World Without Oil

World Without Oil is an alternate reality game that was free to play online. During its live period (from 30th April 2007 to 1st June 2007) it used the narrative device of an oil crisis to encourage participants to better understand their individual dependencies on energy. Players contributed their own real-sounding stories as blog posts, YouTube videos, voicemails and emails, and those stories combined to weave the main fabric of the game. Themes explored included social innovation, food security, energy sources, personal and community resilience and many other real-world issues. As players told their stories and traded ideas to solve the dilemmas of the crisis, they collaboratively built up social entrepreneurial skills and devised creative solutions to real-world problems. Players' contributions were evaluated and scored, but scoring was deemphasized in favor of collaborative achievement and social recognition. The game was created by Writerguy for Independent Television Service (ITVS) as an interactive public media storytelling project.