Village in Crisis - The idea

We care about things that impact our everyday lives. We spend money to alleviate common annoyances and give to charities that directly impact us and those around us, e.g., donating to breast cancer if a family member is a survivor. There is immense suffering in the world and the vast majority happens far from us (citizens of the US). We don’t see child soldiers or the women who are sold into the sex trade or whole villages suffering from dengue fever. Out of sight, out of mind.

The challenge is to bring the suffering to the attention of average Americans. Shoving it in people’s faces doesn’t work, they’ll just avoid it. It has to be made palatable and actionable.

Here is where farmville comes in. The solution is to create a game where players are like mayors/local non-profit leads of a city. They get to see a (watered down) version of what it might be like to live in a developing country including its trials. The job of the player is to keep the citizens happy and healthy.  This is no easy task in these simulated cities as public utilities are either nonexistent or dilapidated. The player must rely on non-profits for help. For a non-profit to help, the user needs to give a micropayment or play a ‘mini-game.’ These mini-games would be things that actually have economic value: watch a trailer, fill out a survey, or solve simple mechanical turk-like tasks. The player wouldn’t have to use micro-payments to succeed in the game, but they would have to ‘make money’ somehow for the city.

Once the city’s citizens are happy and healthy, the mayor moves onto the next city. This would be a collaborative game so several people can be helping the same city. After playing the game for weeks, players can check to see what their game playing has bought for real people: mosquito nets, clean water, goats, etc. This can be tracked by the number of quality adjusted years of life given to real people. That would be the game leaderboard. There would be a nearly 1-to-1 relationship between how a player does in the game and how many adjusted years of life they’ve added.

The game could also expose people to regional conflict and problems. If an issue is happening in reality it could make its way into the game and suggest the user call their congressman or senator.