Plan It Green

Plan It Green is a video game in which you are the mayor of your town, Greenville. This game reminded me a lot of Sim Town, just a lot more green oriented. As mayor you have promised to make your hometown a more environmentally friendly place. You do things such as make green upgrades, bring clean industries to the town and just generally improve as many green aspects as you can.  The main focuses of the game seem to be Green building, Recycling, and Energy conservation. There are several ways to upgrade existing homes such as Eco friendly painting, Eco gardens, Solar panels, Rain water collectors, etc. As you create your new green metropolis, you increase your ‘green index’ aka Greendex as you increase your sustainability. You ‘win’ this game by taking your city from a polluted, non eco-friendly place, to a sustainable, thriving metropolis with green jobs and industries as well as keeping sustainable practices in place.

Although the game is fun, it is unrealistic as far as real “Green” education goes.  It does however offer a chance to build eco-businesses like organic coffee shops and bike shops.  Although it does not give advice on how to live green, it does raise awareness for the issue.  It reminds me a lot of a popular facebook game such as Farmville or Café World. The game itself is almost addictive and for me the hour long demo went fast. I enjoyed playing it and it reminded me a lot of the Sims from when I was little.  It is easy to play and understand and the gameplay is extremely fast.  It is a great game that is really fun and does help bring more media to green issues, even if they are on a grand scale of being a mayor of a city!

The game Plan It Green is created by National Geographic, an informational company whose mission is to inspire people about our planet. National Geographic is most famous for their television specials and monthly magazines which advocate the public on the beauty of our planet. “NatGeo”, as the company is usually abbreviated, teamed up with the popular distributer of cartoon games “Big Fish Games” to create the first casual Green building game. There is a free trial of the game available online, and the full version is also available for $6.99. This simulation Green building game seems appropriately priced for its audience which features a large range of ages, probably from early teens to mid twenties. While the game is a cartoon, and the icons as well as directions seem designed for younger ages, I still found myself enjoying this game very much. The reviews that were posted online were those by adult individuals between 25-40 who began playing the game out of interest in the green movement and found it educational.  The specific concentrations of the game are Green building, Recycling, and Energy consumption—the three most common and accessible features of the Green movement. Even though our group considered ourselves familiar with these features of the Green movement it was very interesting to see them implemented into the larger scale of an entire district. The game allows players to realize that Green upgrades to homes and parks really can increase overall “happiness” in a city.