Roleplaying Games | Science Fiction | Politics

‘Ecopunk: 2044’ Paints a Grim Vision of Global Ecological Collapse

Oil Companies are existential threats to humanity

“Buying this book is not a contribution to the environmentalist cause.

But it is a means to inspire action.

The Earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.”

— Ecopunk: 2044

Just after this year’s Earth Day, Vice published a piece on how oil companies stack the deck in their own favor. Even if every single voter wanted to stop Shell, BP, Chevron, and Exxon from burning up the planet, oil companies could sue governments for lost profits.

On April 22nd, 2022 — Earth Day — environmental activist Wynn Bruce set himself on fire on the steps of the Supreme Court. Most regular news consumers didn’t hear about it until the next day, when he died in a hospital.

The day before that, CNBC posted a piece on where in the US global warming will have the least impact. The fact that a lot of people will NEVER be able to afford to move to these “climate havens” was mentioned in passing. The piece didn’t offer a solution to that little problem.

“2024 / THE ENVIRONMENTALIST CAMPAIGNS FADE

Environmentalist groups collectively fail to create sufficient leverage to enact change, even in the bland demands they often couch it in. Those in the west fail to escape their ideological domination by pacifist liberals and those in the global south are unable to out-gun the violent repression of capitalism. By 2024 any progressive rigour has been neutralised and incorporated into capitalism by centrist parties, as is their function.”

— from Ecopunk: 2044, page 174

Ecopunk: 2044 is a disturbing mashup of The Day After Tomorrow, Ghost in the Shell, and Disco Elysium. The game paints a depressingly likely vision of our future after catastrophic global warming.

Housing, diet, labor practices, geopolitics and more are addressed in Ecopunk’s lengthy lore section. Every detail of the setting is more alarming than the last. The book’s lore would make a godlike series bible for a Netflix show.

In 2044, Earth is officially in a Death Spiral. The biosphere is collapsing and the three (or four) remaining superpowers are doing everything they can to delay The End. And everyone knows The End is coming, even if they don’t want to admit it to themselves.

Weather is a big part of the game. Regardless of where you are, you could experience anything from a searwave, which is exactly what it sounds like, to a deep freeze.

As we all know, weather affects societies. Tempers flare when it’s hot, along with violence. The cold drives up infection rates of several ongoing pandemics. Either temperature extreme can lead to power outages or food shortages. More than any other RPG I know, the weather dictates the flow of Ecopunk: 2044.

Most people live on less food than we do now, and almost no meat. Virtually all farming operations are nationalized. Insect-based foods are commonplace. Most people also don’t own cars, and rarely live alone. Universal basic income exists, but provides the bare minimum of everything, like clothing and food and housing, rather than a lump of cash.

But some lost things have been rediscovered. Universal Basic allows creatives to ply their arts full-time. Metropolitanisation has helped replace individual loneliness with a returning sense of community.

While markets still exist, everyone with half a brain abandoned liberal (and illiberal) capitalism. “Business”, “trade”, and “commerce” are not synonymous with “capitalism”.

Politics in 2044 is ugly but not hopeless. The masses have straight up murdered a lot of politicians and rich people (because they could have stopped this madness decades before but didn’t), and the remaining elites have a healthy fear of the people. “Hard Green” authoritarianism is mostly supported, because the alternatives would speed up the Death Spiral. Debate rages on whether humanity can geoengineer its way out of Climate Armageddon.

These political battles are not fought on debate stages or at the ballot box. Protests, labor strikes, and even assassination are the new tools of politics. Details on voting and elections are notably absent in Ecopunk.

The geopolitical situation is just as tense as the societal situation. Three superpowers — basically China, basically the EU, and a mostly-united Africa — have become ethno-states in their own ways. Most smaller nations straight up failed. Only a few small neutral countries remain. Plus, the UN now has it’s own army, and the authority to use it to forestall the Death Spiral.

Ecopunk’s hi-tech elements are just as fascinating. Cyborgs and drones are common, and guns are more dangerous then ever.

While functional AI exist, only two artificial superintelligences have ever been made. One of them, called Bridge Builder, rewrote the internet into something wholly different within a few days. The other was destroyed in a lab moments after its birth, and in that brief period invented a whole new kind of cyberweapon.

But the more things change, the more stupid people still believe stupid shit. Even with an entire planet of evidence, there are people that believe this environmental train wreck isn’t happening. They think that governments — all of the governments — are causing isolated environmental disasters to justify their growing power. They think the Prohibition on subsidized meat is an attempt to feminize men. They think World War III never happened. Etc.

Also, World War III happened.

Ecopunk: 2044 is unapologetically political. The author takes shots at rightism and centrism at every opportunity. Readers are reminded that the Death Spiral is the fault of hypercapitalism run amuck.

Ecopunk: 2044 shares DNA with other games we’ve covered. Like Hammerheads, Ecopunk falls firmly into the climate fiction genre, but from a different, darker angle. Like Underground, Ecopunk’s player-characters are do-gooders that have to do bad things. Like Hard Wired Island, Ecopunk desperately wants players to consider how current real world actions could lead to a horrendous future. Like Mörk Borg, the art is stupid-gorgeous but more comprehensible.

But no game is perfect. Like Lancer and Cyberpunk RED, Ecopunk’s combat mechanics slow down an otherwise brilliant game, although to a lesser extent.

But even if you never play it, Ecopunk: 2044 is worth reading. The future setting the author has constructed is shocking, fascinating, and probably, tragically, prescient. You will devour the lore overnight, then go catatonic from climate despair.

The game is especially required reading for gamers that vote, because if we don’t kick the Greedy Rich out of office soon, Ecopunk 2044’s dire fiction will become fact.