ElectroCity

Background

Genesis Energy wanted to educate children about energy generation, sustainability and environmental management in New Zealand. The plan was to use an alternative to conventional media in order to involve young people in the type of decisions that will affect their future, and that of New Zealand.

Idea

Rivet created a game inspired by PC classics such as Civilization and Sim City. Players make decisions over land-use and energy, and those decisions determine the fate of their community over 150 ‘turns’. Players start with a pristine New Zealand landscape of rivers, mountains and bush. Then it’s a case of deciding what they want to do with it. They can create a clean and green tourist town or a monstrous metropolis with millions of citizens. Every action in the game carries consequences in several areas. Raising taxes brings in more money but lowers residents' overall happiness. Harvesting coal or gas is expensive and causes pollution, but opting to go with all wind power is inefficient and unreliable.

The game was designed for year seven to nine (intermediate) students. It was developed in consultation with school teachers so that they could easily integrate the game into their social studies lessons, and the website contains a host of downloadable fact sheets for teachers to use in their classes. The game was hyped with a teacher’s pre-registration site which counted down to the launch and built a database of over half of the target teachers in New Zealand. Teachers were then sent a mailpack including instructions, lesson aids and stickers for the students. To play the game, visit www.electrocity.co.nz.

Results

The game went live on 2 May 2007. By mid-July, the site had already received 7.6m page views across more than 900,000 sessions, with each session averaging more than 10 minutes. 5,710 ‘school’ cities had been created and almost 11,000 ‘public’ cities. Around 400 teachers have registered to date. The game has also been picked up by blogs and gaming sites around the world.

Target Audience

Year seven to nine school teachers and students in New Zealand

Size

1,489 schools were emailed before the launch and as at 27 July, 535 DM packs had been sent out

Our Thoughts

Games are beginning to make their way into integrated advertising because, if you get it right, they offer an immersive online experience. The challenge isn’t to produce 30 seconds of content that engages – but 30 minutes. I would definitely like my kids to give the game a go so they can learn that every decision you make has a consequence. Scary!