Third World Farmer game

3rd World Farmer is a free online simulation game. Players make decisions on planting crops & purchasing tools & buildings. Unpredictable events-- drought, fire, disease-- are common. The goals are to survive and to improve the family's material well-being. Both are challenging.

The interface is easy to use & the game itself is fairly engaging.



From the developers' press release:

"3rd World Farmer is a new kind of game. An experiment in the genre of Serious Games, it aims at simulating the real-world mechanisms that cause and sustain poverty in 3rd World countries.

In the game, the player gets to manage an African farm, and is soon confronted with the often difficult choices that poverty and conflict necessitate. We find this kind of experience efficient at making the issues relevant to people, because players tend to invests their hopes in a game character whose fate depends on him. We aim at making the player "experience" the injustices, rather than being told about them, so as to stimulate a deeper and more personal reflection on the topics.

We think the game has the potential to be an eye-opener to people who have become accustomed to the ordinary means of communicating third world desperation. Our aim is to have everybody play the game, reflect, discuss and act on it. The game is well suited to start off discussions about 3rd World issues, so we also encourage teachers to use it in their classes"

Play the game: www.3rdworldfarmer.com

Read more about it at: www.gamesforchange.org/main/gameprof/663