3rd World Farmer

3rd world farmer is a game we played to understand how difficult it can be to survive in poverty, when you do not have a voice, not have education, no medicine and no money. It is a strategy game that takes lots of caution and if you do not start out right the chances are your family will die. You have to plant certain things that give you money each year but anything can happen. You can be robbed, there could be fires, your well can cave in, there are so many things that could go wrong, and that is what it is like in the real world.

Strategies that worked were all things to do with security. You needed a secure source of water, you needed a diverse food supply so when one thing died in a year you would always have another thing, you needed to save up your money for better security, you needed crop insurance, and education and medicine and most of all, a voice. A representative so you can be recognized by the world. For 3rd world farmer you needed to think long term to survive, you needed to make decisions that might not work out so well as soon as you made them but heavily affect the way you live in the end for the better.

Strategies that did not work were all the short term decisions that did not guaranty good security. Decisions like selling your children, this would result in a little bit of money as soon as you sold them, but soon you would need them again. Allowing people to use your land for waste, as that would poison your family and crops, and military posts, that would lead to people stealing your crops. These might give you a bit of money at the start but would always result in something bad happening in the end.

The SLR that links to this game is Reason critically because of all the long term decisions you had to make. Those decisions were difficult to find and make. You needed a good strategy at the start that you could rely on but, as I said before, anything can happen in that time. It all depends on skill and a certain amount of luck.