IBM Announces Free City Management Educational Game

At this week's Impact Conference in Las Vegas, IBM announced CityOne, an upcoming serious game application designed to help players understand the business principles that drive urban growth and development. CityOne is a free strategy game that presents players with a number of scenarios that address problems in the energy, water, banking, and retail industries. Each mission must be approached with high-quality, economical solutions, and the game encourages the implementation of smart growth strategies that employ clean, efficient technology. IBM cites an example scenario in which a city's water usage has increased at twice the rate of population growth. To overcome the city's strained resources and damaged infrastructure, players will "institute a Water Management System that would include accurate real time data to make decisions on delivering the highest water quality in the most economical way." Banking scenarios similarly show the business benefits of mobile payments, dynamic invoice, and micro-lending. Retail and energy industry missions will focus on service reuse and process management. "Serious games allow professionals to inherently comprehend system interactions, and accurately model the potential business outcomes that can result, in a way that no other medium can do," said Nancy Pearson, IBM vice president of SOA, BPM and WebSphere. "CityOne will simulate the challenges faced in a variety of industries so that businesses can explore a variety of solutions and explore the business impact before committing resources." CityOne will launch in the fall of 2010.