This game was frustrating for a number of reasons. The first of those reasons being the fact that it is meant to simulate actual life for people living in sub-Saharan Africa. While playing the game, which seems impossible to do well at, I just felt sad and defeated thinking about Kodjo and Fatou as real human beings. In each game they started out strong – 100 health, subsistence met from last season – and things look good for two or three turns, and then boom… maize yield is low, there’s a drought, and Kodjo has a disease that requires a CFA 300.0 trip to the doctor. When this started happening, I honestly just didn’t know what to do. I tried to solve the problems, but nothing seemed to work. And then I thought if I can’t solve these problems as I sit in my warm, furnished house on my $1200 computer, how can someone who is impoverished, malnourished, and dehydrated solve these problems? The answer, I suppose, is they can’t. They have to make sacrifices, and just when you think you might have enough money to buy something, another more pressing issue may occur. So, really, throughout this game, I just felt defeated and sick to my stomach thinking about the actual human beings living in the environment this game is meant to simulate.
What really got to me though was when I got a few rounds in and a checkbox came up that said “Attempt to have a child”, and all I could think was “Are they serious? How on earth am I supposed to keep a child alive when I can barely keep myself alive?” Again, I thought about the people living in the environment the game is meant to simulate. They don’t have the resources to take care of children, AND they also don’t have the resources to prevent having kids. Birth control is unavailable and most people are not educated about sex. This results in overpopulation and underfunding and lack of resources, which then results in more deaths, especially child deaths. Many people think first about clean drinking water and food as the most essential resources for individuals in sub-Saharan Africa, and while they are extremely high on the list, I would argue that investing in sex education and cheap birth control strategies should be higher on the list because this can help with overpopulation, which would then mean less tangible resources like food and water are needed further down the line.
I felt a lot of your same frustrations. I felt so helpless, like nothing I was doing was working. It felt like no matter how carefully I planned the work hours and made sure there were enough resources, maize was always low, somehow there was a drought, both Kodjo and Fatou were sick, and there was nothing more I could do. But you’re right that the saddest part is that these are examples of real people who experience this and have to try and live through this. At first I was trying to build some economic stability, but it got to a point where surviving was the only goal.
I was also frustrated by this simulation. It felt like even when I tried to change each variable, it was never enough. It left me feeling really disappointed and mad. It made me understand a fraction of what aid workers must feel when trying to deal with these really difficult problems in real life.