Speaker 1: Welcome to it could happen here a podcast that is
Speaker 1: remarkably today not really so much about things falling apart
Speaker 1: and is mostly about things in fact getting better and
Speaker 1: how we can do that. Um. I'm your host, Christopher.
Speaker 1: With me today is Garrison and we're also joined by
Speaker 1: Nick and Max, who are two members of the artist
Speaker 1: collective solar Punk Surf Club, who have released a very
Speaker 1: very interesting you game that we are here in part
Speaker 1: of talk about called solar Punk Features. Hello, Dick, I Max,
Speaker 1: How how are you doing? Hey? Doing well? Thanks? Yeah,
Speaker 1: doing great. Thanks for having us one excited to have
Speaker 1: you to on. So I guess my first question is
Speaker 1: how did you too get into game design and sort
Speaker 1: of first have the idea to do a sort of
Speaker 1: like political gaming project like this. That's a good question.
Speaker 1: So we're not, um, we're definitely not game designers by
Speaker 1: Ushian or trade. UM. We're members of the artist collective
Speaker 1: Solar Punk Surf Club, and we're particularly interested in creating
Speaker 1: artwork and social practice that pre figures these kinds of
Speaker 1: egalitarian futures that we'd like to see in the world.
Speaker 1: And so this game was something that we've been kind
Speaker 1: of a project that we've been thinking about and sitting
Speaker 1: on for a little while, and was kind of something
Speaker 1: that made us excited, got us excited, and we think
Speaker 1: there's a whole bunch of other reasons that we think
Speaker 1: it's a really cool um project to work on an
Speaker 1: important project, and um, yeah, so we kind of took
Speaker 1: a took a deep dive headfirst into the world of
Speaker 1: game design and learning how to how to do that
Speaker 1: over the past year or so. Okay, so how about we,
Speaker 1: I guess also start with I guess explaining what solar
Speaker 1: Punk features is and sort of how it works, and
Speaker 1: then we can get into the sort of political aspect
Speaker 1: of this sort of game design project. So, solar Punk
Speaker 1: Futures is a storytelling game where players imagine pathways to
Speaker 1: a desirable future by collaboratively overcoming real world challenges. The
Speaker 1: object of the game is to collectively remember one of
Speaker 1: the stories that grew into our utopia. Um. The idea
Speaker 1: is that through back casting, where you assume within the
Speaker 1: context of the game that players are already in utopia
Speaker 1: and merely remembering back to their ancestors struggle, that players
Speaker 1: can transcend the idea that what currently exists must necessarily
Speaker 1: exist which social theorists Murray book Chain described as the
Speaker 1: acid that corrodes all visionary thinking. So we wanted to
Speaker 1: make a system to facilitate collaborative performance sort of we
Speaker 1: call it a collaborative performance of memory, but one that
Speaker 1: combines sincerity with laughter and speculative storytelling. The game also
Speaker 1: combines a lot of different elements that we saw in
Speaker 1: other games, um, collaborative you know, collaborative storytelling, cooperative gameplay, uh,
Speaker 1: some elements of role playing, and different kind of mechanics
Speaker 1: that we thought would build out that kind of like
Speaker 1: I said earlier, those prefigurations of those egalitarian world So
Speaker 1: we're trying to you know, we're trying to make a
Speaker 1: game that had the fiction and the idea of utopia
Speaker 1: built in uh in terms of the goals of the game,
Speaker 1: but it was also we wanted to build it into
Speaker 1: some of the mechanics of how the game is actually
Speaker 1: played too. Um. But my question from here is sort of, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess firstly is I think what sort
Speaker 1: of specifically drew d solar Punk is sort of an
Speaker 1: aesthetic for for this, Like I know, there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of sort of like the kind of sociocology solar
Speaker 1: punk fusions, but I'm interested in what you you specifically
Speaker 1: to it. So we see solar punk as a visionary
Speaker 1: utopian politics and aesthetic that critically engages the reality of
Speaker 1: capitalist catastrophe while maintaining a radical optimism about humanity's hopes
Speaker 1: for a communal, ecological future. Nick was just speaking to this. UM.
