One Laptop Per Child initiative includes games

THE ONE LAPTOP Per Child (OLPC) initiative is here at the Games Developer Conference (GDC) with an interesting pitch and that is you should write games for it.

SJ Klein was there to talk about the initiative and spur interest in what most people would not consider a threat to the Gameboys of the world.

OLPC is the $100 PC you have been reading about, and technically the device is called the XO-1, the first of, hopefully, many. It runs an AMD Geode X500 at 366MHz, has 128MB RAM and 512MB of flash. The screen is 1200*900 in monochome mode, and includes a Fedora based Linux distro. The entire machine takes 1W running full tilt, one third of a watt with the backlight off, and one third of that acting as a router for the mesh network.

Linux obviously has advantages here, it is open source for one, and OLPC has a Python based framework to run things in. So, what does this have to do with games? The guys are looking for more to spur interest, teach people, and generally just have fun. There is currently a Tetris port, Will Wright among others is helping to open up Sim City so it can be ported, and probably countless others that I don't know of.

OLPC is looking for people not only to write games but also to write frameworks for writing those games. If you are as good at coding as I am, you can help out in other ways, like sponsoring someone to write chunks of code or design work.

Basically, there is little money to be made here, but there is opportunity to do good, and possibly a lot of fame to follow. Imagine if you got 10 million kids around the world hooked on your next big idea? In any case, you can see more about the OLPC initiative here and the gaming parts here.µ