Free public service games for young people about sweatshops and death

My wife Alice quit her day job (commissioning public service games for the UK's Channel 4) in January to do a start-up, but some of the games she got underway are still coming out. Two new ones that are of particular interest are Sweatshop, a tower defense game that "highlights the abject horror and terrible exploitation of sweatshop factories – and the most dangerous enemy in the game is your own impulse to succeed"; and The End, a game about death, existentialism, and the afterlife, released into the increasingly atheist population of young Britain. All free, of course!

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: existentialism • Games • Happy Mutants • Kids • labor • uk

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Gracias.
hogan

appropriate for all ages?
Colin Knox

I click new game, and it asks me to enter a Name, and I do, and then nothing happens. The “Next” button or whatever it’s called makes a chime sound, but….
technogeekagain

And what’s wrong with an increasingly atheist — or agnostic — population? Those *ARE* legitimate religious choices, even though they make organized religion uncomfortable and cut into its income stream.
Cory Doctorow

Not a thing. But this marks the first serious attempt by a public UK entity to discuss existential issues with teens in a way that encompasses atheism as a legitimate choice.
michaeljonjensen

Love the concept of Sweatshop. Hated having to wait for each bit of textual explanation and scene-setting to display. Found the music grating. Great to have the real information interspersed between levels.

It just took too long to get to actual play, and I was impatient. I don’t play many games, so take that with a grain of salt.

But kudos to your wife for enacting her ethics.
- Gulliver
  
  +1 what michaeljonjensen said.
  
  Also, The End rocks, though I wish the avatar customization had more abstract characteristics available in keeping with the motif of the game. Overall though, it’s a great way to lure the little ones to existentialism and humanism. I wonder if in the future there will be campaigns to ban educational games from school intranets. “Why, in my day we had wholesome games like Street Fighter and Doom, and you had to walk a six whole miles in freezing rain to get a popsicle!”
championselector

nice one. and props to your missus, cory…
RadioSilence

Cory, was she behing the excellent Trafalgar Origins game?
http://www.channel4.com/play-win/trafalgar-origins/

Tell her thanks, I whiled away many hours playing the multiplayer game.
http://www.facebook.com/villehising Ville Hising

The End, what a fantastic game!
tiredofit

Pretty much all I did in the Sweatshop game was read stupid shit and waste time. After three minutes of no game play I quit.
RedIndianGirl

I keep losing because I am much too nice of a boss – I’m all about the worker. But that’s probably because I’m a happy subversive radical socialist!!!
Lane Yarbrough

I played the game. My only suggestion would be to relax on the one-word sentence openers.
Bubba73

The End is groovy