Things don't go brilliantly on my first attempt at MTV's online videogame Darfur is Dying. The task ought to be a simple one: direct your character, chosen from a family of eight refugees, to and from a well outside the notorious camp's borders – without being seen. I select Poni, a 13-year-old girl in a pink dress, as my avatar, and as I hammer laptop arrow keys she pegs it across a cartoon desert, flask in her hand.

Disaster strikes 900 metres from the well, when a truck full of Janjaweed militia catches sight of Poni and veers her way. I try evasion but in a kerfuffle press the space bar (“hide”) – leaving Poni crouched on the sand in open view. The truck catches up – and a Game Over screen like none I've ever seen before appears:

“You have been captured. Girls caught by the Janjaweed face abuse, rape and kidnapping.”

I'm asked if I want to play again.

Well… yes and no.

“Games for change” – the title given simulations like Darfur is Dying – are on the rise. Packaging sour social problems in sweet addictive formats, their makers hope to shock.

The pick of this year's bizarre hits has players live the life of a conscience-plagued drone operator. Another transfers fantasy football's principles to the US election.

And next month a blockbuster arrives. Half the Sky – a book by Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn – will be transformed into a colourful Facebook game where the decisions players make channel sponsors' money to a number of charities for women.

Of course, there's room for scepticism here. Online games tend to be short-lived and faddish; causes like Darfur the opposite. And some might find the mix of real-life horror and a “fun” pastime uncomfortable.

But to me this misses the point. As somebody who spent more time as a kid playing videogames than pretty much anything else, it's exactly the blend of cutesy graphics with grim material that can give these games their emotional wallop.

When I reload Darfur is Dying, for example, Poni is ghosted out, unable to select, dead. And for the first time that makes me feel odd – at least enough to check out the “how to help” tab.

If they get the balance right, then, “games for change” could socially charge a booming market. Fifty-three percent of Facebook users play games; in the UK alone people spend 21.5 million hours per day doing so.