I am only partly exaggerating when I say that.

I will consider your experiment a success when you can spend a good half hour doing nothing but staring at the micro-worlds of plants in awe and ecstasy at the beauty of the universe. Spontaneous singing is permitted, however.

Did you ever read my blog post Games and Perceptual Apathy? If you haven’t, click my name for the link.

Perhaps Avatar could have been different in a way that helped people make the connection to the real world. But even with Avatar as escapist as it is, the movie does provide a foundation that more social-change-minded stories and games could build on top of.

A lot of people have seen this movie. That’s something. Now what can we do to build off the basic emotional engagement provided by the film, to tie this into the real world?

Pretty interesting! I think your message is conveyed pretty well no matter which path the player chooses (thanks mainly to the conversation with the Turbalien), but I agree with your testers that the experience is somewhat hurt by having to quit the game to “win.” People might not make a strong connection between pressing the “End War” button and making a conscious decision to do more than exit a game. When I pushed the “Start War” button, I didn’t think I was making a decision to start a war, just to see what the game had to offer.

Requiring the player to quit removes your chance to inform people about what they can actually do. After not killing the Turbalien and seeing the conversation, a menu could pop up that asks the player if they want to end the war. This would scroll the images and text that you see under the Turbalien-killing scenario (I think all players should see it!) and it could also display some additional information, or links to contact the appropriate government officials and/or action groups.

As far as how much a similar idea may help with terrorism, I see it as a deeper problem. I don’t think it’s as much of a problem of your average Iraqi/Afghan/etc seeing the US as the enemy because of things we’ve done, so much as the religious aspects. When your religion tells you that god is on your side when you smite the unbelievers, it doesn’t create much room for social change. I think change starts by convincing the religious leaders that their zeal is misdirected – more of a top-down approach.

Of course, that may be an impossible task, in which case you might be right that the bottom-up is the way to go.

@Chris
Certain food makes my skin breakout too. I got really bad breakouts on my face after eating tumeric several months ago. I think peanuts do the same. I’m going to give the tumeric a try again to make sure it wasn’t something else.

My sister says diary, the lactose, makes her skin breakout.

Mind telling me the book you read?

Thanks for the kind words, I’m nearly evolution 3.0 on Jan 26th (b-day)!