It is possible for young people to have a good time while learning the social value of taxes and the importance of combating fraud and corruption. This is demonstrated by the tax education video game ‘Alerta cósmica. Odisea celeste por la igualdad’ (Cosmic alert: Celestial odyssey to equality), which was presented on 16th November by the Directorate-General of Taxes (DGI) of Uruguay and the European Union's EUROsociAL Programme. Citizen awareness, the game-playing component, and new technologies all converge in this cooperation project.

In the year 2070, the planetary system is in harmony. But one day, for unknown reasons, several planets start to suffer from administration problems and inequality; the robots used to provide services start to malfunction, and many people stop working for the common good. To combat this chaos, the tax administration asks our hero Juancho, along with his adviser Athena, to travel to the affected planets to restore order.

Through the video game ‘Alerta cósmica. Odisea celeste por la igualdad’, young people put themselves in the shoes of these two agents to confront problems as important as illegal work, tax fraud, inequality, poverty, corruption, piracy, difficulty accessing public information, and lack of personal data protection.

This is an educational resource aimed at girls and boys between 14 and 17 years of age in secondary schools in Uruguay. It is available through the Ceibal Plan Platform (http://www.ceibal.edu.uy/), an initiative for promoting the digital inclusion of citizens and enabling expanded and improved access to education and culture.

The original idea for this product came from the ‘JugaT’ contest held in 2014 and involving students from schools all over the country. The winners, students at Liceo No. 7 in Salto, participated in testing during development of the video game. Besides being available to Uruguayan students, this educational resource has a regional version for the young people of 14 Latin American countries within the framework of the Tax Education Network.

The presentation and launch of the video game was attended by Joaquín Serra, Director-General of Revenue of the DGI, Laura Motta, a member of the Central Management Council of the ANEP (National Administration of Public Education), and Celsa Puente, Director of the Secondary Education Council. On the part of EUROsociAL, attendees included Ignacio Soleto, Coordinator of the Public Finance and Democratic Governance Unit; and Borja Díaz Rivillas, senior expert responsible for the Tax Education working line. They were accompanied by the three students who won the ‘JugaT’ contest: Óscar Múñoz, Nicolás Salvo, and Augusto Bonet.

• Link to the video game trailer
• Making off
• Download the video game