It’s May 2017. We see an elated Emmanuel Macron, celebrating his presidential victory, his platform focused on making the government more efficient and including green initiatives aimed at helping France reduce its dependency on nuclear and fossil fuels. In his acceptance speech, he says he understands the “rage, anxiety and doubt” simmering in the country and that he plans to use his five years healing the divisions.

In many countries worldwide, the topic of energy transition seems to be highly charged. The array of challenges connected to this process embraces a clash of worldviews, controversies over the efficiency of existing technologies, legitimacy and quality of planned and implemented policies, disputes over the “right” energy mix as well as other complex economic and social issues.

In The World’s Future, participants become country leaders and collaboratively steer the fictional world from now till around 2030. As players make virtual decisions on their country’s energy mix, R&D expenditures, environmental policy, and socio-economic growth, they get a very realistic feel of what may happen if we don’t take climate change seriously.

The purpose of social simulation is to trigger change. This change may affect attitudes, standpoints, our understanding of a given issue or – most desirably – the way we behave or act. Social simulation is supposed to make the process of positive change possible. To accomplish it, the participants of social simulations recreate a real life situation.