Speaker 1: We see it as a restorative justice process on a
Speaker 1: planetary scale among people, between humans and non human nature.
Speaker 1: So that means reclaiming pieces of the past, pre pre
Speaker 1: capitalist culture. UM, that means material accountability for old practices,
Speaker 1: and it also means radical adaptability towards new ones. I
Speaker 1: think it provided a useful way of synthesizing several currents
Speaker 1: that we had already been thinking about and involved in
Speaker 1: between new media and social practice, thinking not just about
Speaker 1: images and objects in space, but also the set of
Speaker 1: social relations that those things produced. Yeah, we're also we're
Speaker 1: like partisans within solar punk. I don't think there's I
Speaker 1: don't think there's too many pro capitalists within solar punk,
Speaker 1: but I think there are some people who are maybe
Speaker 1: drawn to the aesthetic but don't necessarily have a politics.
Speaker 1: But we do think that there's a kind of a
Speaker 1: latent horizontalism, a latent anarchistic politics in a lot of
Speaker 1: the aesthetics around solar punk and so uh as a
Speaker 1: as a collaborative as an aesthetic that is being defined
Speaker 1: collaboratively by people online and elsewhere. You know, we wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of stick out of position about what we
Speaker 1: thought a really realistic utopian world might look and feel. Like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think this is something else I know YouTube,
Speaker 1: I'm very passionate about. Um is about specifically using games
Speaker 1: as a medium to do this and sort of this
Speaker 1: as like this kind of storytelling membrance as a specifically
Speaker 1: political intervention. So could you talk a bit more about
Speaker 1: you know, like a yeah, you know, good questions like okay,
Speaker 1: so why this and not on you know, on this
Speaker 1: sort of less more like like why this and not
Speaker 1: a grilla garden? You go, why this and not some
Speaker 1: other kind of organizing etcetera, etcetera. Um, yamage it here
Speaker 1: you say about that. Yeah, well, I'm not gonna hate
Speaker 1: on guerrilla gardening. I definitely think it's a both situation. Um,
Speaker 1: it's also in the game. Yeah, that's true. It's it's
Speaker 1: one of the cards, one of the tools that you
Speaker 1: get to use as an ancestor. Um. Yeah, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of different things that we
Speaker 1: were thinking about when we were thinking about why a
Speaker 1: game that I got a little bit into earlier. But
Speaker 1: you know, for one, UM, I think it helps reach
Speaker 1: abroad and often deep politicized audience with a fun way
Speaker 1: to kind of engage in some thorny political questions. I
Speaker 1: think that games as a participatory medium were especially interesting
Speaker 1: for people who are interested in sort of anarchistic modes
Speaker 1: of teaching and education, education through doing rather than lecture. Uh.
Speaker 1: Although you know, we were also read a lot of
Speaker 1: good political theories, so I'm not I'm not opposed to that. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I think, uh, you know, games are also fun,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of there's a lot of political
Speaker 1: organizing and activism work that happens out there that feels
Speaker 1: that's hard and that is necessary to do. But just
Speaker 1: because a lot of the important work to be done
Speaker 1: is hard doesn't mean everything that's hard is important and
Speaker 1: everything that's fun is you know, trifling or not going
Speaker 1: to help us get where we're going and and overthrow
Speaker 1: capitalism and build a new world. So um, yeah, those
Speaker 1: are those are some of the reasons. And yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think that's especially sert of interesting point because I
Speaker 1: think a lot of what happens in left to spaces
Speaker 1: you get a bunch of people doing stuff and they
Speaker 1: burn out really fast because you know, you're doing an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of work. It's all miserable. A lot of
Speaker 1: the times you're getting physically assaulted. And like, I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that's interesting to me about
Speaker 1: this is you need other forms of sort of community
Speaker 1: building and sort of like you need other forms of
Speaker 1: organizing that do not involve you being repeatedly traumatized over
