Digital media students want to raise your carbon consciousness

“Carbon Chaos” may sound like the name of an alternative rock band, but it’s actually a new iPhone game created by students in the Masters of Digital Media at Vancouver’s Great Northern Way Campus (GNWC). The game was developed jointly by GNWC and TransLink in a bid to raise awareness of the impact of transportation choices on the environment.

The game, which is free on the iTunes store, is an action-puzzle game. Your goal is to put passengers onto buses, cars, or bikes and send them to their destinations to earn points. Bikes carry a single person, cars carry three people and buses take 10 people. Buses and cars give off carbon dioxide gases which block other vehicles from moving until the gases dissipate, so you have to plan your routes carefully and quickly.

The game was inspired by a challenge from adjunct professor David Eaves (who also advises Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson on open data and open government), says the game’s project manager, Luke Johnson. Eaves challenged students to come up with a game with an environmental theme, Johnson says. “We came up with the idea and pitched it to David and then narrowed down the vision from there.” When the game was finished, they donated it to TransLink to assist with distribution (there’s a link to the game from the TransLink website).

Johnson says the team didn’t have the resources to determine if the game actually increased environmental awareness, but otherwise, he’s happy with the results. “As far as the project team was concerned the game met all goals. An inexperienced team of students published an iPhone game in three months to acceptable reviews, and it's extremely satisfying to see the fans keep coming back to the game as they vie for position on the leaderboards. It was a great challenge and we all learned a great deal in the process, and of course we'd love to do it again.”

It’s an enjoyable and moderately challenging game, although the environmental message is somewhat simplistic and the game sometimes seems hastily put together (the plural of bus is sometimes spelled as "busses" and sometimes as "buses" in the game, and one of the “Did You Know” messages reads: “Did you know you can bring you bike on to the Skytrain, bus, Seabus and Westcoast express?”). It also includes links to various TransLink services. Definitely worth checking out if you have an iPhone. Kudos to the students, to TransLink, and to GNWC for developing and releasing a local, relevant videogame.

I’ll be writing more about Great Northern Way Campus and the Digital Media program in a later column. It’s a collaborative effort between the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design and the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Its mandate is to “intersect arts, technology and the environment in a manner that bridges academia with industry, artists with technology, and innovation with development. It is an integrative environment that builds community and celebrates innovation,” according to the GNWC website.

Also in tech news this week:

The media furor about technical issues with the new iPhone 4’s antenna almost obscured the announcement that the phone will be arriving in Canada on July 31. Bell and Rogers will be offering the iPhone 4, so check with them if you’re interested in switching or upgrading.