Game for Change

Dinner Quest

Video games have the potential to be powerful motivators for social change, on perhaps an even greater level than any other media form. As players assume the role of another character, that character's concerns become the player's, their pains, worries, and joys shared. It is physically impossible to passively engage with a video game, as engagement implies activity. This became particularly apparent to me as I played Depression Quest for the first time. The difficulties of depression, which I had often attributed to distanced characters in movies and books, became extremely personal. I began to positively recognize potentially depressive qualities in myself, and instead of simply gaining sympathy for the clinically depressed, I found I was able to reach a level of rudimentary empathy.
I believe that video games have the power to change lives, as we place ourselves in others' shoes and have proxy experiences that would otherwise be inaccessible to us. With this in mind, I decided to tackle a social issue that is very dear to my heart by creating Dinner Quest: The Hunt for a Real Meal. About seven years ago, as a budding high school student with the mind of an anarchist but with no particular system to tear down, I turned my eye of scrutiny on the food industry. As I was introduced to interesting food theorists such as Ian Cheney and Michael Pollan, I became extremely alarmed about the culture of food that is developing in the 21st century, and the implications it has on future generations. While serving a mission in Denmark, these concerns were placed mostly to the side due to a fantastically healthy food culture in Scandinavia, but upon my return to the United States of America, home of preservatives, I have begun once more to critically analyze food.
I studied three works specifically for this project. The first is Michael Pollan's 'The Omnivore's Dilemma', his beautiful critique of mass production in the food industry. Within the book he follows four separate meals all the way back to their origins, and this idea became the main theme for Dinner Quest. This reading was supplemented by 'Hungry City', a book by British author Carolyn Steel. Her book is a more specific examination of how food is consumed within the city, and reveals alarming facts about how far our food really travels before it gets to us. As more and more people in the 21st century live in cities, we are becoming increasingly disconnected from our food, and most of us don't even know what fresh food tastes like any more. The final piece was Ian Cheney's documentary Truck Farm, which is a playful yet instructive study on how farms can be made practically anywhere. Cheney himself begins a farm in the flat bed of his Dodge pick up, and then drives around New York City to meet with other farmers who use rooftops, barges, floor to ceiling windows, and abandoned baseball fields to get back in touch with nature.
All of these texts went in to the creation of Dinner Quest. For this game, I wanted to put the players into a position where they are forced to be accountable for each aspect of their meal. As I began to study the topics myself(especially some fun blog pages about slaughtering chickens)I realized just how agrarian and foreign these types of activities are. It scares me how far removed a plastic wrapped chicken breast in the supermarket is from slitting the throat of a flapping chicken. I hope that Dinner Quest is a reminder that behind every chicken patty served, there was a living chicken. I did not, however, want the game to just be a scary ride through the terrors of slaughter, as many studies of the food industry have been(Food Inc. and The Jungle being classic examples). In my studies of honest farmers, hunters, and gatherers I have noticed a consistently increased respect for nature and life. Those people who slaughter chickens, ironically, seem to have a greater respect for life than the person who has never killed. I hope that Dinner Quest not only reminds players that a lot more went into the creation of their food than they often account for, but that greater satisfaction can be pulled form a closer association with their food at every level of its creation.
In a world full of restaurant ads, fast food drive-thrus, and deliver to your door internet food companies, I believe that this issue is poorly represented in the media. I hope that Dinner Quest makes a difference in the lives of those who play it, and I honestly believe that the closer we can associate with our food the happier we will be, the healthier our bodies and spirits will be, and the better our food will taste.

Play Dinner Quest here:
http://www.philome.la/DavidHawkes14/dinner-quest