World WithOut Oil ~ a cultural phenomenon

World Without Oil (WWO) is a Alternate Reality Game (ARG). The game is fully intended to play deeply into our real lives.
Jane McGonigal is on the team. Jane is a developer of alternative reality games with a track record of designing games that help distil inspired solutions from the players.

Ken Eklund is the creative director and producer of the game. "We are saying there is an oil shock. It is an alternate reality that is not so far from where we are now." World Without Oil went Live on Sunday April 30th “as $4 pump price looms….” That was supposed to be a concocted headline for the Game launch but the San Jose Mercury News came out with essentially the same headline on April 29 for real.

Ken cites the book, The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. People playing start to connect with like-minded others, find their ideas are a match, work better with this other piece they hadn't thought of before. Players come up with their own creative solutions on how to live without oil and there's nothing to stop them applying that in their lives. As Jane says, "There is something amazing about huge numbers of people banding together. It's like a human supercomputer."

World Without Oil website got half million hits the day the game launched, with the number of players and postings in the first week far exceeding projections for the entire game. Besides the blurring of real and imagined caused by the price leap at the pump, the game has touched a nerve and activated a groundswell of engaged netizens cum citizens.

The window of opportunity for engaging with WWO is a mere 32 days - April 30 - June 1st: each day represents a week in real time. Show up. Be a character. Play for real and play the future before you live it.