We are so close in completing Happiness, a preventive game about trafficking. All we need is a little bit of your help.
- Preventing and informing about this on-going, ever-growing problem has never been so important. Please take a moment to read about the project. Thanks!
What we have completed so far:
Extensive research
Attending various conferences on the topic
Colloboration with various NgO’s working in the area
All main elements of the game are build, including 6 websites and 2 videos.
What we lack:
4-6 weeks of Action Script programming
2 websites
About Happiness:
In Happiness you need to find and free Olena, and as soon as possible, as she is enduring an insufferable
situation. She thought she was going for a job in a café in the UK, but ends up being a sex-slave for a trafficking mafia. The game takes you through her journey from Ukraine to the UK, where we get facts and information about trafficking, the causes and consequences on the way.
About trafficking:
At the end of the 20th century, trafficking in women, men and children for the purpose of sexual exploitation
has mushroomed into a multi-billion dollar shadow market.
They are trafficked to, from, and through every region in the world, using methods that have become new
forms of slavery. The value of the global trade in people as commodities for sex industries, is estimated to
be more than 30 Billion US$ annually. People are reported to be trafficked from 127 countries, to be exploited
in 137 countries and 161 countries are reported to be affected by human trafficking.
Why a game?
To stop this exploitation in the long run, a key factor is to inform, and prevent in the recipient countries.
We decided to address the issue in an alternate reality game, which is a game happening on the internet using websites and video. The game is targeted to 16-17 years old boys and girls.
An Alternate Reality Game, with its multiple choices and its way of resembling reality very closely, is a good way to illustrate
complicated decision making, and also the tricky situation the trafficked woman is in: If she tries to escape,
the traffickers might kill her family back home, and because of the extremely high fictive debt, set by the
traffickers, it’s almost impossible for her to pay, in order to be free.
Through the structure of the game it is easy and evident to include a broader learning perspective, including
the subjects of Geography, Political science, Social Science, and History.
Some key words for subjects that could be discussed within these areas are: Globalization, the trade with
people (seen in a historical perspective), gender roles, illegal migration, a narrative analyse of a media
product & a critical eye on the Internet.
Happiness not only aim to deliver a message, but also to simulate an experience. Often games are thought
of as a leisure activity, but they can also be excellent rhetorical tools, and they have an effect, which many
other forms of media lack: The power to create empathy. The empathy comes through the interaction that
takes place between the player and the game. Furthermore learning games are a strong tool for enhancing
pro-social behavior.
The game will be available on the Internet free of charge and through the NgO’s Safe & Alive, Reden International, HopeNow & Center against Human Trade, with whom I collaborate.
The key-elements of Happiness are produced, through my collaboration with the Pervasive Media Studio in the UK http://www.pmstudio.co.uk/. What I need funding for is the programming to put the graphic elements together, and develop some supportive educational material to go along with the game.