Games with a conscience: Darfur is Dying

Further to my post about Libraries needing to create computer games to stay current and woo visitors, comes this new game, “Darfur is Dying”. Produced by five students at the University of Southern California, is an online role-playing game that tries to show what it’s like to be a Darfurian refugee struggling to survive while escaping Janjaweed militias.

Already it is being translated into Chinese, Arabic, and Spanish. Presented at the fourth annual Games for Change conference at the New School in New York City, it has struck a chord with socially aware new gamers.

When I was teaching CD-ROM interactivity over ten years ago, many of my students were interested in such an idea. Why, my students were asking, weren’t there interesting games for young adults that were more than scoring points through killing, etc. The time wasn’t right, back then. Is it now?