'Watch Your Steps' Pervasive Game Aims to Lower Carbon Footprints

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- In the name of raising environmental awareness, enterprising University at Buffalo students are turning their campus into a virtual -- and real -- playground this week as they conduct a final project for their class in "Pervasive Gaming," an emerging game genre in which virtual and real-life play come together.

In partnership with UB Green, the campus environmental stewardship office, the UB students in the Special Topics class (DMS 434/515) in the Department of Media Study developed a game called "Watch Your Steps" in which teams compete to lower their carbon "footprints," that is, the impact they make on the environment. The team with the lowest number of points at the end of the week wins.

The course in the UB College of Arts and Sciences is one of a few college courses being offered in pervasive games, although the field is growing rapidly. It's so new that the class's main text is an unpublished dissertation.

"The idea behind pervasive games is to exploit the technologies -- cell phones, MP3 players, Personal Digital Assistants and Blackberries -- which ubiquitously blend into our lives, but which also take our private lives into the public realm and make a spectacle of them," explains Melissa Berman, a student in the course and a master of fine arts candidate in the Department of Media Study.

Pervasive games are described as "hybrids" that may include performance, treasure hunts, art installations, political activism and advertising.

Consequently, UB's North (Amherst) Campus is being taken over this week by teams of students chasing down gassy bovines, Al Gore look-alikes, obnoxious sport utility vehicle salesmen and lumberjacks chasing trees, all of whom provide an opportunity for participating teams to learn how to lower their impact on global warming.

Participants in "Watch Your Steps" sign up on the Internet and answer a simple survey about their lifestyle and habits. They receive clues through text messages on cell phones, PDAs or other technologies and then fan out across the campus to complete their missions.

"Computer games are what you play with a mouse and a controller," said Josephine R. Anstey, assistant professor of media study, who teaches the course, "but pervasive games play with that barrier between real and fictional. Pervasive games are embedded in the 'real' world while also being tied in with the idea of ubiquitous computing."

Anstey had her students design the game for UB Green so that it included a social purpose, as well as technological and playful themes.

Participants in "Watch Your Steps" will use technologies ranging from text messaging on cell phones to MP3 players to "decode" the clues and complete their missions, whether it's publicly persuading a stranger how to break a carbon-boosting habit or getting a pushy sport utility vehicle salesman to skip his shtick.

These mini-games will take place through Thursday, with the final obstacle challenge taking place at 11 a.m. Saturday at Baird Point on the North Campus, where teams will have to assemble a windmill, test their recyclable-sorting mettle against the clock and participate in a water-conservation version of the age-old egg and spoon game.

"Watch Your Steps" winners will be announced at 2 p.m. Saturday at an awards ceremony in UB's Center for the Arts on the North Campus.

"Watch Your Steps" is being conducted during a semester in which UB is celebrating its longstanding leadership among American colleges and universities in reducing energy consumption through extensive and innovative conservation measures, research and teaching and in promoting alternative energy sources under the theme "A Greener Shade of Blue" http://www.buffalo.edu/greener_ub.