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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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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.
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.
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.
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.
Large generators of the type used by hospitals run on diesel.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.