Grand Theft Marketability

*sidenotes of the day - Take the Humanitarian quiz here to see how much you know about the pains of the planet.
* First person to answer the name of the movie whose character I reference at the end of this post gets an internet present.

I'm reading through Reuters news this morning and I come across a story of a new video game sponsored by the U.N which is intended to promote awareness of poverty and hunger to the youth of today. In a righteous attempt to connect with the gun thirsty youth gaming market "The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) hopes the game in which players direct aid workers trying to help the poor, will teach children about the problems of feeding the hungry, especially those trapped in war zones" (source). I mean what better way to combat the America's Army shoot em up, knock em down, and then stomp on em genre than a competitive game with similar environment but an ultimate goal based in humanitarian aid.

For a brief second I was all like "hot damn" what a find, Im gonna show all my little Geekstars and get them psyched on flying a helicopter through battle zones with a goal to drop off food to a suffering fictitious nation and thus better the world for all. *tear*sigh*breath*imgood.

But just as I was about to praise the U.N creative minds for thinking up such a wonderous product, I looked at the name of the game: FOOD-FORCE. *choke* I mean what the shit. The good guys finally develop a product that could in concept, compete with the Grand Theft Auto, America's Army, game market and you end up naming your game something that sounds like a spin off series of Captain Planet. I mean seriously, who was behind the marketing of this game; Fred Penner and Tinky Winky? Needless to say I was dissapointed, especially since the game is being offered for free, and was based in a very cool concept, good graphics, and what appears to be similar gameplay to that of other games with objectives that only differ in destruction as opposed to Food-Force's aid motives.



Regardless of the name, it is still a cool concept, and I urge you guys to go check it out, and maybe write a digital note to the folks responsible for this game encouraging a name change. I think I'm gonna suggest Hunger Hunters (Im like so the next Allegra Geller).

posted by mr. tomas ubik @ Thursday, June 02, 2005