The U.N.’s Hot Video Game

What’s the most effective way to get First World kids to start caring about Third World problems? The answer, according to the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP), is an action-packed humanitarian video game that lets players rack up points for air dropping food rations and surveying war-torn populations on the fictitious island of Sheylan. “The gaming market is saturated with blood and guts and gore,” says Justin Roche, the game’s project manager at WFP headquarters in Rome. “We’ve turned the concept on its head by addressing the urgency and immediacy of a real crisis situation.” In its first six weeks, the game has been downloaded—for free—more than 800,000 times at food-force.com The site includes lesson plans for teachers and background info on the fictional Food Force aid workers, like a mustachioed Brazilian who, his bio reveals, joined 15 years ago after reading about the WFP’s work on its website. After a gamer pointed out that the Web barely existed in 1990, the Brazilian replied diplomatically, “The game is set in the year 2026; it was back in 2011 that I signed up.” —By Wendy Cole