For any of our international readers who aren't up to speed with events in England over the past week, we've had some of the worst examples of rioting and looting in the country's history, culminating in over 1000 arrests and 600 criminal charges in the last few days alone.
Authoritarians have blamed a “sick” society; liberals have blamed corruption in our upper-classes and a forgotten underclass for the tensions. One Metropolitan Police officer even blamed Grand Theft Auto.
But while video-games got unfairly flogged during a moral panic for the thousandth time, a humble video game project for Channel 4 Education continued its journey towards development at Big Robot, a studio led by veteran game journalist, Jim Rossignol of Rock, Paper, Shotgun fame.
It's a humble project called Fallen City that challenges gamers to clean up a city that's fallen into ruin and dereliction, with dwellers who are unhappy and angry about the state of their surroundings. Fatalism and acts of civil disobedience only serve to worsen the problem, prompting you to come in and solve it.
On the surface it's a cute approach to big issues, but under the hood Fallen City is taking criminological premises such as the Broken Windows Theory into account. The creatures that populate the setting – 'Angries' – will even lose motivation and have a shortened attention span as the city's state gets worse, tasking you to cheer them up with communal events.
Check out the latest update on Fallen City's progress here, and be sure to check back as the project grows. Amid a gloomy week for everybody in this country, Fallen City provides yet another reason to stay positive.
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