Anand Mallik is Building a Game to Fund Climate and Social Justice Work
Interview by Kelly Wilkins
The Promised Land Game
We spoke with Anand Mallik, the longtime web developer turned indie game developer who’s building The Promised Land, a forthcoming farming game that will donate 60 percent of its proceeds to fund climate justice groups like the Sunrise Movement and COVID relief organizations.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
RIFT: We'll dig into the details later but can you first give us just a brief overview of The Promised Land game?
Anand Mallik: Sure. It's a multiplayer pixel art driven farming game. You and your friends can log on and check out a utopian futuristic society, where we figured out things like how to make an economy work for everybody. And what you get is a plot of land, you get to farm on it. If you're familiar with titles like Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley, we're very much following that ethic of farming. So you'll be able to chop down trees, get rid of stones, get some stuff out of that to craft, as well as have some tools to tend to your farm, till the soil, put down some seeds, water them, and of course get some plants. And there is a figured out utopian economy for you to interact with, which involves a fixed currency as well as a more freely traded and printed currency, which kinda regulates necessary goods and goods that can be introduced by the economy at large as well. But generally it's just about chilling out with your friends, and farming, fishing, and doing relaxing things — and mostly noncompetitively.
And getting into the story of the game, while it is a utopia there are bad faith actors — people like Gill Bates and Jeff Bozo. I think we talked about an elongated Musk. These kind of figures. And basically they'll be trying to tilt a utopian society to their favor, and you'll be working with the other characters to make sure that doesn't happen, that the utopia stays that way. And it will be like experiencing a world where a society is more apt to act as a community in defense of its own systems as opposed to kind of what we have now where there’s nihilism, apathy, death and apocalypse. So we’re creating an alternative to that for people to escape to.
And I think the coolest part is that while it’s free-to-play, 60 percent of all purchased assets will go towards fighting the good fight to try to reverse the situation of climate change as much as we can — to try to protect humanity I think is a better way to put it — as well as to try to provide mutual aid for COVID. Right now we only have one partner and it’s the Sunrise Movement, probably the biggest youth foundation in the climate movement. And we’re really excited to work with them, to help use this to raise money for them and other groups, and we're looking into defining those groups right now.
RIFT: Awesome. You've said that you wanted to create a game that could lower the stakes of activism so that everyone can get involved. Can you say more about this?
AM: Yeah. I started this maybe way back in November of 2018, and obviously activism in all of the ways that we interpret that word politically has only expanded greatly, especially this year with the past summer — COVID, George Floyd. The problem there is it’s still hard for everyone to truly get involved. Protests are super necessary, they need to be expanded, they need to stay out there, but it's not something everybody can do. Not everybody can take the risk. And I’ll just be dead honest here…I'm 34, I've been sitting in a computer chair for over a decade, I don't really have the kind of body that's built to run away from the cops anymore. Not all of us can take the same risk, so it's a way to help without having to take a big risk. And I don't want to admonish or hurt the pride of anyone that is taking the risk. What I want to do is help them. So this is a way for those that can't take the risk to help those that are taking the risk.
And it's also for those that might be too cynical to join an organization, to spend their free time working for the Sunrise Movement, or DSA, or any of these groups, but still would like some change. This is just an easy first step to try to feel involved. And I'm hoping it could lead to people maybe taking the next step. But if not, it could still be a financial boon for the organizations that exist. So I'm really hoping that it can lower the emotional, physical, and material risks of being an activist — especially in a society tilting towards fascism, as many people feel.
And I'm a tech nerd by trade, so it's one of those things. They say you should make a start-up that solves your own problems…I guess I'm trying to solve my own problem of both wanting to be more involved, but in all honesty, not wanting to take the greatest of risks that might be necessary.
RIFT: Tell us about free-to-play MMOs and why you decided to build this type of game to raise money for climate justice organizations.
AM: Free-to-play games, MMO or not, are incredibly successful, just from a business standpoint. The biggest games right now are free-to-play. To name check a few that would be Fortnite and League of Legends. Those are competitive games but the big point is that they’re free-to-play, so they'll have a huge audience and they’ll use the free-to-play as a lure to get people to download the game and play them obviously. Maybe 10, 20 percent of the audience will pay for the goods that end up keeping these businesses alive. And that sounds like a crap-shoot but again, Fortnite is making a billion dollars and so is League of Legends. Games that are more single player or rather noncompetitive like ours make a quote unquote more modest sum of around nine figures at the top level, which is close to 100 million. That would be Path of Exile and Warframe. So ‘Why?’ There’s a lot of money.
But the other thing is that — and this goes back to lowering the stakes for activism — if it’s free-to-play you can take less risk and you can actually build a community that will make money for the organizations that you want to support. So I thought it was a unique way to use business as usual to try to create a better future and generate a community around it as well.
