Village the Game: Play it. Love it. Live it.

by Ferdinand Kjaerulff

The Founder of Village the Game invited me to blog on his web-page. I am a Civil Affairs officer, so you might wonder why I am writing on this particular blog. I like to give an overall explanation by describing the “bigger picture” that we sometimes tend to forget or can’t see because of a very dysfunctional vertical division of labor among people today. I like to describe the three most crucial convergences in the process of globalization that creates the platform for several completely new workspaces where previously separated people are now collaborating to solve common problems.

1. Convergence - The BOP Work Space

The first convergence is happening between the private sectors and NGO’s at the bottom of the wealth pyramid. The private sector's increased role in the developing countries and emerging markets provide opportunities for new and innovative forms of collaboration. The mutual recognition of interdependency and the shared vision of a better future are gradually removing the barriers that prevented aid agencies, NGO's, and private firms from working together in the past. Since the end of the Cold War, effective utilisation of the private sector has been widely recognized in the development community. The development community basically invited the business world into their BOP workspace and these diverse groups are now collaborating to eradicate poverty.

I think Village the Game might be the best way to get access to this new workspace. It offers people in the West a unique opportunity to explore this very complex space with all its distinct problems, challenges and innovative solutions. I truly hope Village the Game can be the platform that brings together the NGO's that are becoming increasingly enterprising, the private companies that seek to be socially innovative and the governments that are committed to remove constraints imposed on the business environment at the bottom of the pyramid. I truly believe this convergence between public, private, and non-governmental actors opens opportunities for new innovative development practices, where everyone involved can pursue previously invisible opportunities.

2. Convergence – The failing state workspace

The second convergence is happening between civil and military actors in the area of post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction. Post-conflict rebuilding has now become a strategic challenge for the twenty-first century, where failed states threaten to destabilize and disrupt the world order. This new workspace in failed states lies midway between conventional warfare and traditional development assistance. In this workspace civil and military organisations have slowly realized they each possess competencies, infrastructure, and knowledge that are complementary to each other and could be combined to achieve a greater effect.

3. Convergence: The enabling platform

The process of globalization, the spread of free-market trade, new wireless technology and computerization is fundamentally changing the world. We now have sufficiently sophisticated building blocks in terms of network technology, work-flow software, and game-engines to actually construct the workspaces for BOP and failing states. It is definitively not technology that is preventing us from building the tools required for eradicating poverty or winning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is simply not happening, because we as individuals are not doing it....

The future BOP workspace will become a reality because an entrepreneurial organisation is actually building it. I think Village the Game is brilliant because it might become this BOP workspace platform where people from around the world plug and play in order to share work, exchange knowledge, start companies, and invent services with the unifying purpose of eradicating poverty. It can become so powerful because of modern technology that people will be sucked into the universe. Peer-to-peer lending, Google earth and Village the Game is only the beginning and it will eventually all converge into one ”mash-up” on a single platform. I truly hope Village the Game can someday send everyone an invitation to plug and play on this platform.

I like to do something similar. I like to build the platform for post-conflict reconstruction in failing states. The top-down approach has been tried and unfortunately it failed. We simply don’t have the world governance structure to make it work. However, I strongly believe it will work if it comes from the bottom-up together with the rise of the digital generation. This generation will instantly get it. Someday our generation simply has to come up with the workspace that goes beyond entertainment and social networking to solve the defining problems of our era. Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering micro credit. If the underlying platform for the BOP work-space could be used as a template for intervention in failed states, the same thing could happen to this grass-root BOP experiment. This platform would enable external forces to function as system administrators instead of occupying forces. I think this platform is worth creating. Some might say it can be done. However, the Internet was invented here in Los Angeles and it fundamentally changed the world. I think it is time for the creative class and the digital generation to grow up and take some responsibility. We need the serious workspace to unleash the gamer’s hidden potential and harness the benefits to solve the defining problems of our time. Remember what is at stake here. What will happen to globalization if we don’t build these networks of workspaces to solve the problems of the twentieth century? We will simply miss out on a historic window of opportunity to make globalization truly global. And we don’t ask for much. Gamers just have to do what they do best, Plug-and-play. In sum, We the People needs to become We the gamers. And so, my fellow generation of creative gamers around the world: ask not what your game can do for you - ask what we together can do for the game.