Speaker 1: and over again. And that, yeah, especially just working on
Speaker 1: something like this, and then I don't know, just playing
Speaker 1: with your friends and having having things that are like
Speaker 1: collaborative and joyful and community buildings I think very important
Speaker 1: as a way to just you know, even just this
Speaker 1: is not a very basically logistical level, but prevent people
Speaker 1: from burning out. Yeah, And and I definitely think that
Speaker 1: there's a role there to prevent people from burning out
Speaker 1: and and inspiring people with some of the fun ideas,
Speaker 1: the ideas that they come up with when they're not
Speaker 1: looking at a Google doc meeting notes, but instead they're
Speaker 1: playing a card game and maybe drinking a couple of beers,
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, how would I combine guerrilla gardening
Speaker 1: and um, you know performance art too, bring about you know,
Speaker 1: to solve a specific challenge of capitalism like deforestation or
Speaker 1: these are some of the cards in the game. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I think it can be inspiring, you know,
Speaker 1: it's also um, it can be educational. I played with
Speaker 1: some family. Uh. I think the first time I played,
Speaker 1: when we got the physical copy that wasn't a play test,
Speaker 1: was with some family and they don't necessarily identify as
Speaker 1: leftists of any kind, but we had a really fun
Speaker 1: game where we explored ideas of deconstructing borders, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know they were It wasn't like I was guiding
Speaker 1: them in this direction. It was just kind of the
Speaker 1: assumption of the game that there was utopia, got beyond
Speaker 1: this ingrained capitalist realism, that there just isn't that there
Speaker 1: isn't an alternative. And they're like, okay, well the game
Speaker 1: says we're already in utopia, so that means there's no
Speaker 1: private property. And I was like, whoa, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a jump. I didn't expect from my from my family.
Speaker 1: One thing I'm interested in in terms of how it
Speaker 1: functions as a game is like balancing the actual more
Speaker 1: I don't know, fund based like role playing game elements
Speaker 1: with like it's kind of structure as a thought exercise,
Speaker 1: and like a world building game like how how how
Speaker 1: do you approach trying to get a balance of like
Speaker 1: fun role playing as well as this type of like
Speaker 1: reverse world building. I was kind of I was still
Speaker 1: a little bit on the y A game in the
Speaker 1: first place question, but I'm also intrigued by the balancing
Speaker 1: fun and politics question. If you don't mind, I wanted
Speaker 1: to go back to the y A game for just
Speaker 1: a second, um, because I think maybe it will lead
Speaker 1: into this. Games are, you know, an ancient form of art.
Speaker 1: I know, I said we work in new media before,
Speaker 1: but games are actually an ancient form of art, and
Speaker 1: I would argue social practice. Um. There's a game called Senate.
Speaker 1: There's a game called the Royal Game of Er, which
Speaker 1: both date to five thousand years ago in ancient Egypt
Speaker 1: and ancient messo but Amia, respectively. We did in making
Speaker 1: the game, we did a bunch of research on the
Speaker 1: history of of games. There's a fifteenth century game called
Speaker 1: the Game of the Goose from uh well, present day
Speaker 1: Italy that paired like these gorgeous illustrations, also with like
Speaker 1: didactic moral instruction. In the early early twentieth century, the
Speaker 1: Surrealists created a series of games um with the intention
Speaker 1: of breaking through traditional thought patterns and unleashing the potentials
Speaker 1: of the unconscious. They also wanted to subvert academic modes
Speaker 1: of inquiry um. And then today, you know, some of
Speaker 1: our most popular table top games. You know, I think
Speaker 1: Nick was mentioning this earlier, how they can sometimes inscribe
Speaker 1: oppressive logics. So, you know, rather than a game where
Speaker 1: you're competing in against other players to drive them into poverty,
Speaker 1: or a game where you're trying to colonize other players land,
Speaker 1: you know, for the purpose of world domination, we wanted
Speaker 1: to make a game that actually practices the cooperation, interdependence, care, consent, uh,
Speaker 1: these things that will be needed, you know, for it
Speaker 1: actually to transcend the social ecological crises of our day.
