Accepted Contribution:

Designing Alternate Reality Games to Restore Our Planet ?  
Amy Cheung (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) Wing Yan Ng

Send message to Contributors

Contribution short abstract:

TimeBank THE GAME is a six-weeks alternate reality game designed to motivate players for environmental actions in the real world - rewarded by an eco-value-accounting system called 'Time-Coin' through which they can buy VERBS to escape crises and evolve in 4 online dystopias.

Contribution long abstract:

The IPCC report (more than 14000+ citations) has presented overwhelming scientific evidence that human-induced climate change is a pressing threat to our wellbeing, the code for humanity has now been declared red. Yet motivation for the civil society and governments across the globe to reduce carbon emissions remain low.

TimeBank THE GAME is a six-weeks alternate reality game designed to motivate players to take action in repairing our environment, in return rewarded by an eco-values accounting system called 'Time-Coin' (1 minute of action equals to 1 coin) offered by various environmental NGOs/partners. Players of our game were required to join a 7 day carbon diet in the real work (first week) and took an oath to marry and protect the planet in a ceremony, through which they committed to give up their human features humbly and surrendered themselves into being a cell, thrown to survive in different climate-induced crises zones in 4 virtual scenarios week by week.

Each week, players had one chance to progressively pass a critical zone of danger- hunger, darkness, intoxicated ocean, burning forest and only by synchronising their environmental repair actions in both real world and right VERBS in virtuality, could they find salvation.

We hope to seek feedback about how to present our work again in between the online game and real life actions? Whether our Time-Coin system is an effective mechanism to motivate change? How can we improve players' gaming experiences between the VERBS, actions in both the real and virtual environments?

Workshop W05b
Work-in-Progress: Games
  Session 1 Friday 10 March, 2023, -