Play
Food Force
Work with your friends to deliver humanitarian aid across the globe and impact the real-world.
In this “spiritual” sequel to the 2005 original, Food Force takes players online to Facebook and gets them together with their friends to learn how the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) delivers humanitarian aid all over the world.
The first version of Food Force was a downloadable PC title that was played by over 10 million users worldwide. To aid in the Japanese distribution and translation, WFP worked with the internationally acclaimed game studio, Konami. Six years later, Konami led on the funding and creation of the 2011 version of Food Force, marking two milestones for this 40 year old company: not only is this their first, free social game, but it’s also their first full blown social impact title.
From farming crops, preparing goods, sending friends to deliver food, and responding to crises around the globe, the new Food Force is an ambitious reboot of the franchise. It takes advantage of the social web by providing a dynamic gaming experience that allows players to gain instant access to creating impact. This is done by purchasing virtual goods that benefit a player’s performance but also generates donations for international aid. As players distribute aid across the virtual world, they can track their real world impact through the “real-world impact tracker”, which shows them how much aid was delivered through their virtual goods purchases.
Funder:
Konami (for the World Food Programme)
Press:
Games.com, Mainichi Daily News, UN News Centre, Case Foundation
Contact:
Emilia Casella, Global Media Coordinator: emilia.casella@wfp.org
Yuko Yasuda, Spokesperson: yuko.yasuda@wfp.org
Screen shot:
Review the Game
The character art is very cute, but some of the game art is a bit lacking. If you were able to spend some time polishing up the user interface, I think it would be beneficial and make the overall experience better.
The beginning tutorial was way too overwhelming and long. Instead of trying to make me learn all of the intricacies of every detail of the game up front, maybe try to introduce new concepts at key milestones in play… let the player get in there and try a few things, then learn something new. I found myself immediately overwhelmed and lost as to where to start.
The game takes way too long to load in between the different modes (farm, factory, map). I’m not sure if you could do something about that…more snappy loading would help the overall experience a lot.
I didn’t enjoy this game at all. Explaining about the game took to long and The same Icon of the girl appeared every time which was distracting because it was so big. I found my self not even reading what she had to say. It looks as though a lot of effort has been put in to it but it wasn’t very user friendly.
This game is an excellent tutorial introduction to the World Food Program. The game shows all major aspects of the WFP supply chain, explaining through game exercises how each phase works. The game leverages the Facebook platform and allows friends to collaborate. I could imagine this game fitting into school systems very well; there’s nothing fundamentally controversial about its content. Outstanding game for change!
This game reminded me a lot of the SIMS game, except it has a point in addressing a hot topic in the global economy–hunger. You want to help the more under developed countries by getting food resources to them. It deals with the awareness of global hunger and evaluating accountability, or social responsibility that an enterprise assumes (Brooks, 2009) by understanding which country needs what product sooner. The game also deals with understanding "time lines," or an anticipated accomplishment list with land marks (Brooks, 2009) in order to have a product ready and available when it is supposed to be for the countries that are depending on it. The point of the game is to supply these under developed countries with food in order to help change the lives of hungry children.
Bibliography
Brooks, A. C. (2009). Social Entrepreneurship. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.
Review the Game