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Serious Games
November 14th, 2007 by Cara FerraroThere is a lot of talk these days about "Serious Games". What are they anyway and how are they different from typical video games? Serious Games is a term used to describe a movement in gaming where games are created and used for education, training, health, and public policy.
Darfur is Dying (http://www.darfurisdying.com/) is probably the most well known game created to raise awareness about a specific topic, in this case the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. A contest entry by MTVU and the Reebok Human Rights Foundation, the game puts the player in Darfur as a villager who must perform real-life tasks like foraging for water without being captured by the Janjaweed. The game ties in actual statistics about the life of people in Darfur and how you can make a difference.
Planet Green Game (http://www.planetgreengame.com), produced by Starbucks in collaboration with GlobalGreen USA, allows a player to pick a mode of transportation and travel through a city, finding ways to decrease the CO2 emissions. In addition to learning more about global warming, the game provides the ability for users to take action and pass along the game to a friend.
Do you know what edict means? At Free Rice (http://www.freerice.com), they’re turning your vocabulary knowledge into rice to end world hunger. The World Food Program’s internet game, Free Rice (http://www.freerice.com/), is simple in its execution and has two primary goals; providing English vocabulary to everyone and helping end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people. For each correct click to a vocabulary question, the website donates money to buy 10 grains of rice. Since its launch in October 2007 it has already raised over 1.7 billion grains of rice to feed the hungry - not bad for a little over a month.
Even main-stream games like SimCity are jumping on the Serious Gaming train by highlighting the impact of electricity generation on carbon dioxide emissions and climate change within the interface of the next release of SimCity Societies.
Serious games take learning to a new level. They target a generation raised on the net who eagerly spread engaging games virally through sites like MySpace and Facebook. The games attempt to teach people about the world in which we live in an interesting and engaging way. Would you rather learn about Global Warming as your cruise a virtual city on your skateboard? Or read page after page of text on a traditional website (with celebrity quotes, of course)? The answer seems almost too easy.
Do you think there is a place for a serious game to raise awareness around your nonprofit’s mission? Have you launched a serious game you are having success with?
