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3rd World Farmer is a new kind of game. An experiment in the genre of Serious Games, it simulates some of the real-world mechanisms that cause and sustain poverty in 3rd World countries. In the game, the player gets to manage an African farm and is soon confronted with the difficult choices that poverty and conflict can cause. As a farm and family management game it has an emotional impact on many players because usually these types of games play out in much easier settings, where it's always possible to prosper by playing cleverly and making the right game choices. It's not always like that in 3rd World Farmer. Just like real people are dying from starvation in desperate situations that they never asked to be put in, all it takes for things to go wrong in this game is one bad harvest, an unfortunate encounter with corrupt officials, a raid by guerillas, a civil war, a sudden fluctuation in market prices, or any of the many other game events, that might never happen to families in industrialized countries. By letting players experience this - albeit in a harmless, fictional setting - we hope to open their eyes to the problems and to motivate them to make positive social change. Our aim is to have everybody play the game, reflect, discuss and act on it. The game is a great starting point for discussions of 3rd World issues, so we encourage teachers to use it in class.