Gone are the days when computer games involved little more than mowing away descending hordes of pixellated aliens. Now people are beginning to see the potential of games as ways of teaching and learning, not just individually but in groups and, theoretically, as a planet. Hence World Without Oil, an alternate reality game that runs for the next month, with players attempting to imagine plausible solutions to the not-entirely-hypothetical scenario of the world running out of oil yesterday, 30 April 2007. It’s still early days for this sort of project, but I think we can expect to see a lot more of them as time goes by. [Clickable Culture]