A fellow Renegade just sent me a link to Starbuck’s PlanetGreenGame. I gave it about five minutes of playing time managing after three attempts to successfully balance fuel and speed to complete a test drive, finding 10 out of 12 ways to fix a not so green house, and visiting a Starbucks which asked for my eco-priorities and suggested I bring my own cup the next time I visit a real Starbucks. I also earned two “global solution” credits (of a total of six available) and learned about green architecture solutions in Germany and the Energy and Climate Change Strategy instituted by South Africa. All in all, it was time well spent and if the US Open Finals wasn’t about to air, I suspect it would have received a little more of my attention. (Note: Watching Federer play supersedes any online game however virtuous.)
Not knowing much about the game, I did a little research on it. Turns out, this “advergame” has been out for several months and carefully reviewed in the bloggosphere. Here’s an interesting POV on it from the gamer’s perspective:
Starbucks and Global Green USA bring
us the eco-educational, “Planet Green Game,” a fact-filled, Flash-based,
multi-media experience that sometimes contains some interaction
resembling gameplay. The premise is that you are a citizen of
Evergreen, USA, and you must help make your home, transportation,
and town greener. In most cases, you do this by correctly answering
softball quiz questions, matching identical items, or clicking on
things.
Green focused blogs were quite a bit friendlier. One described it as “great game” that was “fun and educational.” Another went into far great detail despite ultimately acknowledging it as “just another marketing hook”:
One thing that intrigues me about Planet Green Game is its hybrid
status as an educational game and advergame. Social marketing is
always marketing, of course, but Global Green USA clearly hopes to
capitalize on a cross-promotion with a very well-known retail chain,
and likewise Starbucks can’t complain about appearing to care about
environmental issues (whether they actually do care is irrelevant).
The in-edugame product placement fascinates me too. The Starbucks
store is one example, but so is the Energy Star logo on the back of
the home building minigame memory cards.
Starbuck hopes that the greener they get, the more coffee they will sell. And so they should. Thus far traffic to PlanetGreenGame.com has been modest (Alexa ranks it at 645,826 with daily page views in the low thousands). Perhaps if more people take the time to play the Planet Green Game they will indeed be *enlightened* about the need for immediate action of both the big and little variety. Fortunately, this is but one of many genuine efforts by Starbuck’s to be a good corporate citizen, to do well by doing good. In combination, all these efforts makes me feel better about forking over four bucks and change for my Iced Grande Soy Chai Latte twice a week (whether I need it or not!).