Can a video game make 13th century Africa as popular as the streets of San Andreas or the mythical plains of Middle Earth? Can it really teach us about the Africa we don’t know?

John Sarpong, the grandson of Ashanti king Prampeh who was exiled by the British from1895 to 1924, and Adam Ghetti, a hotshot teenage video game designer, hope so. MTV News reports that they plan to release “Africa” a massive multiplayer online game this December.

"Ghetti said he thinks the setting will present gamers a welcome and surprisingly rich change of scenery. "The African mythology back from 1200 to 1400 A.D. is thousands of times richer than the J.R.R. Tolkien series of novels," he said. "Don’t get me wrong, he was an amazing individual with brilliant ideas. But that’s been milked for 80 years now."

It’s a different Africa than the one we typically read about in the newspaper. That Africa has already made an appearance in gaming’s virtual worlds.

The military spy adventure “Metal Gear," released in 1987, was set in South Africa. The opening battles between Master Chief and Covenant aliens in 2005’s "Halo 2"are waged on the African island of Zanzibar. More identifiable use of the African landscape has been equally ballistic: "Black Hawk Down” centered on gun battles in 1990s Somalia, and "Call of Duty 2" soldiered players to World War II-era North Africa.

I’m skeptical whether the virtual Africa envisioned by the two men — in which antelope roam, drums telegraph news and the king of Mali can go to war with the emir of Morocco — will usher in a new understanding of the "dark continent." But note:

Sarpong has an extra hope for "Africa": He envisions it being played in Africa. He knows that MMOs are typically the terrain of those with the high-powered computers that are required for entry. But "Africa," which will be distributed via the Internet, will be designed to run well even on the less powerful computers frequented by Africans in their countries’ cybercafes. "For the first time they can have the experience as well," he said.

If Sarpong’s dreams come true, that may be a bigger challenge to our stereotypes about Africa and Africans than the MMO itself.