World Without Oil
Ken Eklund Jane McGonigal, Dee Cook, Marie Lamb, and Michelle Senderhauf
World Without Oil simulated the first 32 weeks of a global oil crisis in the form of an online game. A site was created that invited users or 'players' to imagine how a global oil crisis might affect their own life, socially, emotionally and economically. Users were invited to blog, twitter, upload video and audio, or images. They were awarded daily prizes for the most convincing and imaginative posts. The site was created by Ken Eklund and was launched on 30 April 2007, to coincide with the start of the fictional global oil crisis.
Creative Contribution
What was the significant innovation in approach or thinking behind the project/artwork? How can this be recognisably attributed to the involvement of creative practice?
World Without Oil created a new way to engage people with relevant real world issues. Ken Eklund, WWO's creator, took the social immersive gameplay popularized by commercial alternate reality games and made it more accessible, using it to apply collective intelligence and collective imagination to a real world problem: our society's pervasive dependence on petroleum.
"The game crowd-sourced a complex analysis of our interdependencies with petroleum. It is a vivid, realistic portrayal of a present-day oil crisis and its effects on the common person. Along with the collective imagining of the crisis, the game tapped 'collective intelligence' to devise solutions and created a narrative-driven, collaborative space in which players and viewers self-organized peer-peer learning and self-prescribed changes to make their lives more resilient in crisis. " Ken Eklund (written response to survey)
World Without Oil was a novel design that sprang in part from Ken Eklund's wide-ranging experience with both traditional computer game projects and interactive educational initiatives. World Without Oil was a mix of some of the most intriguing concepts emerging in the online space: social networking, user-generated content, Web 2.0 interaction and serious gaming.
Collaboration
What were the disciplinary contributors to the project? What model of research / development was followed? What were factors leading to success / problems?
The World Without Oil team included alternate reality game veterans Jane McGonigal, Dee Cook, Marie Lamb, and Michelle Senderhauf, who contributed a wealth of gamemastering skills and innovative gameplay refinements to the storymaking project.
Values
What were the outcomes of the project? How were these disseminated to outside stakeholders? What models of value are implied by this project? What was the Impact of the work?
"The World Without Oil game proved to be an effective "content propagation" vehicle, gathering over 1500 stories from its players during its one-month run. The archive of these stories, still online at www.worldwithoutoil.org, has been seen by over a quarter of a million people (Dec 2008)." Ken Eklund (written response to this survey)
World Without Oil was chosen as Best Activism Website at SXSW Interactive, was a finalist for a Webby Award as Best Internet Game by the Interactive Academy of Arts and Sciences, and honoured as environment-oriented art at the 01SJ festival and as innovative ICT for the common good by the Stockholm Challenge.
Links and Resources
http://www.worldwithoutoil.org/metavideo.htm
http://worldwithoutoil.org/metabuzz.aspx
