Gobion Rowlands

Gobion Rowlands is the Chairman and co-founder of Red Redemption Ltd - the very successful Oxford based independent developers of socially positive computer games that brought climate change to the international gaming marketplace. Gobion’s environmental gaming industry expertise has led him to be appointed a “Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts” (FRSA) in 2008, a “Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society” (FRGS) and a "Fellow of the Royal Institution" (FRI) in 2010 and an ‘in demand’ speaker and writer on numerous subjects including serious computer games, social enterprise, climate change and communication. In 2010 he joined the Board of Directors for Games for Change (gamesforchange.org), a non-profit which seeks to harness the extraordinary power of digital games to address the most pressing issues of our day. He also spent a year as an Affiliate Researcher of Sustainability and Communications for the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University and recently lectured at the Skoll School of Social Enterprise and the University of the Creative Arts.

Under Gobion’s guidance Red Redemption has won a number of awards and grants including a UK government Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) "Smart Innovation Award", a UK government Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) "Climate Challenge Award". He was also nominated for a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer award in 2009.

Prior to Red Redemption his career has included senior production and project management roles for Lycos-Bertelsmann as Producer, Gameplay PLC as Senior Producer and Project Manager for Wireplay, and Arena Technik as Senior Producer operating the Wireplay Service. He has consulted on projects for the UK Government e-Envoy’s office, the British Council and the Soros Foundation and the former UK Department of Trade and Industry.

A graduate of the University of Westminster with a BSc in Psychology and currently working on his Masters in Science and Society at the Open University, Gobion is the son of Welsh born music producer, manager and publicist Jonathan Rowlands, and his Swedish model mother, Gunilla. Gobion’s early days were filled with trips back to his mother’s homeland where his grandfather filled his mind with stories of heroic Nordic sagas which fueled his early interests in mythology and creative role playing games.