Darfur Is Dying versus September 12th: A Toy World

In this post I will compare two Serious Games which are created with flash and are available online. The games are designed to educate the player about the negative sides of warfare. The first, Darfur Is Dying, shows the life of a refugee and the problems they have with the simple act of getting water. The second game, September 12th: A Toy World, is a reaction on the US’s campaign against terrorism. Both of the games can easily be played using your web browser with flash layer.

Darfur Is Dying

Play it here

This browser-based game is created by the mtvU, a division of Viacom’s MTV Networks . It sets out to give the player a view of the life of one of the millions of refugees in the Darfur region of the Sudan. The player begins by selecting a character to forage for water, quickly discovering how age and gender play heavily into the success or failure of such a simple daily tasks and how harsh the consequences can be.

The game offers an opportunity to explore a typical village, discovering all the dangers and deprivations within. The game also gives the player the ability to improve conditions in the village through various actions such as petitioning politicians to pass laws that will benefit Darfur’s refugees. The two parts of the game could have been connected to one another. Getting the water is fairly simple when you get the hang of it, the camp life is much more complicated. I hardly played the camp life because it wasn’t clear to me what I needed to do.

The game displays it’s information is screens of text which are easily skipped and mostly unneeded for the game. From playing the game you learn that a simple thing as getting water is for the refugees something they literally risk their life for. If your player is caught, you cannot use that character again. The choice of character play a big role in the gameplay: an adult will bring back more water than a child, but is also more likely to get caught.

Evaluation

Score 25/36

September 12th: A Toy World

Play it here

The game is response to America’s War on Terror. It puts the player in control of an aiming device that hovers over a town; clicking the mouse fires the weapon, launching a missile towards a “terrorist” target. However, no matter how well you shoot the missile will create collateral damage. The dead civilians are mourned by loved ones, who then become terrorists themselves due to the damage the player has caused. The game cannot be won; the player’s violent actions only make the situation worse. This is a damning commentary on the US’s military campaigns.

The game doesn’t have any text, it tries to deliver its message by showing the results rather than telling the player what the result will be. As this general has a bigger impact and it is much more likely that the player will get the message this way (written text is too easily skipped), the game fails in doing so. It was fun to play for about 5 seconds, after which it became just a repetition. The new terrorist don’t cause you any harm, so it doesn’t matter for the game how much damage you cause. The game did however get the message across that the war against terrorism will just create more terrorists and that we’re caught on a never-ending path of destruction and hate.

Evaluation

Score 3/36

Comparison

The two games which I discussed here are vastly different, both in nature and gameplay. Darfur Is Dying is showing the life of a refugee up close while September 12th: A Toy World gives a much more global overview of the problems war causes. In Darfur Is Dying, being caught while running for water has a serious impact on the game. The impact could have been bigger if you would see a dead body instead of having text saying that you’ve most likely been killed. Darfur Is Dying has clearly been designed better than September 12th: A Toy World. It is more rounded, the topic better integrated and it does a much better job in delivering its message.

Conclusion

Darfur Is Dying is a proper online Serious Game which shows the life of refugees. It might be worth playing the camp life more if it was explained better. September 12th: A Toy World is fun to play for a few seconds and doesn’t get any message across at all. It is just about of destroying buildings. The people in the game are too small to really notice.