Lara Croft carries a rice bag
07:51, 1 January 2006
.. Posted in Development, Relief and Advocacy Efforts.. Link
In April 2005, the United Nations World Food Program introduced a computer video game, Food Force, that it hoped would teach children something about global hunger, and would demonstrate that concrete steps can help and that working on hunger is exciting and cool. Soon after its initial quiet launch, Food Force had so many hits that the Web site kept crashing. It is the second most downloaded free Internet game, after the Army's recruiting tool, America's Army. More than three million people have downloaded it so far (for both Macs and Windows) - and it is now being translated into languages other than English and Japanese. Food Force, which cost the World Food Program $350,000 to develop (America's Army cost the Army $7 million) is a natural for an agency filled with real Lara Crofts - doing airdrops, confronting doped-up 13-year-old guerrillas, driving convoys through terrain filled with land mines.
No one shoots anyone in Food Force. Rebels are negotiated with, not blown away, and the women are sensibly dressed aid professionals. The game is this: the fictional Indian Ocean island of Sheylan has been ravaged by drought and civil war; millions of people need food. The player joins a World Food Program team and must airdrop food from a C-130 Hercules; pilot a surveillance chopper; navigate a supply truck through land mines and guerrilla checkpoints; coordinate shipping and prices for rice, beans and oil on the world market; design a nutritionally balanced food package for the hungry; and use food to help rebuild a community.
