Kitcatt Nohr Digitas

The guy at the desk next to me is playing Farmville. I know this without looking, because he’s always playing Farmville. I know that can’t literally be true, because then he would have nothing to put on his timesheets and he would be asked not to sit at the desk next to me any more. And he’s definitely still sitting there. So the guy at the desk next to me is playing Farmville. And so is the guy at the desk next to you. (Even if that guy is not actually a guy at all.)

I know this because 411 million people play games like Farmville. (Source: Zynga)

That means almost half a billion people are spending a significant portion of their lives escaping from the world they live in to a fantasy world of farming. Including the guys at the desks next door to us.

But if we were living in Africa, those guys might not be using games to escape the world they live in. They might be using them to change their world.

They’d be playing a game called Evoke. Evoke is a game with a difference. It was developed by the World Bank Institute, ‘the learning and knowledge arm of the World Bank Group’. That’s right, we’re not talking about some guys in a bedsit somewhere, or even some millionaires in a former jute warehouse in Dundee, we’re talking about the World Bank. Making games. They’ve recruited the best talent to help them, as Evoke is ‘directed by alternate reality game master Jane McGonigal’. She’s the power behind the gaming phenomenon that is Halo. (One of the most successful 'conventional' console games ever made, technophobes.

The name apparently comes from a proverb: If you have a problem, and you can’t solve it alone, evoke it. It aims to use the power of social gaming to enable young people in the world’s poorest countries to develop solutions to the problems they and their countries face.

EVOKE is free to play and open to anyone, anywhere. Its first challenge lasted for ten weeks lasts earlier this year. Players who successfully completed ten game challenges in that time will be able to claim their honors: Certified World Bank Institute Social Innovator – Class of 2010.

More importantly, top players will also earn online mentorships with experienced social innovators and business leaders from around the world, and scholarships to share their vision for the future at the EVOKE Summit in Washington DC.

It's a game based around solving real problems for the real world, rather than finding your way around a maze or shooting digital soldiers. (Not that those aren't genuinely worthwhile ways to pass your time, obviously.)

And it's designed to be played on a low bandwidth connection, so it's as appealing to people in the low-tech south as it is in the high-tech north, theoretically.

The challenges are framed in ways that are designed to lead to solutions that can be shared and improved. For instance, one led to the construction of an urban farm in Mexico. Which immediately led another 'agent' from Mexico to set up an urban farm of his own, using the information he had gleaned from Evoke.

This then led to a series of exchanges from 'agents' all around the world, who then developed the idea further. It's a perfect example of how group efforts can help with a creative project, without descending to the level of crowdsourcing.

Not that Evoke is entirely above that, as it's currently involved in seeking ways to make the second edition of the game even more appealing.

And that's the only real quibble about it. For all its global reach, its stellar cast of mentors and developers, and its backing from the World Bank, Evoke only persuaded about 19,000 people to register. Compare that with the half billion or so who are playing social games on Facebook.

Yes, a significant number of those people were from developing countries, but too many of them were still from the prosperous north for a true exchange of ideas to take place. Maybe that will happen next. Let's hope so. And that one day, the guy next door to me will be changing the world.