Everyone WANTS to go green but there’s not much fun or excitement involved in getting to the all-important reward. A new partnership between Japanese electronics manufacturer NEC and BIGLOBE, one of the country’s largest Internet service providers, addresses this very issue by turning going green into a video game!
Basically, people need to know that their efforts to use less energy are getting results. With the new Carbon Diet service (image above), they can. Subscribers install a WIFI-enabled device to their circuit box, which measures and sends electrical consumption data to their home computer and then to an online database.
When users log on to the Carbon Diet website, they can check on their energy consumption on an daily – even hourly – basis. Even cooler, they can see how they stack up compared to other subscribers to the service.
This is where the fun kicks in… since rows of numbers are boring and video games are not, NEC and BIGLOBE have adapted the former to be the latter with their attractive Carbon Ball computer game design!
Watch with glee as your bright blue Dung Beetle avatar rolls up the savings and shrinks your carbon footprint, leaving your lazier, less green neighbor’s avatar behind the 8-ball. Dung ball, actually. When you win, we ALL win! (via Pink Tentacle)
