Spent and 3rd World Country
I played Spent and 3rd World Country and I have to say that that while both of these games were teaching about the choices we make in life, I enjoyed playing 3rd World Country a little bit more.
With Spent I just felt very hopeless by the experience. I know that was the point of the game, so that people will give to the charity, however, the structure of the game did not sit well with me. In the game I tried to make some good choices, but the message that I ended up leaving with was that no matter what smart choices you tried to make you were inevitably going to fail, so I wondered why even try? I know that this was not the intention of the game designers, but it was what I felt. I also felt very led by the game and there just was no way out.
In the case of the 3rd world country game I really wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do initially. After a little trial and error I figured things out. I would say that I enjoyed this game a little bit more than Spent. There was an element of hope, whereas in Spent it was designed to give a sense of hopelessness. The problem with Spent was the hopelessness kind of made me want to give up and I don’t think anyone should leave a learning game with that mindset. The good thing about the 3rd World game was that there was a little bit of hope and I felt like I learned more in that game.
Juliana.
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Allie 4:54 pm on October 5, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Juliana,
I haven’t played the games yet, but ugh. that sounds awful. When I read the description, I was more hopeful – it reminded me of a project assigned in a class I TA’d a few years ago on poverty policy (in the US) in which the students had to roleplay a single mother on social assistance for a few weeks. That set of assignments was really eye-opening for a lot of our students. It seems that successfully developing educational programs and games concerning issues of poverty and systemic inequality requires a lot of sensitivity – not only to the treatment of who is being represented, but also to the learners.
Juliana 8:26 am on October 8, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I think it is a very important type of lesson for students to learn and I think it is important for students to leave feeling like they can do something, rather than feeling like things are hopeless. In the case of Spent, the designers really wanted to give people a feeling of hopelessness so that they will be more likely donate money to the charity. However, I really wonder if this approach would work. I think in cases like these perhaps using stories of people who were helped by the charity would work. This way people who are donating the money can see the impact of their donations.
Juliana.