Video Game Teaches Kids About Sweatshops
Via Wired UK comes news of a new educational video game. The “Sweatshop” game is designed to teach young people about how the pursuit of ever-increasing profit margins leads to sweastshop working conditions in factories churning out consumer goods. Players learn about the “race to the bottom” in a hands-on way.
Says Wired about the game’s intentions:
As young people generally have limited disposable income, they are likely to buy cheap, fashionable clothes from high street retailers who often drive down their prices by employing sweatshop labour. The game intends to educate its player as to the conditions of many of the workers in sweatshops, based on current research and information. It seeks to highlight the conditions of workers, but also inform as to the wider pressures that have brought this particular system into being, highlighting the role of clients, factory owners, managers and workers down the chain. A game seemed like a super good way to achieve this.