Changing Behavior

"If you want to change the future, play with it first." World Without Oil recently won a webby for best game in 2007. It's a game that is a powerful educational resource and interesting tool for facilitating large scale behavior changes.

I like this idea b/c there's so much truth to the fact that people won't start resolving an issue until they're confronted with a reality. It's a great way to break our habit of procrastination and start solving problems before we're already two feet in the hole.

From a planning perspective this is a great brainstorming tool. It has the potential to facilitate large scale changes in behavior. We are used to media like movies or television. The Inconvenient Truth created healthy discussion, but World Without Oil is more comprehensive. It's a great use of new media because it encourages interactivity and takes engagement with an issue to the next level. Everyone involved has the potential to collaborate and although the results technically exist in an "alternate reality" it is an exercise that produces real solutions.

I think there are at least two important things going on here:

1. When people participate in a game like WWO they become engaged in a community, it increases their level of understanding and they become more willing to change. This is a powerful tool because it enables people to anticipate a problem and change before the problem becomes a reality.

2. Ideas come from ideas. This kind of immersive role playing environment let's people create solutions for a future problem. Creating a frame of mind makes an alternate reality tangible and that is a great stepping off point for resolving an issue before it manifests.