I found the Millenium Village Simulator incredibly frustrating because it was impossible to win.\u00a0I have played similar games in the past with other classes, so I assumed I would at least be able to do better than I had before but that was not the case. No matter what I did (or did not) do to keep them alive, Kodjo or Fatou died within the first few rounds of the game. Whether that was through starvation or illness, there was no way to save them with the resources I had available. Even when I spent the money to get them to a doctor, they still died because of the lost work time. With too much idle time, they died from malnutrition or insufficient water, and with too little they got sick. Growing cotton, although beneficial in other games and in theory, always produced a loss and lead to malnutrition. Even when it seemed like everything was going well and I might survive one round, drought or malaria brought sure death for\u00a0Kodjo and Fatou.<\/p>\n
After listening to Dr. Bezio’s podcast, I realized that games such as MVS are designed to be unwinnable so that they replicate the systemic failures in Africa. The actual people who these games are based on experience these same conditions, only in reality and not online. The need to dedicate so much time to water and food collection means that there is little time left for anything else, causing constant economic instability that can lead to worse health outcomes.\u00a0Without aid or solutions to these systemic issues, they will continue to live on the line in between life and death.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I found the Millenium Village Simulator incredibly frustrating because it was impossible to win.\u00a0I have played similar games in the past with other classes, so I assumed I would at least be able to do better than I had before but that was not the case. No matter what I did (or did not) do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-responses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6933,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6932\/revisions\/6933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}