This article in MTV news hits the nail on the head on one thing - If your kid (or for that matter you) doesn’t know about something, make him learn it through game that is fun, exciting and challenging.
The story goes like this; the grandson of a Ghana king and a 19-year-old programmer in Atlanta believe that the Western world doesn’t understand Africa, which may be true in most of the cases (ask yourself). So how to make Westerners aware of Africa and the African way of life? Simple, make a video game about the continent!
Come December, and a video game will be released named ‘Africa’. It will be a MMORPG like ‘World of Warcraft’ and ‘City of Heroes’.
According to the article USP the game’s backers are banking upon is the hope that players will be enticed to pay a monthly fee not to live among the usual fantasy heroes and elves but to delve into a land of 13th century African civilization and mythology, crossing the virtual Sahara on a camel, journeying to Timbuktu and fighting as a Zulu warrior against the lion equivalent of a werewolf.
John Sarpong, grandson of Ashanti king Prampeh of Ghana, exiled by the British from 1895 to 1924 said;
We felt very strongly that video games can help increase understanding and education about Africa and get the unmotivated public fired up about what is going on with Africa.
Sarpong has spent recent years running Africast, a company that broadcasts African programming over the Internet.
Adam Ghetti, the teenage creative director at Rapid Reality that is creating the game, said he hopes the game will ‘right some wrongs’.
In his words, Ghetti, a white says;
The white American board developers of the large MMO development companies out there right now don’t honestly have the right background and knowledge on the continent of Africa and its lore, mythology and rich history, and quite honestly neither did I. They just don’t teach it over here. The game is designed, in part, to change that.
We certainly can’t agree more on what their thoughts on this. It smells of a very, very exciting and enjoyable game is in the offing this December. I shall most certainly look forward to its release.
Let us know about your views on this.
Thanks MTV
