As part of the European project City-zen, a Serious Game is being developed by UK Partner Clicks and Links that is to be deployed in the city of Grenoble as well as Amsterdam Nieuw-West. The goal is to engage youths in these cities to save energy by raising awareness and changing behaviour through the familiar medium of gaming. Gaming tends to have a bit of a negative reputation, but consider the opportunity of leveraging the following traits for a positive objective, such as saving energy. Games are addictive, fun and engaging which means that they can be great tools for education. After all, “The best way to learn about anything is by doing”.- Richard Branson. Currently, the first playable demo is released as you can watch below. Then, a series of iterations will lead to a game that will leverage real-time energy data from next generation smart metering systems as input so that real world behaviour is reflected in the virtual environment.
