Play the Ayati Game

Play the Ayati Game

If you click here, you will be directed to a game developed by a group of teens. In it, you will be in charge of keeping a poor Haitian family alive through four years, four seasons each. You will get to monitor their health, their wealth, and their education, decide where and when to send them to work, when to go to the store, what to buy. WARNING: I found this game through a discussion on a development blog where the poster noted that he played it once again and once again, the entire family died of cholera. I started playing at 8 PM and suddenly looked up and it was 3 AM.

You will find perhaps as I did, that there is no real winning at this game, just staying alive. I still have hopes that one day I will be able to get all the kids educated but the public school keeps appearing and disappearing and the others are very expensive. I also long for the indoor plumbing for the family but fear that it will be forever out of our reach.

I have some complaints - that even when I let someone rest at home, their health did not seem to improve, that there were no vitamins available at the store, that the level of happiness always stayed ridiculously high for people who had nothing. (But then, I have lived in Haiti and I have found that to be true, they are ridiculously happy).

So go ahead and play and be sure to post comments. When we have compiled a list of them, I will set up an appointment with the head of UNICEF here and see if we can make some changes and turn the whole thing into a fund raiser for them......va pa lante!!