Darfur is Dying

The activist video game is designed for university students and is played online at no cost. The idea of a Darfur-related video game came from mtvU, MTV’s 24-hour college network. The game was created with the goal of increasing the level of student activism around the situation in Darfur. According to the organisers, although the game is an oversimplification of the crisis in Darfur, they hope that it offers an entryway into the crisis and answers basic questions.

The game is a narrative-based simulation where the user, from the perspective of displaced Darfurians, negotiates forces that threaten the survival of his or her refugee camp. It offers a glimpse of what it's like for the people who have been internally displaced by the crises in the country.

Darfur is Dying is set in a refugee camp and is based around a series of tasks. "To begin, you choose from a number of Darfurian characters of all different ages and genders. Once you have chosen your character, you begin with a very simple task: fetch water for the camp. Your character then dashes across a barren landscape, clutching an empty container. Along the way, you have to dodge trucks filled with gun-toting militiamen. If you are lucky, you will make it to the water pump, and then back to the camp. If you are unlucky and get caught, you are told what happens to your character. For example, a player learns that a young boy is likely to be killed or kidnapped by the militias, or that a young girl is likely to face rape and abuse."

Conflict, Rights.

mtvU says that more than 2.5 million people have played the game since it was launched. "Darfur is Dying is a work in progress" according to the game's creators. To develop the game, the creators of "Darfur is Dying" - Susana Ruiz, Ashley York, Mike Stein, Noah Keating, and Kellee Santiago of the University of Southern California - worked closely with humanitarian aid workers with extensive background experience in Darfur.

In the Darfur region in western Sudan, civilians face mass killings, torture, rape, destruction of villages, theft, and other human rights abuses at the hands of the Janjaweed militias - bands of fighters backed by the Sudanese government. Since the start of the conflict in February 2003, over four million people have been affected by the crisis, hundreds of thousands have died and more than two and a half million people have been displaced.