## Description
_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.