Red Cross launches cutting-edge family search game

LONDON (Reuters) - It could be a phone call, it could be an email, but it's from a Ugandan teenager asking you to help find the mother he has lost touch with during his country's civil war.

Joseph is a character in a cutting-edge Alternate Reality Game launched by the Red Cross on Monday -- a 21st century cross between a role-playing game and a treasure hunt.

The game called "Traces of Hope" (www.tracesofhope.com) is the first time a charity has used the interactive ARG format more commonly used to promote films and commercial products.

The Red Cross is using the real-time game to draw attention to the plight of civilians who get separated from loved ones during war, and to highlight its family-tracing service.

"It's like a puzzle," said Charles Williams, editorial manager for the British Red Cross. "It will put players in the shoes of people in conflict situations who have to make difficult decisions."

Players are immersed in the world of Joseph, 16, who is in a camp for people displaced by the war in northern Uganda.

Some 2 million people were uprooted by the two-decade conflict in which Lord's Resistance Army rebels kidnapped thousands of children to use as soldiers and sex slaves.

The game forces players to use the Internet, email and telephone to get an idea of the intense pressure civilians face in the turmoil of conflict.

"For a teenager alone in a war zone it's very disorienting, very scary, very difficult to know what to do. There are no easy decisions," Williams said.

Once players sign up, the game starts without warning when Joseph gets in touch asking for help, and they have to track down information and clues planted on websites like publishers Penguin and humanitarian news service Reuters AlertNet.

"It mixes storytelling, game play and detective work all together. It's the first time a charity has done an ARG," said Matt Connolly of Enable Interactive, the digital design company that helped develop the game.