Learning geothermal energy basics with the serious game HotPipe

Burning fossil fuels is a big part of our heat production. Sincethis process is both non-renewable and polluting, finding other optionsis important. A clean and underutilized alternative is geothermal energy.However, it is often not considered due to sheer ignorance or misconcep-tions. HotPipe is a serious game designed to alleviate these problems,particularly among youth populations. Players control a drill to creategeothermal wells solving a variety of puzzles, which introduce relevantcases for geothermal heating and show what geothermal wells are madeof. The game focuses primarily on conveying the concepts ofwater circu-lation,relation between temperature and depth, androck type proprieties.From our game evaluation, players revealed a solid improvement on theirgeothermal energy knowledge.

@InProceedings { MADJJSBB19,
  author       = "Mac an Bhaird, Liam and Al Owayyed, Mohammed and Driel, Ronald van and Jiang, Huinan and Johannessen, Runar A.
                  and Salamon, Nestor Z. and Balint, J. Timothy and Bidarra, Rafael",
  title        = "Learning geothermal energy basics with the serious game HotPipe",
  booktitle    = "Games and Learning Alliance",
  series       = "LNCS",
  volume       = "11899",
  pages        = "312 -- 321",
  year         = "2019",
  publisher    = "Springer International Publishing",
  note         = "8th International Conference GALA 2019, Athens, Greece, November 27-29, 2019",
  url          = "http://graphics.tudelft.nl/Publications-new/2019/MADJJSBB19"
}