Speaker 1: And kind of to that point, you know, I would
Speaker 1: say that games always reflect the beliefs and norms of
Speaker 1: their historical context. So with solar Punk, futures. We wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of flip the script and UM project using
Speaker 1: you know, the modalities of like speculative fiction, collaborative performance.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, the values and more is of a
Speaker 1: of a desirable future. So games are are very human thing,
Speaker 1: an ancient human thing. And why do people play games? Uh?
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, you know, education is part of it, UM,
Speaker 1: but also building social bonds is another important piece, and
Speaker 1: that always is a company. It's a very like academic
Speaker 1: way of talking about it, maybe, but it is. It
Speaker 1: is fun. It has to be fun. That's why people
Speaker 1: do it. In terms of the To get a little
Speaker 1: deeper into the balancing question, you know, every game is
Speaker 1: a balance between a bunch of different competing factors. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of people who were talking about the balance
Speaker 1: between randomness and planning in in games and the balance
Speaker 1: um between structure and free form. And it's definitely something
Speaker 1: if there's any game designers out there thinking about making,
Speaker 1: you know, games like this, play testing it will help
Speaker 1: you so much because you know, the game in a
Speaker 1: rough form existed in the spring of last year, but
Speaker 1: playtesting really helped us refine a lot of those questions
Speaker 1: and find that kind of balance between structure and freeformness.
Speaker 1: We wanted it to be accessible to people who aren't
Speaker 1: d n D players, but we've also played with people
Speaker 1: who play a lot of d n D and GM
Speaker 1: and all this stuff, and they took it in a
Speaker 1: lot of fun and wild directions that we didn't expect.
Speaker 1: That helped inform kind of new ways that we could.
Speaker 1: You know, we added some optional rules in there for
Speaker 1: people who want to take it in a different direction
Speaker 1: or or add more complexity, or or even or for
Speaker 1: other people who need a little bit like a handhold
Speaker 1: and want to flip a coin to decide something rather
Speaker 1: than um, you know, come up with it totally on
Speaker 1: their own. So I think, um, yeah, it's a hard
Speaker 1: it's a hard thing to balance, you know, all the
Speaker 1: different factors that go into a game. But I definitely
Speaker 1: think play testing and all the people who who played
Speaker 1: with us in those early games really helped helped us
Speaker 1: figure out the right balance. And to your earlier point
Speaker 1: about burnout, like activists burnout, Um, some people who we've
Speaker 1: invited to play the game maybe have have expressed this
Speaker 1: idea of like, well, um, I'd love to, but I
Speaker 1: don't have time, And maybe maybe they they think of
Speaker 1: of gaming. And I know I've certainly been guilty of
Speaker 1: this too, of feeling like guilt over things that feel
Speaker 1: like it indulges like you should be doing the real
Speaker 1: work all the time. But you know, I think it's
Speaker 1: important to hold that in the perspective of the tradition
Speaker 1: of of feminism, civil rights advocates, others on the left
Speaker 1: that have talked about the importance of um joy that
Speaker 1: needs to be integral to our struggles. There's the famous
Speaker 1: Goldman quip, if I can't dance, it's not my revolution.
Speaker 1: So perhaps you know, these ideas of like guilt and
Speaker 1: shame or martyrdom or whatever are kind of toxic parts
Speaker 1: of the old world that we need to to let
Speaker 1: go of. UM. So I guess this is kind of
Speaker 1: coming back to say that there's, as as Nick was saying,
Speaker 1: there is an ethical, pre figurative case of um of
Speaker 1: how games can allow people to um express themselves through play,
Speaker 1: but there's also a tactical one, and that games can
Speaker 1: be a structured way of thinking about how do we
Speaker 1: create a liberated society? On everything I think is sort
Speaker 1: of interesting about Well, like, I guess this is somewhat
Speaker 1: less true of tabletop games as in medium because typical
Speaker 1: games are a lot of sort of cloud storytelling ish stuff.
Speaker 1: But like I know, like like so like I'm I
Speaker 1: I put a lot of video games right, and it's
Speaker 1: like it's like a lot of the structure of what
Speaker 1: gaming is is sort of like it basically just turned
Speaker 1: into like another job that you have, and it's interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like I mean, you know, and you get you
Speaker 1: like you get, you get the same you even get
Speaker 1: like bog like crossover between the terminology of like like
Speaker 1: you know, like I think like grinding is like a grind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like grind. I think I think that came from getting
Speaker 1: first and then moved over into the weird grindset stuff.