And to kind of give people...you know…we all go on Twitter, we all go on Facebook, we all know we're adding to this great massive hole but it's destroying the world, putting people at each other's throats, yelling at each other, I'm hitting the heart button for things that I don't like at all but I just want to support them…it's all a big mess emotionally. And I know it sounds weird but the free-to-play aspect gives an opportunity to try to connect as many people as possible to the idea of connecting as a greater whole and fighting for change.
RIFT: And how can people play this sort of game?
AM: This game is going to be a downloadable. We'll have a phased rollout so it's gonna be a closed alpha at first while we build up the main features and content in a closed beta. So we're trying to form a small community of people to help inform the development as well as test it, and then we’ll be in an early access mode where it will be publicly available to play. We're gonna launch on web browsers as well as a desktop Windows, Mac, and Linux in early access. After that, fingers crossed, we would then aim for consoles and things like that. But the initial release will be on browsers and desktop Windows, Mac, and Linux.
RIFT: You said that you’ve been building this project for a while — tell us about the evolution of the project, who's the team behind it, and how did you decide to partner with the Sunrise Movement?
AM: So for a long time it was just me. Starting in November 2018, actually right on election night, I thought that the blue wave of 2018 was a little bit disappointing so that's kind of where I concocted the idea. And for about a year and a half I was more or less alone. I worked with some artists that I was freelancing to generate the art. I work with a great artist, Fred, right now who’s putting together everything. But I think it was during the George Floyd protests where I realized that COVID-19 help was probably not coming, in a way that was really damning for whatever can happen for climate change. So my initial hope was to try to make the game fully by myself slowly while I'm working — and this is in the top of 2020 where the world is a bit more sane — and I realized that maybe it's better to just try to take a swing at crowdfunding and working with people earlier. So I reached out to Adriel Hampton in July I believe of this year, and he reached out to almost everyone he knows and asked if they wanted to support the idea. And I really, I couldn’t appreciate Adriel more for putting his reputation on the line and doing that. And since then we've built a great team; we added Natty Strange, Brandyn Buchanan, and Kennedy Cooper. Now we’re kinda slowly rolling out a marketing team so I can focus on making this game and they can focus on marketing it for a crowdfunding effort, which will be starting, well we're starting now actually — you can go to www.playthepromisedland.com and support the project if you wish.
That's where we're at now. But with regards to organizations, we've reached out to a few, we’ve had discussions with a few, but none were quicker or more enthusiastic to react than the Sunrise Movement. Being a person whose been in corporate organizations as well as having some knowledge of political organizations, I couldn’t be impressed more with the speed and involvement that they've had with us. We’re really excited to launch with them as our initial partner. As far as the how, Adriel asked Vic Viana to join the board and he knew Will, one of the founding members of Sunrise. So we did have a bit of an in as far as how we got there. But I really couldn't speak highly enough about Sunrise and the way they act as just an organization. I know they’re a youth organization, but again as someone whose been in organizations with adults in the corporate world and stuff like that, like you wouldn't still see the same amount of efficiency, so they’re very dedicated and we're really excited to see if this can work out for them.
RIFT: Yeah that's so awesome to hear. Why are there not already games like this out there and what have the challenges been in building it?
AM: Man, there are actually a lot of ways to go about that answer. The gaming industry is like many others going through the stages of late stage capitalism and all of the consolidation that that implies. ‘Why aren't they making like a multiplayer farming game that is based on a very successful property?’ My biggest answer there would be that even though I'm looking at making something that could top out around nine figures, that's not enough for a lot of these Triple-A game studios. A lot of money is being sucked into efforts that could be 10 figure efforts, which are properties in the billions of dollars, which are great. But the same thing's happening in the movie industry, in the publishing industry, the journalism industry — which I’m sure you know. There's a huge gap in the middle. There's all sorts of institutional money going towards a few people that you know up at the top; in the efforts at the bottom, scrappy things. I’m sure you know all about that. And there's a huge gap of financing in the middle for projects like this, with complete disregard to politics.
So, ‘Why are there not already games like this out there?’ You know, I'll give the reason like everyone else: capitalism. But in terms of the 60 percent thing, well that’s probably the same answer. ‘Why aren’t there games out there like this?’ Well, the companies need to support shareholders more so than the gaming industry they’re in, the culture that it represents, and of course not the workers that make the games. Nothing out there speaks more to that than the release of Cyber Punk 2077. I'm not even gonna get into that. But basically, and this is something I know very well from tech, once you engage in accepting investment to make something, that in exchange gives up ownership to an investor group that isn't playing any part in making it, you're gonna have to make compromises on the project — be that financial or message wise. So, ‘Why aren't there games like this out there?’ Way too many reasons. And I do hope that the risk that we're taking will pan out to change that. So we're taking 40 percent of the dollar, right? We're going to make this game, obviously, but we really hope to scale this such that we can make other games like this and like others.
