Black Cloud Environmental Studies Gaming

• Grant Awarded: $238,000 (Innovation award)
• Principal Investigator: Greg Niemeyer, UC Berkeley Center for New Media, Berkeley, CA 
• Project Collaborators: Antero Garcia, Ilse Ruiz Mercado, Aida Eltorie  

Project Summary

Black Cloud is an environmental studies game that mixes the physical with the virtual to engage high school students in Los Angeles and Cairo Egypt. Teams role-play as either real estate developers or environmentalists using actual air quality sensors hidden through the city to monitor neighborhood pollution. Their goal is to select good sites for either additional development or conservation. Combining scientific data with human experiences, students collaborate, share and analyze their findings, including working cross-culturally between cities.