Speaker 1: But like I think you're right, yeah yeah. And gamification, right,
Speaker 1: that's another way that like gaming is being almost like
Speaker 1: weaponized by capitalism to get squeezed just a little bit
Speaker 1: more out of everyone. Yeah, there's there's a really interesting
Speaker 1: article whose name I am forgetting because I am yeah,
Speaker 1: I um, but Vicky Astawall wrote it like a while
Speaker 1: ago that was about how like games are like it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's used sort of mechanically doing the
Speaker 1: same thing over and over and over again. But it's
Speaker 1: it's a problem because it's like it's it's labor that's
Speaker 1: like too perfect. I guess it doesn't create anything. There's
Speaker 1: no sort of like I like, there's there's no sort
Speaker 1: of like um like aspect that produces like value that
Speaker 1: could be extracted. You're just sort of you're just doing
Speaker 1: the thing over and over again. And it's like and
Speaker 1: you know, and that then then that, you know, becomes
Speaker 1: a problem for capital in some sense, is why there's
Speaker 1: all these panics about like everyone being addicted to gaming,
Speaker 1: because it's like, well, okay, you're not making money for us,
Speaker 1: And but I think it's interesting truck simulator you could
Speaker 1: be driving some actual Yeah. Yeah, but you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting that this is a political intervention into
Speaker 1: that of creating something that's you know, precisely the opposite
Speaker 1: of that that it's you. You're not sort of like
Speaker 1: it's not just like an incredible intensification of the sort
Speaker 1: of like reward systems of working. It's hey, we're gonna
Speaker 1: come together and we're gonna tell we're gonna you know,
Speaker 1: make collaborative decisions and overcome challenges. And I think I
Speaker 1: think that's a very interesting sort of political angle to
Speaker 1: come at this from. Yeah, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of tabletop games in particular, compared to video games.
Speaker 1: I think, well, I'll say, role playing games in particular
Speaker 1: put you in a driver's seat in a way that
Speaker 1: I think can is is hard, right, Like sometimes I'm
Speaker 1: too tired to or if I think, you know, I
Speaker 1: have a I have a D and D night, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know if I have the energy
Speaker 1: for this after working all day, um, whereas I might
Speaker 1: have energy to play you know, a video game RPG
Speaker 1: that kind of walks me, you know, handholds me through
Speaker 1: a story. Um, it's kind of more like watching more passive. Um.
Speaker 1: But I do think that there's I just think there's
Speaker 1: something so important about thinking through what it might be
Speaker 1: like to live in this utopian society. And it's important,
Speaker 1: I think because if we don't, well, for one, a
Speaker 1: ton of people just don't even think about it. Um.
Speaker 1: And so to the extent that this game is something
Speaker 1: that gets bought or played with families of people who
Speaker 1: are you know, one of the many people who have
Speaker 1: been deep politicized in this country. Um, I think that
Speaker 1: can be really helpful. But I also think that, um,
Speaker 1: I've played it, and I've found really fun and exciting
Speaker 1: ideas that I wouldn't have thought about if I was
Speaker 1: staring at a power map or something and thinking where
Speaker 1: can we intervene in my city too, you know, help
Speaker 1: help solve this or that problem. So I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's power there. So I think one of
Speaker 1: the other things I think is interesting to me about
Speaker 1: how you cute sort of the team put this product together.
