Genocide within a computer screen: Darfur is Dying

There are many games that seek to tell stories, stories that often times whisk players away to fantastical lands for glorious adventures. However, there are game designers who seek to place players in reality and communicate stories that ground players. Students at the University of Southern California have created just a game, one that places players within one the worst humanitarian crisis in the modern world. This game is known as “Darfur is Dying”. “Darfur is Dying” centers around the Darfurian genocide in which the Central Sudanese government and militia forces have been accused by humanitarian organizations of ethnic cleansing. These targeted attacks have forced many Darfurians to seek refuge within UN peace camps, but unfortunately due to government pressure in recent times these camps have been stripped of all security forces. “Darfur is Dying” begins by asking players to select 1 of 7 family members. They range from a 10 year old son to a 30 year old father. The selection is important because who every is selected is tasked with venturing out into the desert to collect water. Young girls/boys may travel faster and can hide within most terrain, but are slowed significantly once capturing water. Older members have a harder time hiding, but can carry substantially more water. Once you return with water you are task with caring for the state of your camp, but raids often times put players behind progressing.

One the most striking moments in the game is when you play as girl and are captured by militia forces. A message appears reading “girls are often abused, raped, and murdered by Militia forces.”. This important distinction on gender helps paint the gruesome atrocity clearly for players. As academics Mary Flanagan and Helen Nissenbaum write “because so many people are engaged in playing computer games, games’ cultural influence in terms of gender disparity can no longer be ignored.” (Flanagan and Nissenbaum)

Works Cited:

Flanagan, Mary, and Helen Nissenbaum. “A Game Design Methodology to Incorporate Social Activist Themes.” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems — CHI ’07, 2007, doi:10.1145/1240624.1240654.