And ‘What have the challenges been building it?’ That was your other question. Money! But I had free time and I had money to use, and it’s because I’ve been in tech for about 10 years. So that's what really gave me a bit of freedom to work on this in my free time as well as carve out time outside of that. But it's still not enough for a multiplayer game, ironically, and we're still trying to finance it, and we'll see how that goes. Otherwise, challenges? For people within the gaming industry, people who have their stakes or career in the gaming industry (which I do not), it's hard to be political. It's hard to say things that you want to say and still get the job, because you're gonna get the job for being on a production line where you do exactly what the other people tell you to do.
Also I would say challenges have been just determining whether this could be something that could be supported within or by the gaming industry. And I've kind of arrived at the conclusion that it has to happen outside of the gaming industry for it to have any kind of effect, simply because it's so mired in the financing system which is gonna make sure the people making the games are always in debt, always overworked, always burnt out. And whether or not it's on purpose or whether or not it’s maliciousness is beside the point. It's just the answer to the question ‘Why are there not games like this out there?’ I've given you about 3 or 4 paragraphs on why I guess, but they're all my opinions.
RIFT: What are the next steps for the project? What needs to be accomplished in order to launch the game successfully?
AM: Right on. The biggest thing is funding, so we’re engaging in a crowdfunding effort. We’re going to be marketing as hard as we can. We are selling seats to the initial alpha, so you can be a part of the development starting hopefully in a few weeks, near the end of this year. We'll have a basic set of farming for you, crafting items, and I'm trying to get a little bit of a fishing mini-game in there as well. So we’re gunning for about 5 to 10 hours of initial content to test and play with us. After we raise some money and we can build an alpha there will be a beta. You can also buy tickets for the beta; it'll be closed and there will be more content. This will be a finalization step towards getting to an early access state which will be public. And we say early access just because we will still continually be building the game after that.
And for those familiar with gaming, one thing that I'm looking at a lot is RuneScape — to slowly, slowly build out to a RuneScape-like game where it's not just farming, it's not just finishing, it’s not just tending to animals; it's all sorts of things where you can live a life in this game. So we really want to build it out and keep building it out in terms of features as well as content. We don't want to just have one place for you to visit and have a farm, we want to have multiple different environments to visit and have a farm, and see how wacky and crazy we can get. So a lot of steps. That's kind of like a very long road map. But just brass tacks realism…what needs to be accomplished is, well, we need to raise money, such that I can work without having to work in tech but also, more importantly, such that we can get more art from Fred and other artists and ideally (and this is approaching more realistic 6 figure kind of fundraising sums) hire writers, game designers, and of course other programmers to make this product really happen. But we'll take it as it comes. I've obviously been able to take it to a part where I feel like there's a stable multiplayer experience that can scale, and if we can just get a little bit of money we’ll just keep adding to it as we can. So next steps are about as hard as this mountain is gonna be to climb, but hopefully we'll get some support along the way.
RIFT: This method of fundraising seems so crucial these days and I am thankful and excited you're working on this. Before we end is there anything else you'd like folks to know about the game?
AM: You know I’d like to just react to what you just said — the method of fundraising. One of my private hopes is that other people try to take shots on crowdfunding, but while you're giving away maybe the majority, maybe not like we are, to other organizations as a matter of your crowdfunding. I think it can be an interesting way to just approach crowdfunding in general, but we'll see.
Right now if you want to get involved, you can go to playthepromisedland.com. There will be a link to the shop right there, and you can go ahead and buy tickets to the closed alpha. It's a bit expensive, it's around 200 bucks. Or you can wait until the game comes out and just get some extra goodies by giving us 5 bucks now. If you’ve got a lot of money, we have ways that you can be a nonplayer character in the game. It would cost I believe about $5000, so it's not cheap. And then there's some other neat things on the page as well. So if you want to support the game right now, the best way — unfortunately or fortunately — is money. Otherwise just sharing it, tweeting it, all that really helps. And if not, just good vibes, just wishing us well would also help. But I would really encourage people if you have $5 to throw us, go head to playthepromisedland.com. And making that purchase and seeing what it feels like after you’ve swiped the credit card knowing that 40 percent is going to this weirdo game but 60 percent is going to some real work being done by Sunrise. And I would love to hear back if that gives anybody a good feeling. But that's how you can help now.
RIFT: Well thank you so much for speaking with us today and good luck.
AM: Thanks so much Kelly. I really appreciate it.