A Video Game For The Environment

Can video games save the planet? Maybe, if they are in the hands of the right high school students.

The Center for New Media at the University of California, Berkeley was just awarded $238,000 for its work on an alternative reality game that stars … the environment. The game, called "Black Cloud", lets teams of high school students use data from real air quality sensors to act the part of real estate developers or environmentalists. The students, who are in high schools in Los Angeles and Cairo, must balance sites for development with sites for conservation.

Berkeley's work was recognized by HASTAC (the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory), in partnership with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. But "Black Cloud" had a lot of competition: Judges sorted through more than 1,000 applications to name seven winning projects, which also included another environmentally themed entry. The Sustainable South Bronx Fab Lab, in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, won $100,000 for a system that lets users turn digital models into real world constructions.

You can learn more about the HASTAC competition here.

Image, credit: Black Cloud development screenshot, The Center for New Media at the University of California, Berkeley