RECENT COMMENTS

ADVERTISERS

Advertise via Culture Pundits





Water Cooler Games

a forum for the uses of videogames in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment



ABOUT
About This Site - RSS Feed

Ian Bogost (editor)
Gonzalo Frasca (editor emeritus)


SPONSORS
Visit Persuasive Games
Visit Powerful Robot


COMMUNITY

Unicef Games for Kids
March 13, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

I just found out about Unicef Games, a small but growing game portal for the well-known advocacy and fundraising organization (thanks to Barry). It seems Unicef has created two games so far, World Heros and Halloween Coin Toss.

Halloween Coin Toss is quite simple and really has nothing to do with advocacy at all. The player tries to toss coins into Unicef-marked boxes posted near local merchants. I suppose the game helps kids understand that such boxes exist so they can encourage their parents to give them a coin to drop in when they see one.

World Heros is a more extensive game, with quite high production value, especially art and sound design. The game allows the player to volunteer on a variety of Unicef relief missions, including immunization, water purification, and nutrition. While the environments change on each mission, the gameplay is the same: the player drives a Unicef truck around to catch iconographic representations of Unicef relief that a Unicef plane airdrops. I think the idea is to give kids an understanding of the kinds of relief efforts Unicef organizes and the various types of relief necessary in each (e.g., bottled water and medical kits for earthquake victims).

All in all, these games aren't terribly sophisticated in their representation or encouragement of advocacy. That said, they do seem to be designed for very young children, and I can imagine that they might be beneficial conversation starters in such a context. If you have kids who occasionally pester you to play Sesame Street games on PBS Kids, World Heros might be a satisfying replacement that could engender some out-of-game discussion.



Comment from Frasca on March 14, 2005

Hey Ian, next time you want to learn about games with an agenda, there is this incredible little website called WCG, which has plenty of interesting stories... including one on Unicef games. :P

http://www.watercoolergames.org/archives/000328.shtml

Hope you had fun at GDC!

El Seņor Frasca, getting ready for that Australia trip

Comment from Ian Bogost on March 14, 2005

Haha, GDC must have turned my brain inside out.


POST A COMMENT

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?



TRACKBACKS

SELF PROMOTION

RECENT ARTICLES
New Journal: The Computer Game Education Review

RIT professor Stephen Jacobs is the editor-in-chief of a new journal, The Computer Game Education Review. Here's the blurb he ...

You Drive Like an Old Man

Insurance company Liberty Mutual has created Driver Seat, which they bill as "the world's first senior driving simulator." The game ...

Games for Change: Documentary Games

A bit late, I suppose, but I wanted to post my notes from the Documentary Games panel at last month's ...

Humana's Games for Health Contest

Humana's games for health division has announced a new contest, Insert Coin for game concepts that meet the broad goal ...

Distraction, Comfort, Sedation

I've known for some time that hospitals have used videogames for some time as experimental tools to help children relax ...

Games for Change 2009: Nicholas Kristof Keynote

Toilet Training for iPhone

Bailout! the Board Game

1066

Guru Meditation for Atari and iPhone


FAVORITES

ALSO VISIT
  Copyright © Ian Bogost & Gonzalo Frasca, unless otherwise noted. Re-printing for commercial purposes by permission only (contact us: ). Re-printing for educational purposes is allowed with proper attribution.