'3rd World Farmer' teaches of hardships

— -- While most video games are made for entertainment, some are developed with a more serious purpose. 3rd World Farmer was developed by a group of students from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark for the purpose of letting others experience what it is like to be a farmer in a Third World country.

Acting on the belief that players invest in game characters whose fate they control, the developers created a simulation of a farm in Africa owned by a poor family. The initial game design fashioned a scenario that never allowed you to overcome the poverty. Frederik Hermund, one of the designers of the game, explained that they started with that design choice "to stress the need for real life action." But Hermund and his team of designers decided to modify the initial game because they found that "some players were slightly traumatized by a totally unwinnable game, and because we wanted to show some ways out of poverty." The game is playable at www.3rdWorldFarmer.com.

The simulation starts with a husband and wife, two children, $50, and a plot of land with a hut. You play the game by making decisions on a yearly basis that include whether to use your land for crops or livestock, send the children to school, have more children, spend money on medicine, invest in infrastructure (buy a shovel, plow, or tractor) or your community, and more.

While making these decisions sounds complicated, it is not. The decisions are presented in a straightforward manner, and, once they are made, the simulation moves you forward a year and informs you what has happened to the family and its farm as a result of your decisions.

Initially, our kid testers found playing the simulation to be a very bleak experience until they adjusted their thinking about how to play it. My own experience was similar until I played the simulation with Tsheko Mutungu, a Princeton University student from Zambia, who was visiting my family. Mutungu encouraged me let go of my "American ideals" to educate the farm children, explaining that until the farm prospered, I needed them to work on the farm.