Saving John

This interactive game demonstrates how community effort and dialogue can help increase understanding of homelessness. Players send tweets with the hashtag “endHomelessness” to advance the on-screen character, John, towards his goal of overcoming homelessness. The minions in the game are typified as giant spiked balls descending slowly from the top of the screen, each of them representing a factor that prevents people from overcoming homelessness. Each tweet advances John a step towards his goal. If John is kept waiting at a spot for too long, he will be crushed by a giant ball, and the game will reset. The game demonstrates how a virtual experience could generate a social footprint in the real world.