No need to create an alternate reality in which it's happening." But is that reader changing her lifestyle because of it? Reading articles about the real world doesn't always inspire action the way a challenge, a mission, or an immediate crisis does. The thing is, the oil crisis is already here, or a few months away. Some people have criticized WWO as a waste of time, saying, "I explored a few links and watched a few of the videos, but stopped after a while because the real peakoil blogosphere is actually more interesting. Alternate reality can encourage players to take action in their real lives.
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The newly reopened Liberty Science Center was recently criticized by the New York Times for making everything "personal, urgent, and political." I wonder how the same critic would react to WWO! The more we can accomodate visitors/players who want to engage in any of a number of ways-personal, theoretical, active-the greater the potential involvement and impact. The beauty of WWO's oil shock is the extent to which oil scarcity is already considered an issue that spans the personal, political, financial, and scientific, and WWO, recognizing this, allowed players to engage on the levels most compelling to them. Complex, multi-faceted strategy games are possible, as long as the game design accomodates complex, multi-faceted topics and directions.The game masters led, but did not overshadow-they harnessed and supported player contributions to the extent that some active players were mistaken for fictitious characters. The content was substantive, and arguably constituted a meaningful addition to the body of pre-existing content around the effect of a major oil event worldwide. One way to look at the WWO resources is to consider that a small group of game masters empowered and provided a platform for 1,800 people to generate content for 60,000 consumers (and growing). Good game design can encourage serious visitor participation on specific topics.But the biggest question in my mind is: what lessons can museums (and game designers, and etc.) learn from WWO? I can't wait to see the curriculum guides they release in September to get students playing the game. There are many players whose lives-and everyday lifestyles-were changed by participation in World Without Oil. And while I am someone for whom massive brainstorming around likely world events was not compelling this spring, I recognize that there are many people out there for whom this is an extremely successful form of engagement.
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I've spent several hours perusing the WWO time machine, finding the voices, images, and missions most interesting and applicable to my lifestyle. Now that it's all over, strangely enough, I am. It required much higher engagement than reading news articles on the topic it was a huge growing, twisting network of news, strategy, activism, and personal expression. It is a far cry from the "calculate your carbon footprint" or other casual games about resource usage. I followed the World Without Oil story with great interest, but was frankly overwhelmed when I checked it out early in its release. Overall, about 60,000 interacted with WWO resources during the game, 1,871 of whom actively contributed content. On an early game week, week 14, I counted over 35 player-submitted photos, stories, and missions (actions to try to address the crisis). Yes, much was generated by the game masters, but there are now 143,000 google hits for "world without oil," the majority of which are player-generated blogs, livejournals, photo pages, videos, you name it. The breadth and depth of content is staggering. There are also "threads" on the right column that present a variety of player-created tours of the archives. If you go on the site now, you can access the "WWO time machine" and travel to any of the 32 "weeks" to see the stories at that moment in the crisis. Players used all manners of Web 2.0-blogs, YouTube, Flickr, and more-to share content. Thirty-two "weeks" of events were condensed into the 10-week game, and each week, both in-game characters and real people-players all over the world-documented life in the new reality and swapped stories, solutions, and possibilities for survival.
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World Without Oil ran from April 30 until July 12, during which time the central site provided a running commentary on the reactions-personal, political, financial, ecological-to a fictitio us oil shock. There has been some fascinating coverage recently about the wrap-up of Ken Eklund and Jane McGonigal's ARG World Without Oil, a huge community game in which players roleplayed within a fictitious scenario in which gas prices are at $7 a gallon, market and weather volatility is sky-high, and the state of both the natural and man-made world are in crisis.