country faces.
Which economic sector is emitting the most greenhouse gases? How capable is the local environment of absorbing these emissions via vegetation? How are you doing in meeting your climate conference obligations?
Is the nation politically stable? If not, what might be the reason? What is the state of healthcare, and education? Do people have enough work, and is that work well enough rewarded?
How does your nation power itself? How does its technology compare to the rest of the world? How much wealth does it have, and what is its GDP? What does that mean in terms of your budget?
The data set we are implementing into the game is vast in scope, and made all the more engaging by the fact that it is as close the the real-world data as we can make it. We have a wealth of statistics, data, and research to draw upon in every field we touch upon, drawn from many of the world’s most prestigious institutions.
Making this data accessible and understandable to people, structuring interrelationships so that hard facts and numbers become dynamic game elements, is at the very heart of Fate of the World. What we aspire to is a game that explores what it means to be a member of humanity in the 21st Century.
As always, thanks for reading. We’ll be back with more news very soon.
The Fate team