PBS Innovation Showcase

In the global role-playing game World Without Oil, game developers set up a scenario of a world on the brink of catastrophe and invited its community of players to respond online and in person to the events, updating them with new mini-scenarios. And respond they did, with blogs, podcasts, videos, cell-phone messages, photographs, and public meetings, imagining the potential effects of the oil-shock and creatively living out what the possible responses -- both bad and good -- might be. World Without Oil created an extensive archive of material and brought together a community of more than 15,000 players who put hard thought into how life would be in an oil-crisis situation.