Sustainability Game

Here is a sustainability game. I wasn't able to play it through because my connection froze.
From what I saw, the idea of the game is to make choices that create a sustainable lifestyle
for your character. In the upper left hand corner of the screen is a globe graphic image that tells you how many earths you would need to sustain this lifestyle if... (everyone were to live it?).

From a game design perspective I liked having an immediate, tangible metric available to tell
me how I was doing. Good player feedback is critical for engaging games. I also liked the fact that
the player had to create an onscreen player character. The character creation was amusing and easy. It could be skipped entirely in which case the default character would be the onscreen persona.

In comparison to the Chevron Energyville game I played last week this one was far more engaging. First, having the onscreen persona makes the game feel more personal. Psychologist and marketers have shown ad nauseum that faces make a difference to people. Messages that
include a face, drawn or photographed, are generally more effective than those without it.
In cybernations a simple face animation is used to represent the happiness of a nation's people.
It goes from frowning to smiling depending on how well the player is doing. It is surprisingly effective at keeping me attentive to the happiness attribute. Feedback images, in place of numbers, are a powerful tool for providing feedback to the player. Feedback images are their own reward or punishment. Players will work to manipulate the image and thus they are an effective tool for managing play, when used sparingly and appropriately.

I'll make some more comments on the sustainability game when I can get a good connection to it.