Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
games (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter, 2009). A serious alternative reality game such
as
World Without Oil
, funded in the US by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
for ITVS, gained considerable media attention and acclaim was the first game of its
type drawing over 60,000 visitors and 1,900 registered in one month in the spring
of 2007. Jane McGonigal (2012) has argued that computer games play an important
role in making life for many people a more emotionally and creatively rich experience.
Around three billion hours are devoted by the world's gamers each week to playing
computer games. For McGonigal, who was largely responsible for creating
World
Without Oil
, they can help people work collectively and collaboratively, maintain
optimism in the face of major global challenges and point to what a better world
might actually look and feel like. Used within an educational context, serious games
such as energy planning/conservation game
Enercities
, can be highly effective in
changing behaviour and values (Knol and De Vries, 2011). Paula Owen (2012) has
shown how gamification has been successfully used to improve the sustainability
performance of companies and cities. In Bangalore, Infosys Technologies has used
gamification techniques to alter the commuting behaviours of their employees, which
has reduced average daily travel to work time by almost twenty minutes, saving up
to 2,600 person hours per day at their main factory. In the US, a start-up software
business has worked with utility companies to foster competition among neighbouring
householders to lower their utility bills. On average, a 2 per cent reduction in energy
costs was achieved by every participating household. Such examples have led Katsaliaki
and Mustafee (2012) to review how the increasing availability of serious games can
become major communication and learning tools supporting sustainable development.
They suggest that the most popular profile for serious sustainable development games
include the following characteristics: they are accessible online, are sandbox simula-
tion games with 3D graphics, are played by an individual, and target a young people
who act as decision-makers solving environmental problems by using alternative
technologies and considering economic consequences. Game-like elements are often
incorporated into interactive exhibits at museums, science parks, galleries, heritage
and other learning centres.
Television for the Environment (TVE '
Inspiring Change'
)
Established in 1984, Television for the Environment (TVE) is an independent non-
profit-making organization contributing to non-formal development education across
the globe. Its core funders and major donors include the European, ITV, the WWF-
UK, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Islamic Relief, Oxfam Novib, IFMR
(Centre for Development Finance), the Engineering company ARUP, the US financial
services company Bloomberg, the Indian new media technology Handygo, Friends
of TVE and the Web design company,
Chapter Eight
.
Specific project funders range
from Astra Zeneca, BBC World News, the European Union, the Open University
and the World Bank. TVE productions ranging from public service announcements
and shorts to half-hour documentaries in the long-running documentary series
Earth
Report
and
Life
.
Hands On
reports are divided into five or six items, providing
broad coverage of serious problems and people's successful attempts to remedy them.
Empowerment, participatory action and efficacy are the dominant motifs. A series
of six 25-minute programmes were produced as part of the
Future Food
series which
explored key questions of global food security using Peru, Kenya, India, Nigeria,
