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IBM’s CityOne and Aspiring Towards Worldchanging Games

Posted by Hsing Wei on 05-11-10

A recent Forbes article notices movement over the past decade towards “games that can change the world.”  The idea that games can do much more beyond addict and amuse (rise to a purpose beyond entertainment) has been circulated, embraced, and acted on.  Forbes highlights examples ranging from MiniMonos to Armchair Revolutionary and the White House’s “Apps for Healthy Kid” competition.  We now have a growing pool of pioneers to reflect on how to effectively apply game mechanics to spur educational, environmental, and social change. 

The potential to enable a more multi-dimensional depiction of a problem, a dive deep into the factors, and engaging experience through a game done right has had some repeated practice.  At Impact 2010, IBM introduced a new serious game called CityOne.  IBM’s previous serious game, Innov 8 BPM, put IT and business professionals in virtual business unit to understand different perspectives and test their hand at business process scenarios such as evaluating traffic patterns, supply chains, or call center design.  Their newest game in the series is designed to help players discover how to make their cities and industries grow smarter in comprehensive ways. Today’s cities consume an estimated 75 percent of the world’s energy and emit more than 80 percent of greenhouse gases.  City infrastructures that deliver vital services such as transportation, energy and water, must adopt new information and technologies to meet the needs of their growing populations.  According to Phaedra Boinodiris, senior game program director at IBM, CityOne is inspired by games such as SimCity and Civilization Revolution.  If SimCity introduced laymen to the world of urban planning, then CityOne looks to take that introduction to the next level and challenge people on how to better cope with complex modern problems.  Rather than building cities, players are asked to test the value of potential solutions and efficiently manage a city using business process management methods. For example, one mission involves a city where water usage has increased at twice the rate of population growth and supplies are becoming strained, costly, and polluted.  Players must institute a water management system that draws upon accurate real time data to make decisions on delivering a solution to the water issue.

Short CityOne video promo

CityOne is just one of several recent games designed to teach players new skills and solve real-world problems.  Previously highlighted ARG Evoke similarly incorporates real world data and information to help players collaboratively discover, weigh, and brainstorm potential solutions.  Says Evoke creator Jane McGonigal, “...in game environments we have these really sophisticated ways of working with other people and figuring out what each others’ strengths are, putting together a team where everybody has something important to contribute, coordinating globally in a virtual environment. The idea is to make games that take those sophisticated ways of collaborating and apply those to real-world problems.. .games give us that sense of blissful productivity…. Neurochemically we’re kind of fired up … to take on challenges…. Games take us immediately out of a state of paralysis or alienation or depression and they switch on the positive ways of thinking. They trigger the brain to a state in which it’s possible to do good work. It’s possible to aspire to tough goals.”

More via Gizmodo, Popsci, IBM Press room, Wired

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