In August 2019 a climate scientist named Declan Finney emailed me, explaining in great detail the gravity of the climate crisis and offering to help re-theme Pandemic to fit the topic. The idea was to help people better understand the situation and what could be done by wrapping it up into a game. This was a bit of a kick in the pants for me. I’d been thinking about doing something similar for some time, but hadn’t started on anything. I began researching. Months passed. I decided that the topic was deserving of its own game (not a re-theme of Pandemic) but it also felt enormous, daunting, and somewhat hopeless to me.
Then, in April 2020, I came across an article about learning from Pandemic during the Pandemic on Twitter, written by Matteo Menapace. I noticed from Matteo’s bio that he was interested in games and climate and contacted him about the possibility of collaborating on a game about the climate crisis with me. We hit it off and we’ve been working together ever since.
Photo: Peter Prato for The New York Times
Here we are, one year later, and we have a design—Daybreak—that we’ve been putting through its paces, both on the table (with our families) and in Tabletopia (with everyone else).
Daybreak puts you in the role of a world power. Your goal is to decarbonize your economy while at the same time build up the resilience your people will need to survive climate-induced crises.
If you and the other players can collectively draw down emissions to net zero while ensuring that no single player has too many people in crisis, you all win the game. This is quite difficult—but crucially, possible.
If you’d like to learn more about the game, Matteo has written an overview of the design so far. We also did interviews with the New York Times, Wired, and Polygon.
This has been one of the most rewarding designs I’ve worked on to date: the problems we face with global warming are deep and complex. Turning them into game dynamics that are representative, balanced, and—perhaps most importantly—engaging and fun to play is a steep challenge. And we want to get it right. To that end, we’re looking for critical reviewers. If you think you might be a good fit for this, have a look at what we’re looking for and let us know.
I’m also happy to share that CMYK has come on board to publish the game. If you’re interested, you can sign up to get exactly one email when the game launches.
And finally, happy Earth Day everyone! I hope you can find a meaningful way to observe this day, even it’s as simple as taking a walk or hike outdoors.