Energyville: new educational online game about impact of energy on security in your virtual city
July 29 2008 | 1 comment(s)
Chevron and the Economist Group created an educational online game, called Energyville in which users design the energy infrastructure to meet the demand of their own virtual city. Throughout the game, users can
learn about the advantages and disadvantages of each of the different
energy sources in order to make the best decision for their virtual city from today until 2030.
Responses to the game are divided. As Coralie-Franiatte from Culture-Buzz wrote: "At first glance, this seems like a nice initiative on the part of the
oil giant. That being said, isn't it also a bit hypocritical of Chevron
to want to inform the public about ecology when it is part of the
immensely polluting oil industry?"
Or as Spike of Consumertrap commented: "The extra scary part of this little propaganda "game" is that the green
activist-intelligentsia seems to be naively gobbliing the candy and
bounding right into the witch's house."
To give this game some credit, teaching people about the pros- and cons of each energy source is surely a good thing and from my experience with this game, it actually rewarded using renewable energy sources.
The only decisions in this (relatively boring) game are related to different energy sources that you can supply your city with. You can choose between coal, nuclear, solar, wind, biomass, natural gas, etc, which have impact on three scores:
- Econonmic Impact
- Environmental Impact
- Security Impact (see panel below)
The security score is negatively impacted by lack of diversification, reliance on imports from unstable parts of the world, facilities/infrastructure that is difficult to defend, and risky technologies.
I played the game today and made a dissappointing # 25,744th place in this competition - with a score of 671,013,543. Anyone has a better score? Tell us how you did it and what your "security" score was.
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Comments
July 29 2008 12:40PM by simon
related to this, also check out this story about a claim of a endlessly renewable energy source:
"An entrepreneur with $60 million in venture funding says he's found an endless source of cheap energy. Trouble is, it violates the laws of quantum physics."
http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/01/smallbusiness/blacklight.fsb/index.htm#more
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