The grass is green

One pitch a day: in August of 2011, I dedicate twenty minutes each day to writing an « elevator pitch » for a story or a game.

This serious game aims to help citizens from around the world to get a sense of what immigration entails on a personal level, beyond statistics and generalizations. Its goal is not to discourage or encourage immigration, but to build comprehension of this issue in order for citizens to make informed choices and improve relevant policies, and to give would-be emigrants an idea of what possibly awaits them should they choose to follow this path down.

Reports from reliable organizations and testimonies of people who emigrated or tried to emigrate constitute source material. The game puts a focus on the situations where the standards of human rights are not respected. (French citizens immigrating to Ireland are not writhing in pain and despair.)
In the context of the game, the player plays a character with an origin, a status in society, a reason to leave home and a destination. After the set-up, he begins the adventure and needs to deal with challenges such as dilemmas and timed questions which require quick thinking.
Legal as well as illegal methods of immigration are explored. Good outcomes are a possibility. Depending on the source material, possible bad outcomes can include being robbed, beaten, killed, enslaved, raped, forced into prostitution or becoming a tired wreck of a human being, denied a way to overcome his misery. The game highlights risks but also the ways to alleviate them. It describes situations truthfully in order to dissipate misbeliefs, formerly identified in the source material. For example, it could highlight the gap between an utopian vision of Europe and the unfriendliness and insensitivity administration and society sometimes display in some parts of it. Or it could pinpoint the crucial differences between the culture and values of the immigrant and those of the target country.

The game is first developed for mobile phones. The game mechanisms rely on sound, on graphics and on touch. Texts are used as little as possible in the interface but can constitute challenges in the context of the game.