Social Impact Game Proposal

For a possible social impact game, I would like to propose a game that would give insight and educate people on the foster care system and the impact it has on the children and families. As a former foster family, I have personal insight to the hardships and difficulties that children who are forced to move from family to family with uncertainty of if they will every find a permanent home, when they will see their biological siblings, or if they will one day return to their biological parents.

In this informational game, the player would choose from a variety of children who come from a variety of personal situations that would contribute to the reason for why they are in foster care in the first place. Some of these reasons could be abuse, death of a parent, or termination of parental rights to name a few. With these reasons, the player would also learn a background story to their player, which would provide answers to their behavior, where they will be placed, and where they come from. I'm not totally positive of how the final logistics of the game would work, but I would want the game to be about the player finally being able to settle down and be placed with a family that in the end adopts them. In route to this final destination, the child will have to overcome hurdles such as being placed from house to house, trying to feel comfortable and trusting of the people they are placed with, developing a relationship with their new parents and siblings, and overcoming emotional and psychological problems that emerge over time.

Like the Third World Farmer game that I played earlier this week, I would want this game to be more informative and educate the players more on the person's experiences, instead of trying to be fun, as it can open eyes to the hardships to the foster care system. I think that this game is especially relevant today as adoption seems to be a new trend that has emerged because of the movie starts today who are all adopting children from other countries causing people to not really even think about the thousands of children in our country that are stuck in the foster care system looking for their own family. Many of these children are stuck in the system for years, and continue to wait longer as they get older because a majority of families want to adopt a newborn, not a 13 year old kid. Hopefully a game like this would help to just generate awareness about this reality.