Amplitude Studios’s upcoming historical strategy game Humankind is, like its biggest competitor, a variation on the game of “what if?” And since the game seems to be delayed until next year, players have plenty of time to think about those sort of scenarios. Rather than see all that potential brainpower go to waste, Amplitude has decided to harness it in a way only the internet would allow: dank memes.
Starting today, and every Wednesday after for the next ten weeks, Amplitude will be running a meme generation contest. A theme will be chosen on Amplitude’s Humankind Twitter feed and give would-be meme creators a framework to focus their efforts. Participants upload their alternate history meme with #WhatIfHumankind and duke it out with other meme creators. A weekly winner will be chosen for a final showdown with a community voting on the best meme of the entire contest. The grand prize? The entire catalog of Sega PC games. Weekly winners will also being getting prizes, which have not been completely determined, but may include free game keys for other Amplitude games, a slot in upcoming beta tests for Humankind, or other prizes.
Those who are interested can head to the contest page, read through the rules, and start using the meme generator Amplitude has assembled to posit some alternate history scenarios. For this first week, the chosen theme is “language,” always a fun topic for history buffs. The Twitter feed already has quite a few entries already up, but there’s a whole week, and the memes are only going to get weirder.
Humankind will be released sometime in 2021, and the game can be wishlisted (though not yet pre-ordered) on Steam. The OpenDev initiative Amplitude has established for developing/alpha testing Humankind is expected to start later this month, with testers getting brief 96 hour access windows to specific components of the game.
