Countries
All the roles at First Contact: 2035 are designed to ensure every player will have an awesome day. Regardless of what role you play, whether it’s the leader of a country, a scientist attempting to understand the alien’s biology or a member of the press reporting on the day’s chaos, we expect you’ll have a fantastic time.
You can find an outline of the roles in most country teams below, and a full list of countries and their team sizes at the bottom of the page.
Teams
A Note About Israel & Russia
In every game we run, Melbourne Megagames tries to be highly attuned to player welfare - whether that takes the form of consistently offering an accessible concession ticket, considering disabilities, having a specific facilitator responsible for player welfare on the day, or in all the training we do for our facilitators to ensure that welfare is everyone’s responsibility.
We recognise that the Israel & Palestine geopolitical conflict, the October 7 attack, and the continuing war in Gaza are both historically complex issues and presently deeply sensitive issues. With this in mind, we have recognised that attempting to maintain a “realistic” geopolitical context in First Contact ultimately doesn’t meet the welfare goals we’ve set for ourselves and is likely to be an unfun experience for players and facilitators. After extensively considering multiple options, we have decided to represent a more optimistic future.
What does this mean for the game? First Contact will be set five years after the successful formation of a joint Israeli-Palestinian state, realised through the efforts of domestic, regional and international peacemakers. Israel-Palestine will have a system of cooperative, power-sharing government, not dissimilar to the way Lebanon, New Zealand and some other states guarantee multiple ethnic groups representation. Their objectives will reflect their unique position.
Everyone - from domestic actors, to regional states, to international powers - is invested in the success of this new state. Both other countries’ objectives and our facilitators will be oriented to ensuring that the Israel-Palestine state does not collapse or otherwise degrade to internal conflict, whatever its animus.
What does this mean on the day? Israel-Palestine sits among the complex dynamics of countries like the USA, Russia, China, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye, providing for interesting expressions of soft power and play, whilst still maintaining the integrity of one of the most geopolitically complex, culturally important and geographically critical regions in the world.
Treat Israel-Palestine players as you would any other team. Engage with them on the premise of your and their national briefing. If in doubt, remember that we’ve made this change to represent a more optimistic future.
A note on Russia. While altering Israel was a choice Melbourne Megagames has made after considering many other options, we have chosen to retain Very Large Huge Game’s original alterations to Russia (e.g. a “post-Putin” politics) made in response to the war in Ukraine.
These decisions are not endorsements of a one-state solution or of Russia, but rather, our attempt to foster a game environment that encourages strategic thinking, diplomacy and reflects the complexities of international relations, while also retaining a game experience that is fun for everyone.
