Persuasive Design of a Mobile Energy Conservation Game with Direct Feedback and Social Cues

The paper presents Power Explorer, a mobile pervasive game designed to promote energy conservation in the home by letting players learn about electricity-consuming appliances and develop more positive attitudes toward saving energy. Its central argument is that pervasive games, which extend play into real-world environments, are well suited to persuasion and learning because they embed households in real tasks and provide immediate feedback on actual behaviors. The authors position this approach against conventional educational games, which often rely on simulated tasks that may not transfer to real life, or on explicit tips and information that players may filter out as nagging.

The game uses clip-on magnetic field sensors on incoming electrical cables to measure household consumption in real time, relaying compressed results to a game server and then to players' mobile phones over a cellular network. Gameplay centers on a "monster pile" ranking, where player positions reflect recent consumption reductions, a single-player garden view in which switching devices on or off produces weeds or flowers, and two duel modes, one requiring players to manage continuous consumption and the other rewarding brief bursts of high-consumption appliance use. The authors argue that this design is informationally shallow, containing no in-game tips, debriefing, or overt educational content, and instead relies on real-time behavioral cues and social comparison with peers, with reflection expected to occur in family discussion outside the game.

The paper's evidence is limited. It reports that Power Explorer was field tested in 2008 but that results were still under analysis at publication, and it cites earlier work with a similar game showing considerable family involvement. Its conclusions, including the hypothesis that educational pervasive games can omit traditional debriefing if social expansion fulfills that function, are presented as proposals for further testing rather than established findings.