Competition for social status is at the root of much human behavior; depending on the context, status can be measured in many ways, including income, popularity, skill, or indeed virtue. Status competition is central to gaming, and it can be harnessed for the common good. We recently worked with a noted expert on the effects of media, Stanford’s Byron Reeves, to develop a demo for an MMPOG that harnesses gaming principles to promote home energy efficiency, challenging neighbors to compete with one another. The online game shows consumers the financial and environmental impact of energy choices and encourages conservation with competitive status rewards and recognition. This is achieved by linking smart meter-equipped homes to the internet and thus to the game, where decisions to run appliances at off-peak hours or turn down the thermostat, among others, are rewarded in a competitive context. This harnesses the do-gooding - but fun - discipline seen, for example, among Prius drivers, who enthusiastically monitor their real-time mpg readouts like avid gamers. Our demo showed how energy efficiency performance could be competitively measured and managed by an MMPOG at the individual, neighborhood and city level. The concept was presented and well-received in November at the Behavior, Energy and Climate Change Conference in Sacramento. Dr Reeves, who co-founded Stanford’s Media X program, hopes to develop the game in conjunction with utilities and government agencies as a fun, forward-thinking and easily promoted conservation tool.