Starbucks Coffee and Global Green USA have created Planet Green Game, a game about energy conservation and consumption.

The game is set in a hypothetical town called Evergreen. The player chooses a character and transportation mode (foot, skateboard, bicycle, and three types of automobiles, each with different emissions). A variety of energy-related minigames are scattered throughout the town -- a MPG management driving game at the service station, a click-to-fix energy waste game at home, a build a city park game, a quiz at the school and city hall, and energy-efficient shopping memory game at the building supply store. You can also visit Starbucks (!), where you learn about a promotion to encourage caffeine lovers to bring their own mug in during the month of April.

The game is ambitious and sports high production values, although it both succeeds and fails in its mission. The world itself is a simple isometric grid, and it's really maddening to navigate -- even more than isometric perspective usually is with the keyboard and despite the on-screen directional guide. Aside from that, the minigames vary in their quality. The service station game is quite good -- the player has to manage evenness of acceleration on a test course to manage gas milage. The other games are forgettable. The home energy saving game essentially requires clicking on everything. The quiz games are mortifying solutions to what could have been interesting game design problems. And the home building game is literally a memory card game.

One thing that intrigues me about Planet Green Game is its hybrid status as an educational game and advergame. Social marketing is always marketing, of course, but Global Green USA clearly hopes to capitalize on a cross-promotion with a very well-known retail chain, and likewise Starbucks can't complain about appearing to care about environmental issues (whether they actually do care is irrelevant). The in-edugame product placement fascinates me too. The Starbucks store is one example, but so is the Energy Star logo on the back of the home building minigame memory cards. Despite its apparently earnest mission, Planet Green Game reveals the environment to be just another marketing hook. This is neither a new nor a surprising scenario given the popularity of social marketing, but Planet Green Game makes the educational hook of game-based social+commercial marketing more evident.

The more exploratory aspects of the game are really promising and I wish they were more important in the gameplay. For example, walkers and skateboarders can take the bus, but drivers can't. Taking the bus provides bonus points for saved energy use. I wish that it had been harder to get around by foot or board than by car though... then there would have been more reason to consider public transit. Really, these are the sorts of trade-offs that really affect people and their energy use. Surely we know that the SUV is worse for us and the environment than the bicycle. But how do we actually make using the bicycle viable?

(thanks to Walter)