McGonigal's new ARG looking for answers to oil crisis
by Bonnie Ruberg 
{ Mar 7th 2007 at 2:00AM }
At her Serious Games keynote this morning, Jane McGonigal, ex-lead designer for alternate reality game big shot 42 Entertainment, announced her new ARG, World Without Oil. McGonigal calls the game -- which lets players share their ideas for better life during an international oil shortage -- a way to shift from alternate reality games to games that alter reality.
The idea behind the ARG is something called Collective Intelligence, the idea that together we can come up with better solutions to problems than we could alone. In citing examples of CI, McGonigal mentioned games like I Love Bees, even science-fiction novels, but for a great example, just think of Wikipedia. Who, all on their own, would ever know the population of Argentina and the gestation period of a Humpback whale?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
steve17 @ Mar 7th 2007 2:16AM
ok. im sorry i know this is completely random. but i have always pondered this.
we are always looking for alternative fuels, and we already have lots. alot of fuels have replaced gasoline but non of them equal the power. the cars dont exactly get up and go. and alot of them have to be really lightwieght and are still slow to accelerate and top out at lower speed.
so my question is: whats going to be our alternative to diesel? gasoline cant power an 18 wheeler so what makes us think hydrogen can? just a thought.
but anyway this game sounds....intersting. alternate realities are always fun.
rokobungi @ Mar 7th 2007 4:12AM
alternative to diesel would be the easiest thing to find
wikipedia under diesel engine it states 'Recently, Biodiesel from coconut which can produce a very promising coco methyl esther (CME) has characteristics which enhances lubricity and combustion giving a regular diesel engine without any modification more power, less particulate matter or black smoke and smoother engine performance.'
(and power-wise almost all vegetable oils can be made into bio-diesel with 95% of the power of regular 'diesel' fuel(because he diesel engine was designed to run on pure vegetable oil to begin with)
I think the whole 'fuel cell' thing is a bunch of BS. it seems like too much of a magic bullet solution to me.. besides where are you going to get all that hydrogen? electrolysis takes a whole lot of energy.
Savok @ Mar 7th 2007 6:07AM
...
Well at least we're well on our to wiping ourselves out, won't have to put up with this for much longer.
Mentioning Wikipedia is appropriate due to the staggering amount of misinformation on there, I expect this ARG will be about as scientific as everything we "know" about global warming.
But hey, it's going to make someone some money (in the case of gerbil wanting, Al Gore) and that's all that matters.
Ru @ Mar 7th 2007 7:19AM
'Peak oil' is a nonsense. Investigative journalist for the BBC (one of the world's most prestigous news outlets) uncovered oil company plans to puport artificial scarcity to raise the prices of their product. That's right, when you say there is less of something, you can charge more for it.
The fraud originated from Dutch Royal Shell. Read up on it, people.
32_Footsteps @ Mar 7th 2007 9:38AM
After playing Perplex City (and currently into the second season of the cards), you can see the effect that the collective intelligence (often nicknamed the Collective Detective by ARG players) can have on a problem. There are quite a few problems where you need backup on various things - from reading guitar tabulature to being able to extrapolate from maps of Pangaea.
However, the Collective Detective has its limits - namely, problems that require extreme amounts of theoretical knowledge. Perplex City found this out when they gave out a puzzle card asking people to prove Riemann's Hypothesis, concerning the Riemann-Zeta Function. This has been stumping professional mathematicians for over a century - a ragtag group of gamers, even in the thousands, is still no match for that problem.
The idea of this ARG is sound. I just wonder whether or not the ultimate goal would fall into the same category as Riemann's.
Dansk @ Mar 7th 2007 10:46AM
Massive investments in sun power energy? (both in volume of cells and it's efficiency)
Problem solved?
roe @ Mar 7th 2007 2:53PM
I worked with arg/argh professors last year from madison and MIT, they are very cool and feed you well. The goals of their games are to teach kids gps skills, geography skills, problem solving skills, critical thinking and working together outside as a team... also using technology (most urban school don't have pdas, but they bring them to you for free!)
The arg/argh projects work like wikis, because you have community effort... so this game hopefully has kids be creative to come up with solutions, but also to be aware of the problem.
Now all we need is an arg simulatin for senior citizens and baby boomers, maybe we'll call it... "reduce your gas bill or we will not give you social security and health care"
Alternative Fuels E85 @ Mar 23rd 2007 4:35AM
Its for real that oil production has declined a bit and the near future
the oil deposits will be exhausted.
There are three options that we could readily do to solve this
dwindling oil supply.
First is to use biofuels like biodiesel and E85 as an
alternative to oil.
Second is to patronize fuel efficient Hybrid Cars. Diesel hybrid is the
best choice.
Third is to hasten the research and development of Fuels cells which is
being used in All Electric
Vehicles.
These 3 measures are sure way to solve and eventually break free from
oil dependence.
plavix generic @ May 6th 2007 7:32PM
This is one of the most saddening pictures I've ever seen, the people behind the Collective Intelligence concept must be real visionaries... and dreamers too. As sad as it is, it's going to take a lot of time before mankind takes a serious step towards protecting the environment.