Professor Byron Reeves of Stanford believes Blizzard can help the environment with it's successful MMO game World of Warcraft. How? By providing motivation to save energy of course. Mixing the data from smart electric meters in peoples homes, he proposed a motivator could be provided similar to the quests we are so very used to. If players went and turned off more lights, it might increase what they received. It's a fascinating concept but would seem hard to implement.

REEVES: So, imagine that you're in your home, you're signed into this game, you have played this game before. You're on a team. You're in an entertainment context. You have a representation of yourself in this game just like you do in all the entertainment games. And you make a decision in a game to turn off the lights in an unused bedroom. As soon as you do that, the smart meter recognizes that, sends the information through the network to your computer, and your house turns a shade of green that it wasn't before. And, if I'm using less electricity, my team might do well, I get goal pieces and points, whatever the game designers think is fun. In other words, you get feedback in an entertainment game about what you're doing in the real world.

Check out the entire interview over at the Living on Earth blog to hear his entire theory. .