People love to play games.  In a recent TED talk, Jane McGonigal cited an interesting statistic on just how much we like to play games.  She said, as a society, “we invest 3 billion hours weekly playing online games.”  That is a lot of gaming.  It would seem that game designers have pegged the formula for producing addictive games.  However, for as long as there have been addictive games, people have bemoaned the amount of time that others have spent playing them.  The general complaint is that all of these hours spent playing games could be put to more productive use in the real world.  While that debate won’t be decided anytime soon, I think there is an interesting trend happening in eco-friendly products that may finally be bridging the gap.   From real products like the new Puma Smartphone and the Yellow Strom power meter, to proposed initiatives like those found in the Betacup competition, we’re seeing game mechanics being applied to saving the environment.  While this is not necessarily a new idea, the timing of the products, and some of the brands entering the fray, seem to have an outside chance of making a dent in this real world problem.  It is a trend to keep an eye on and one that I think entrepreneurs will be taking advantage of more in the near future.