Carbon

Welcome to the future. It isn't good.   Carbon is a multi-user text-based online role-playing game with a strong cassettepunk aesthetic in which players can explore an expansive world that has been shaped by ecological disaster, economic collapse and war.   Set in an alternate timeline first splitting off from our own in 1975, the fiscal crisis in New York City leads to the emergent idea that financial systems can run society, birthing a system in which the banks and corporations control the city, the success of which leads to the New York Model soon spreading to the rest of the United States and beyond. At the same time, shuttle diplomacy between US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Soviet and Middle Eastern leaders in the Arab-Israeli dispute lead to a tenuous peace deal, establishing the State of Palestine, and forging to a world wherein Hafez al-Assad of Syria's goal to create a Federation of Arab Republics is realized. The onset of hypernormalisation in the Soviet Union is lessened through an earlier implementation of glasnost, and the Soviet Union ultimately does not invade Afghanistan. Meanwhile, in India, the Emergency culminates in 1978 with a violent coup, led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and sees both the restoration of democracy and a sharp rise in Hindu nationalism. The effects of these few choices and events ripple out through time, leading to a world in 2058 that is very different from anything we would recognize.   With the discovery and subsequent exploitation of oil and other fossil fuels on Mars in the late 1990s, environmental collapse has only worsened as various factions adapt the fuel for their purposes, destroying the natural environment in the process. The Amazon rainforest has been little but ash for nearly two decades, while the Sahara desert has expanded to swallow one third of the African continent. Eastern Australia is largely uninhabitable due to climate change, while the marginally more inhabitable West is beset by hordes of genetically modified creatures. A pile of refuse the size of Texas drifts in the Atlantic ocean, populated by millions of scavengers and idealistic fishermen, while the South Pole is now largely absent of ice.   As other resources become more scarce, old tensions begin to flare between the North Atlantic Federation and the Soviet Union, while a new global crisis is on the brink of boiling over between the Arab Republics and the geopolitical behemoth which is Greater India. Those living within the ruins of the European Community scrape by for survival on a daily basis, although the newly-thawed pastures of Antarctica exist as a shining beacon to those wishing to escape the slow collapse of global society.   Entrenched in a universe defined by the actions of the few with consequences for the many, players' choices will leave permanent impacts as they progress through the game.