description World Without Oil Overview
World Without Oil is a 2007 serious game and alternate reality game created by Jane McGonigal and Ken Eklund. It presented a fictional thirty-two-week global oil crisis and invited participants to describe how the shortage affected their own lives through blog posts, emails, videos, photographs, podcasts, and other media. The project used collaborative storytelling to explore possible social responses to energy disruption.
help World Without Oil FAQ
What kind of game was World Without Oil?
World Without Oil was a 2007 alternate reality game and serious game created by Ken Eklund with Jane McGonigal and a wider production team. Players treated a fictional oil shock as if it were happening and documented its effects through blogs, videos, images, emails, and other media.
How long did the World Without Oil simulation last?
The live game ran for 32 real days, from April 30 to June 1, 2007, while the fiction represented the first 32 weeks of an oil crisis. That one-real-day-to-one-fictional-week structure made the scenario progress quickly.
Did World Without Oil have a conventional game engine or downloadable software?
No, the experience was played across websites and participant-created media rather than through a boxed game or conventional downloadable engine. The core mechanic was collaborative storytelling, with player reports becoming part of the shared crisis narrative.
What did players actually do in World Without Oil?
Players imagined how fuel shortages would affect transport, food, work, and family life, then published accounts in formats such as blog posts, photographs, videos, and voicemail. The project used those personal scenarios to explore practical responses to oil dependence.
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