Most environmentalists would be upset if they developed a game to show the dangers of climate change, and then found that most players just wanted to destroy the world. But not Gobion Rowlands.

Climate Challenge, his computer game developed with the BBC and Oxford environmental change experts, received rave reviews on the Internet, with more than one million players.

But he said: “Nine out of ten players, the first time they played it, wanted to cause as much destruction as they could.

“So with our new game, the first thing a player has to do is destroy the world — apocalypse is the first mission."

Fate of the World, the latest game from his Cowley-based company Red Redemption, will be released in August.

"We put you in charge of the earth for 200 years. You can save it or burn it down — it's up to you. It's commercial entertainment first and foremost, but we have input accurate scientific data, so that it represents what is actually likely to happen under different scenarios.

There is the 'most sustainable' mission, where you have to save everyone, and there are others where you have to save your own region, or one species.

"It has a very serious climate change theme, but there is a sense of playfulness and black humour."

The games developers collaborated with Oxford University to input information on climate change, population growth, pandemics and so-called 'geo-engineering' — technical ideas such as mirrors in space to reflect back the sun's rays to cool the earth.

Players have to perform a complicated balancing act, protecting the earth against the pressures of an expanding population which is demanding more food, energy and living space. As well as Apocalypse, where the aim is to raise the earth's temperature to a lethal degree, there is Lifeboat, where only the player is saved, while the rest of the world is abandoned.

Most difficult is Utopia, a perfect society. Now 35, Mr Rowlands has been fascinated by role-play games since he was ten, when he developed his first board game.

He set up Red Redemption in 2000 and moved to Oxford so that his girlfriend Hannah, now his wife, could study physics here.

She then did a master's at the university's environmental change institute, and is the company's science adviser. More advice came from the institute's Dr Myles Allen, who set up climateprediction.net, an Internet site which lets people take part in climate modelling. Despite the success of its BBC partnership, Red Redemption decided to develop Fate of the World independently, after raising almost £1m from business angels.

It has trebled in size over the past 16 months and Mr Rowlands says the collapse of high street games retailers has been good news for small independent games producers. "Most sales are on the Internet now, and we get a much higher percentage."

And he believes Oxfordshire is the idea place to be both a social enterprise and a big commercial player.

"Being in Oxfordshire has been absolutely core to our success,” he said.