Gaming gets its consciousness on

A growing movement of "activist" videogame designers is showing that not only can you make good games about problems like global warming, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the childhood obesity epidemic but that gaming itself can be a powerful medium for spreading awareness and getting people involved. These game makers are not offering the escapist trances so many of today's mega-budget games provide. On the contrary, they want to wake you up.

As Stephen Friedman, the head of mtvU, MTV's college television network, which sponsored a game last year about the atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan, put it, "The first step of activism is to begin to walk in the shoes of the person that's in need." Friedman cautions that at best, a game such as Darfur Is Dying provides only a cursory glimpse into the lives of its subjects but one that nonetheless offers "a much more intimate connection than what you would get from watching it on TV."

In Darfur Is Dying, the player controls a refugee who must accomplish tasks such as finding water and caring for the needs of the camp, all while avoiding capture by prowling janjaweed militiamen. (There's no violence when you're caught, but the character's fate is chillingly implied.) You can play the game for free directly off of mtvU's website and since April, more than a million people have. That success has encouraged Friedman and his team to sponsor two more games: one intended to increase HIV/AIDS awareness among young people, and a second that will allow players a view into the plight of migrant farmworkers.

If you're having trouble seeing how games about global warming, AIDS or genocide are supposed to be "fun," you are not alone. Suffering is pretty much the opposite of fun, after all, and we cringe to think of children engaging with the world's most pressing issues in the same way they engage with Grand Theft Auto, or EverQuest, or Pac-Man.

But game auteurs are quick to remind you that Rome wasn't built in a day. Before the rise of high-speed Internet access, the gaming industry could produce only what would fit on the shelves at Best Buy. So, like the movie studios, it stuck to high-yield, low-risk formulas: guns, magic and football. It's only recently that online distribution broke the chokehold on smaller, independent companies.