Game Design Aims to End Hunger
Game Design Goes Humanitarian
Food Force is the brainchild of the United Nation's World Food Program (WFP), which last year fed more than 100 million people. Seeking to capitalize on the popularity of video games, the game was specifically designed to educate youngsters about hunger and the work of the aid agency."The game itself is somewhere between a game like Tomb Raider and a lecture from the WFP," explained the game's designer, Mike Harrison, to the BBC.
A Nonviolent Game Design Career
"[Food Force] starts with a short movie that explains a crisis in an imaginary country due to drought and civil war, two of the main reasons for people being hungry in the world," said Harrison.In the game, players must complete a series of missions, guided by a team of WFP characters. The missions range from air-dropping food parcels to a Sims City type scenario where players use food aid to rebuild the country's economy. At the end of each mission, players are shown a short video explaining how the aid agency would have dealt with the given situation.
An Unlikely Game Design
According to Voice of America, the original idea for the game came from a young WFP aid worker, who has since died in a plane crash in Bosnia."The idea was really to get kids of the next generation involved in the issue of world hunger, and the whole idea was how to get them engaged in a way that is fun and interesting, and not too depressing," said Jennifer Parmalee, a Washington-based spokesperson for the WFP. "Because, of course, when you look at the broader issue of global hunger, it is indeed very grim, so this was how the idea was hatched."
One Million Food Force Downloads
Since the WFP launched the video game at a book fair in Bologna, Italy, in April 2005, the online game has been downloaded more than a million times by children in 40 countries across the globe. Many educational Web sites have also linked to the game.It is currently available only in English, but translations in other languages will be available soon.
Sources
BBCVoice of America
Food Force
