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Enercities & New Version of Foodforce 2
Posted by Hsing Wei on 12-17-09Nicely coinciding with the Copenhagen Climate talks, Paladin Studios recently released a public beta version of a serious game hosted on Facebook, Enercities. Funded by the European Commission’s Energy Agency, in the SIM-like game, players negotiate between People, the Planet, and Profits while building an expanding virtual city. Electricity consumption is the current focus of the game, but other energy topics will eventually be included. The game is also playable via a website, but the developers hope that Facebook will help drive a larger community base, as players compare scores and rankings with friends. Notably, social networks are not viewed as the silver bullet in effectively reaching key audiences. The Energy Agency also allocated significant funds for the roll-out of the game that will encourage schools and teachers to embed the game in classrooms.
Along a similar vein, Foodforce2 has had a quiet release of a version 1.0 for OLPC, Windows, and Mac machines. The game aims to impact the issue of world hunger by helping children learn the importance of food nutrition and self sustainable communities. With OLPC’s reach into developing and third-world countries, its beta release sparked 29 thousand from Sugar activities. More about its improved features and UI here.