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FEMA and DHS Fund Disaster Hero Game
eldavojohn writes "The United States government has decided that children need a video game to learn about what to do before, during, and after an emergency or hazardous event. Collect an emergency kit! Create an emergency plan! Be informed of what to do! Suffer from heat exhaustion inside the Superdome! ... Wait, what? Oh, I guess FEMA omitted that last one. Disaster Hero is coming in 2011 — plenty of time before 2012."
When disaster strikes, solve problems on your own and belittle those around you!
Actually, educational games are great. Number munchers changed my life: multiply or die.
-Matt
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I hope it is a first person shooter!!! I can't wait to go looting!!!
This is either the best idea ever for a video game, or the worst. I guess it depends on how the game is gonna come out, personally I'm leaning toward the latter, but if it even teaches a few people how to save their own lives then I guess it's a good idea. Hey at least you'll learn something other than how to kill aliens and zombies, or alien zombies. No that doesn't sound right how about zombie aliens, or aliombies, or zombliens. Yea that's it I like that one the best, zombliens, i.e. the flood.
Does it tell you how to survive attack by a horde of hungry zombies?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
And where they're going to put the five colorful buttons.
This strikes me as something they could develop in flash for 1/100000th of the budget and get the same point across seeing as you have to wonder how interested anyone would be.
But we loot anyway.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Sounds like a great idea for a game, actually. Assuming there's a "Survive Russian Invasion" mode and/or or "Zombie Apocalypse".
Obama needs to know what to do during and after an emergency. It's obvious that at present he hasn't a fucking clue.
And sorry, threatening to kick BP's ass doesn't count.
There are tons of web-based games out there, aimed at little kids. The best ones manage to integrate some form of competitive nature. I remember way back in the day, when I was a young'n, there was this little site called neopets.
Some of you might be familiar with this child-attracting monstrosity. It is full of minigames which give them points which they can spend on a variety of stuff. Stuff for your Neopet, as your Neopet is kind of like your avatar, or about as close as you're going to get. I find that they did well in attracting to the "Cool & Cute", the two fields that attract younger kids, however in retaining their audience that had to make it fun enough to keep playing. The best way to do this is to make it competitive with other players.
You could open a shop, and little kids would start playing the market like the stock market (despite neopets actually having its own built in stock market) - kids would understand the investment skills of buy low sell high. There was also a combat arena where you could face off your neopet against other people's neopets. A leveling system I can't remember, weapons, gear, all that stuff.
I'm sure its still like that somehow today, but thats about all I remember.
So, if there is any tip I can give to anyone making a web-game for kids: it's appeal to that social interaction and competitiveness that keeps kids playing webgames, keeps jocks playing football, and keeps nerds playing WoW.
I thought that was the point Fallout3 ... Something about "politicians are evil robots and only weird radio jocks with stupid names should be trusted", along with "if you can loot it and you don't get shot then it's yours" and "shoot first, check to see if it was a mutant later". Damn .. I learned so much from that game ...
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
I want to Michael Brown! "Get me out of this!"
I hope it's better then that real bad firefighter pc game that came out around 9/11
Wonder if the "disaster plan" includes busting yourself and your family out of the FEMA camp?
I don't know, I would lean towards a game that played out a scenario MMORPG style. The game would be first person a-la Quake/America's army. You run around the map doing things, collecting gear, maybe doing home improvements that would keep you safe in an emergency (locking down your water heater here in Southern California for example). Then at random intervals a disaster strikes and your forced to deal with the situations that you weren't prepared for.
Then after so much time after the disaster, the game resets and starts all over.
Think Urban Terror - America's Army - and maybe some type of sim rolled into one.