Speaker 1: And it's also like you know, so like you can
Speaker 1: buy the versions of it that have like very very
Speaker 1: nice art, but you also just put the cards and
Speaker 1: the rules up for free and you can just sort
Speaker 1: of print and play it. So I ownered, Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you could talk a bit about decision you do that
Speaker 1: democratic accessibility is really important to us. It's part of
Speaker 1: the concept that we wanted to integrate into every aspect
Speaker 1: of the game's production and distribution. And so yeah, the
Speaker 1: whole thing is available as a free print and play
Speaker 1: PDF download. Um it's all Creative Commons licensed. UM. So
Speaker 1: that's yeah. And you know, at the same time, as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, we we uh are interested in materiality and
Speaker 1: want wanted to create, um, something that could could accompany
Speaker 1: you know, a face to face interaction as well, which
Speaker 1: is you know, frankly, well, I'll just speaking for myself,
Speaker 1: that's probably more my interest. Um, even though I think
Speaker 1: you know like that. We have a tabletop simulator version too,
Speaker 1: which I think is really cool. But as far as
Speaker 1: the decision to make the game, you know, free, free forever. Um,
Speaker 1: we want people to play, We want it to be
Speaker 1: genuinely useful. Um. This is not a this is not
Speaker 1: a capitalistic business venture. We're running a break even budget
Speaker 1: and want to just keep doing projects and you know,
Speaker 1: elaborating like the solar punk tradition and connecting it to social, ecological,
Speaker 1: communalist politics. So if this can be a catalyst towards
Speaker 1: being able to do more of that, then um, then
Speaker 1: it's you know, we'll have we'll have succeeded on our
Speaker 1: on our terms at least. What's this at us of
Speaker 1: physical copies of how can people if they want to
Speaker 1: use cards and stuff? What is how how would one
Speaker 1: go about getting those? Yeah, so there's a couple of
Speaker 1: different ways. People can download the free print and play
Speaker 1: if they like, If they really love it, they want
Speaker 1: to buy the physical copy. We sold out of the
Speaker 1: kind of first edition that we were able to afford
Speaker 1: to print, but we're raising money on Kickstarter for a
Speaker 1: second edition. So if people back us at a certain
Speaker 1: tier there, I think it's forty five dollars or higher. Uh,
Speaker 1: you get a copy of the game when we're able
Speaker 1: to print them. Uh And so yeah, so it's a
Speaker 1: um and of course, as Max mentioned, you can also
Speaker 1: play on tabletop simulator. But yeah, we're we're really excited
Speaker 1: about it. I think we're also hoping to take it
Speaker 1: around on to some you know, political workshops, probably on
Speaker 1: Zoom for the foreseeable future, get maybe game convention, tabletop
Speaker 1: game conventions and stuff, and also some art art shows
Speaker 1: um to be announced, to be announced, but there's a
Speaker 1: couple of art shows that we're excited to be showing
Speaker 1: it in. So um yeah, yeah. One one thing I'm
Speaker 1: really excited about in terms of playing this at some
Speaker 1: point is the I think starting from the point of
Speaker 1: like you're trying to build the world now, you can
Speaker 1: really easy, it's really easy to run into ruts. Um
Speaker 1: starting at the end point than working backwards, I think
Speaker 1: because that produces that reverse type of thought. I think
Speaker 1: it's a little bit easier for to find the path
Speaker 1: than just starting here and looking at the world will
Speaker 1: be like, oh, how do we do it? You thing
Speaker 1: to make it better, instead of being at the opposite
Speaker 1: place and being like, what's what is the way to backtrack?
Speaker 1: I think can maybe give you some connections and ideas
Speaker 1: that you may not have had otherwise because we're kind
Speaker 1: of always stuck in the now. How do we get
Speaker 1: now better? So I would be very excited to uh
Speaker 1: try try this out at some point and uh and
Speaker 1: experience that backtrack thinking because I think it's a yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm really intrigued with that specific aspect of the
Speaker 1: game because yeah, I'm sure there's gonna be a lot
Speaker 1: of solar Punk games within the next decade probably, um,
Speaker 1: and this is one aspect that I think actually is
Speaker 1: really unique and something that's not just intrinsic to Solar Punk. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's something that's kind of been added on.
Speaker 1: So uh, that's something I'm really excited about. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I would love to love to pick this up uh soon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you for saying that. Um. I think one of
Speaker 1: the things that we hope that the game does is
Speaker 1: help people break through that capitalist realism. Yeah, like there
Speaker 1: is no alternative. It's easier to imagine the end of
Speaker 1: the world than the end of capitalism, etcetera. Um. And
Speaker 1: you know, similarly, if you ask people to imagine the future, uh,
Speaker 1: it's very hard and uh and if they are able
Speaker 1: to at all, it is often extrapolating sort of the
Speaker 1: worst trends of today into a dystopian future. Yeah. I remember.
