World Without Oil is a 'serious alternate reality game', which was imagined and chronicled online in 1500 stories from participants around the world.
Ordinary people were approached to tell 'their' story of the 'world oil crisis' that was occuring within the game.
In an ARG you play as yourself, in any medium in which you want to communicate - blog, email, video, phone, comics, etc. As players imagined how they would need to deal with their lives in an oil crisis, they recorded and submitted their 'experience'.
Some players actually made changes in their everyday lives - how they sourced food, how they got to work, etc. This is such a great example of how playing a game can have a positive and educational outcome, something that I am a part of with my work at Straylight Studios.
Today my attention was directed to the latest global ARG from Jane McGonigal (see also:I Love Bees and World Without Oil) - The Lost Ring. The story revolves around the mystery of an ancient olympic sport 'banned' from the games for reasons yet unknown, and the discovery of a handful of athletes with no memory and only a few clues to guide them.
The global community must help to uncover the artifacts and piece together the puzzle, contributing ideas and testing theories to gain the knowledge required to make sense of the game.
I am only part way through the story so far as it kicked off at the start of March, but the game is well worth a look.
I have just finished reading the story of boo.com, as told by founder and former CEO Ernst Malmsten. It left me with a sense of amazement at the sheer scale of every facet within the operation, from the insane monthly burn rate for a start up, down to the choice of suit for photo ops.
As part of the same industry (not fashion, but online development), I found it a great read (despite the sense of dread from start to finish) and the lessons are so simple. Much has been written on what went wrong and where it went wrong for boo.com, but I found this page picked my spirits up with the 100 dumbest moments in e-business history.
Entertaining. And easily as far as i care to delve into religious discussions.
