A Parallel World for the World Bank: A Case Study of Urgent: Evoke, An Educational Alternate Reality Game

Abstract

In 2010, the World Bank launched Urgent: Evoke , an alternate reality game. Conceived in response to the demands of African universities, the game was designed to promote the World Bank Institu-te’s vision of positive global change through social innovation, and made substantial use of Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, personal proles, and social networks. This article offers a case study of Urgent: Evoke , divided into four sections: rst, the potential to use video games as citizenship education tools is discussed; second, the unique game genre (alternate reality games) into which Evoke falls is explained and some possible uses of this genre in higher edu-cation are examined; third, the functioning of the Evoke game world is explained; and fourth, the re-sults of the Evoke educational project are assessed. The case study concludes with some commentary on Evoke’ s ideological message, which those less sympathetic to capitalism may view as problema-tic.