Teaching kids to wear highly electric pants (as the pictured hero seems to) in a flood seems unwise.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Sure I have had folks make fun of my Zombie Apocalypse survival stuff, but when the power was out for a week due to ice storms I was ready. If you cannot survive without power for a week in your own home you are doing something wrong, excluding those with medical conditions who really should have generators and an UPS.
gives you high-level general knowledge, and it might even teach you something useful, but do more research and besides the standard bug-out-bags, water and stuff - - consider:
- Paper towels ... but were you in Katrina after the floods. and if you were, were you in the neighborhoods I was in? Hunger can be a deadly force)
- Boots that shit washes off easily from
- Rags and more paper towels
- Alcohol (the rubbing and drinking kinds)
- Firearm (I know
- Paper towels
- Cash (cash and more cash, and make it look like you only had a little while you safely keep the rest hidden)
- Jewelery (put some on, fake or low cost - expect it to be taken - but have something they can take or they'll think you're hiding more - which you should be)
- Did I mention paper towels and rubbing alcohol?
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
No, really, I mean it. Some friends of mine were hired to write a game for an Energy Cooperative. The intention of the game was to promote energy safety (electrical and natural gas). But when digging games (call before digging), replacing electrical outlets (turn off appropriate breaker first), ladder work, kite flying, and gas detection and avoidance were brought to the table, the Cooperative rep gasped and said no, no, no! No dying! No danger! No possibility of fear or we'll get sued! So the game turned into a cutesy ball of flaming gas that turned off gas valves (without igniting them somehow), and a socket plug that turned off lights around his house to save energy. Wow, safety. Big waste of the Co-op's money.
Given the recent gulf oil spill, you would have thought this is one of the standard features in this game. But then again, what has FEMA done to oil spill? NOTHING!!! This is just like the Chernobyl disaster. Anyway, I would like to see the interrogate/waterboard/torture/execute energy executives portion of this game. This alone will be a real seller!
The fat green alien rapper on the right of the Disaster Hero page made me laugh. It may do the same for you, just saying. Bling!
I don't need no stinkin' video game to teach me how to rape and pillage!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
From the page: "...designed to enthrall and teach children..."
Definition
enthrall[ in thráwl ]
TRANSITIVE VERB
1. delight: to delight or fascinate somebody thoroughly, engaging that person's attention completely
2. enslave: to make somebody a prisoner and claim legal ownership of that person
Huh, I wonder which definition they were using?
There's an app for that!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
DUCK and COVER!
Its wallet shaped; the tighter you clench it, in order to avoid paying claims, the more points you earn.
I hope it is a first person shooter!!! I can't wait to go looting!!!
No such luck, I'm afraid.
What I can't figure out is how the hell I'm supposed to help flooding victims with a damn toy plastic guitar...
Bow-ties are cool.
This should be Mandatory Curriculum for ALL elected officials and civil service personnel and the scores should be made public.
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
No game will teach the kids altruism which is probably the most important act in disaster situation: people sticking together and helping each other. It's good to count on the government and the army to bail you out but in the end people helping people will do more than any governement agencies can do.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/6/17/
Hopefully this remake will cover the vital "keep people from stealing your umbrella" survival skills.
A video game. Way to actually accomplish something. Here's a little tale about FEMA I heard on the regular news outlets during the Katrina debacle; During the aftermath of the Katrina flooding the sheriff's deputies of hard-hit township located near the gulf went riding around looking for gasoline they could take back to a hospital so they could get its generators started. After collecting a small but useful amount they started back to the hospital. Along the way they met up with some FEMA agents who, under the color of the authority of the Federal Government, commandeered the gas. The one thing they did say was that there were taking all the gas they could find... for...? Who knows. Nothing really rational, I would venture to guess. The deputies went back and found another hoard of gas, but this time swore they wouldn't stop for anyone and would start shooting if they were bothered, by anyone. Good for them. But this item simply illustrates the point.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Player 1: "Great job rebuilding the levee, guys."
Player 2: "Look out--ALIENS!"
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
we get this, but we'll never have duke nukem forever?
Anybody want my mod points?
...after seeing the website for this game: "Why do I got a bad feeling about this?"
Run as quickly as you can into a FEMA camp.