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Crisis in Darfur, the online edition |
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Written by asap
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Monday, 05 June 2006 |
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 You are running across the Sudanese desert in search of water. The low rumble of a car motor -- the sound of death -- is at your heels, and a blue pickup truck loaded with machine guns appears out of nowhere. Then the scene fades out.
“You have been captured by the militia,” your computer screen tells you.
You have just played out the story of 12-year-old Abok, a computer-animated refugee featured in “Darfur is Dying,” an online video game that provides an eerie simulation of life in that war-torn region.
Now Abok is dead, just like more than 250,000 Darfurian refugees who have been slaughtered by Janjaweed militiamen since the genocide began in 2003.
“If they don’t accomplish getting water, he or she has perished, faded out,” explained Susana Ruiz, 33, a University of Southern California graduate student who helped design the game. “You cannot choose that character again.”
Since the game’s debut in April, more than 400,000 people have played, including a handful of celebrities -- rapper Kanye West and speed skating gold medalist Joey Cheek among them. The game won first place in the Darfur Digital Activist Competition last October, a contest launched by MTVu, MTV’s 24-hour college network, to connect young Americans to the people suffering in Darfur.
“It’s not surprising that perhaps (Darfur) isn’t the most accessible topic for young people,” Ruiz said. “It’s stuff that wouldn’t make sense to you, like, who’s fighting who? It’s messy and complicated and very hard to feel.”
By translating the conflict into a digital medium, a “language that college students speak,” according to MTVu, the network hoped to reach the typical student who might not pay close attention to current events.
“I’ve said it before: College students are truly the engine for social change,” MTVu General Manager Stephen Friedman said. “I have not seen anything like this since the anti-apartheid movement of the early 1990s.”
The game can be passed from friend to friend via e-mail, helping spread the message about what’s going on in Darfur. And while playing the game, agitated gamers can send a letter to the president or a local legislator urging them to take action -- a move that automatically improves the “health” of the player’s virtual camp, increasing his or her chance of survival.
The creators hope the letters, combined with growing pressure from the general public, may lead more companies and investors to withdraw from business opportunities in northern Sudan.
“Now you’ve got them angry, ready for action, because things don’t have to be this way,” Ruiz said.
To ensure that the game paralleled real life as closely as possible, MTVu consulted experts like Gerald Martone, humanitarian director of the International Rescue Committee, who has visited Darfur several times.
“It’s actually quite good,” Martone said. “It’s quite stark how the game drives that point home: the number of people who die. The game did not color the reality of the harshness of what’s going on over there.”
Martone was also impressed with the creators’ willingness to adapt to his suggestions. When he expressed displeasure with initial drawings of listless, melancholy Darfurians, they studied photos from his visits and modified the sketches accordingly. The cast of characters available to each player is aged 10 to 30 years old, demonstrating the indiscriminate nature of the Janjaweed killings.
“These are a very dignified, gracious people,” Martone said. “They’ve been slaughtered, but they’re not passive or listless.”
This isn’t MTVu’s first foray into Darfur-related activism. The network has aired original documentaries filmed in Sudan and public service announcements on the crisis, and has worked to organize campus movements.
And digital student activism doesn’t stop at the border of the Darfur refugee camps. “Darfur is Dying” is part of a growing “games for change” movement among video game creators who want to use their talents to effect positive social change. A new program that funds student-created broadband video projects, including a game about migrant farm workers and another focused on the current immigration debate in Congress, will be unveiled by MTVu in the fall.
“Any tool, any game, any video, anything that gets one more person involved in opposing the Darfur genocide makes a contribution,” said New York Rep. Steve Israel, who recently hosted an online town forum on Darfur. “And if this game helps a single person raise his or her voice, then 3 million people in refugee camps have at least some hope.”
asap contributor Meghan Barr is a reporter for The Norwalk Hour in Norwalk, Conn.
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