Latest OLPC Development, And A Reminder About XOGiving

November 10th, 2007 by Eric Socia

Well, since this Monday is the first day of XOGiving, (and also my birthday =P), the initiative that will allow consumers to spend $399 to send an OLPC laptop to a child in the “developing world,” and as a bonus, get one sent to yourself as well, I figured it’s about time to write about another development in the OLPC initiative.

According to TechNewsWorld.com, the video game company Electronic Arts has donated the rights to the game SimCity to the OLPC foundation. The game will start to be included on the nifty little laptops so that children can play it and learn about what it takes to build and manage a city, taking into account “economic and environmental consequences to their decisions.”

When I first started reading the article I wasn’t entirely sure if I agreed with this. But now, I’m starting to realize it may be a good idea after all. They may be less fortunate than us, but that doesn’t make them necessarily inferior, and so they should be able to understand the real concept of the game as more than ‘just a game.’ And if some of them don’t, then at least they have a game they can use to live out a life completely different than their own, which is fun for just about everybody. I mean, really, what else is having an online identity all about?