Speaker 1: I remember so when when I was in I was
Speaker 1: in middle school or something, we had this acietment. We
Speaker 1: had to like write a you like write what are
Speaker 1: perfect like utopian society would be, and we like did it,
Speaker 1: and like three quarters of the like society people come
Speaker 1: up with were just like the worst imaginable dystopia And
Speaker 1: it was just like, it's just like grim sort of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if I was gonna if I was gonna make what
Speaker 1: I thought was an accurate prediction of the few uture,
Speaker 1: it might be more similar to the first season of
Speaker 1: this podcast than uh, some of the hopeful futures. But
Speaker 1: I don't. I also don't think. I don't think the
Speaker 1: door is closed on any kind of solar punk future.
Speaker 1: I think it's important one of the important aspects that
Speaker 1: we included that that is that makes solar punk different
Speaker 1: than just kind of vague utopianism, is that we think
Speaker 1: we ask people to also think about the barriers they
Speaker 1: run into, to think about, you know what, who's gonna
Speaker 1: who's gonna oppose you if you're trying to um, you know,
Speaker 1: deal with polluted water and you find some really great
Speaker 1: system and improve a region's water supply, you know, Nestley
Speaker 1: might come in and buy the rights to the whole region,
Speaker 1: the whole watershed. So you know, imagining those that opposition,
Speaker 1: the material conditions that might change, and how you adapt
Speaker 1: to them. We hope that's something that people also benefit
Speaker 1: from who played this game and and make some predictions
Speaker 1: about the strategic decisions that capital is going to make
Speaker 1: to oppose your your utopian vision. And I hope there
Speaker 1: are more solar punk games, Like you said, I hope
Speaker 1: there's a preponderance of solar punk art in the in
Speaker 1: the next decade. That would be amazing. And you know,
Speaker 1: to what you were just saying, you're right, solar punk
Speaker 1: doesn't mean the end of politics, doesn't mean the absence
Speaker 1: of conflict. UM. So I think we tried to integrate
Speaker 1: that into the game. What makes a good solar punk
Speaker 1: stories that it is plausible yet distinctly anti utopian, anti
Speaker 1: dystopian rather um it you know, provides a glimpse into
Speaker 1: a future possibility for say, the reharmonization of humans with
Speaker 1: other humans, humans with non human nature. Um and that
Speaker 1: is going to involve some amount of opposition on the
Speaker 1: one hand and reconstruction on the other. In short to
Speaker 1: to critique by building as the slogan goes, all right, yeah,
Speaker 1: plugs time. What do you what do you need to
Speaker 1: have plugs? Uh? So, Yeah, we have an upcoming live
Speaker 1: stream on Twitch with Veterans for Peace. They have some
Speaker 1: gamers for Peace and Tuesday night on at eight p
Speaker 1: m they're gonna be playing Solo Punk Solo Punk features
Speaker 1: with us. UH. If people are interested in the game,
Speaker 1: they can download it for print and play on our
Speaker 1: website at H T T P colon slash Slash the
Speaker 1: Future dot WTF UH and UH. People can also find
Speaker 1: a link to our kickstarter on that website if they're
Speaker 1: interested in pre ordering physical copy, which we very much appreciate.
Speaker 1: We're getting close to funded. That's very exciting. I hope,
Speaker 1: I hope, I hope, I hope it gets funded. I
Speaker 1: want to see more of these because the art is
Speaker 1: extremely cool. And yeah, well, thank you to you for
Speaker 1: coming on this. This has been It could happen here
Speaker 1: and we'll see you the next time an episode goes up.
Speaker 1: I don't know when that's gonna be right now, so yeah,
Speaker 1: wonderful extros. It could happen here as a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. Were more podcasts from cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
Speaker 1: for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone
Speaker 1: Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.