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In These Games, the Points Are All Political
bettiwettiwoo writes "A New York Times article (free reg. req.) highlights a new trend in games, and political marketing: openly political games. Both Republicans and Democrats are developing games with political messages, albeit using slightly different strategies. A featured developer, Persuasive Games, is open about their not-so-objective objective: 'We design, build, and distribute electronic games for persuasion, instruction, and activism.' But would that be declared on the games so produced? And would it matter if it did? In such times of artful manipulation, it is actually quite a relief to find that not all politicos are sophisticated high tech geeks: the Long Island Political Network invites you to play... Tic Tac Toe."
Can you actually win against that annoying computer player in Tic Tac Toe? I spent like 15 minutes trying!
That the only winning move in politics is not to play?
Propaganda's greatest victory has been convincing the world it no longer exists.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Seems like nothing these days isn't politically influenced. Documenteries, games , news reports. /me puts on tinfoil hat and goes to russia
you shouldnt forget the games page over here
you mean a game like this? ;-)
Bush Game
Tom.
Oh arse
Politics!
Next thing you know they'll try to invade the movies!!!
Tic-Tac-Toe...I guess that's appropriate for the intelligence level of most of our politicians of today.
I think I've worked at enough failed dot-coms to know why this is happening. Basically, they've got budget X, to maintain the Web site for these political nitwits, and they have to spend it somehow, so that the Corporate Man will keep the greenbacks flowing next time around.
So, they have to piss it away somehow, but really...how can you piss away a great big budget just creating some CMS to handle the candidate's boring "news alerts" and other shit that no one reads? Hence, here comes the "brainstorm", and they all come up with the same bunch of tired old ideas to waste the money and justify their jobs that we've all implemented in the past. You know, polls, "online communities", and Flash games! "Young people like games. We need to lure young voters. Our game will be so kewl that they will all like flock to polling booths and totally elect us!"
And then these stupid little wastes of hard disk space serve to preach to their already converted Beavises and/or Buttheads who are all like "this is so cool...i can like...shoot money with president bush's head...heh heh, heh heh".
Or maybe not. Maybe it's brilliant political strategy.
gameDB
You can find links to several political games here.
I've developed a web-based multiplayer politics game called Political Asylum. It focusses on the campaigning to get elected rather than running the country.
- Allen Pike
Altering time, one time at a time.
Slashdot walkthrough for LI's Tic Tac Toe
Don't start the game by playing in the center square. (That's too obvious-- and it doesn't work.)
Play on the center right square, then the lower center square, then the lower-right square.
Oddly, two of the other center-edge combinations are fully protected against.
It seems particularly pathetic to karma whore as an Anonymous Coward, no?
A new trend in games? It's been there for ages. Like there's no politics in Civilization.
New York Times Link
There's no hiding the leanings of Persuasive Games when the goal is "Strategically place campaigners on a virtual map to reach out to more Dean supporters". In the same vein, there's no hidden agenda with that movie that came out last week, it seems pretty up front in the advertising. It's the messages weaved into the story lines of games, movies and tv shows, the preaching under the guise of entertainment, that gets my hackles up.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
Back in my first High School CS class, my end of the year project was an unbeatable tic-tac-toe game. It had nifty features: Save & load (for those long tic-tac-toe games you can't fit into one session). And I could created save files by hand, so I could load games where the whole board was Xs (or Os), or some such impossible combination. Also this allowed me to be the only person that could beat it (create a save file by hand that was at a point that I could force a win). That was a fun project.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
Q> What is the difference between a board game and a politician?
A> The board game doesn't lie to you.
For problems, seek only the simplest solution, complexity brings with it more problems.
.....what, you mean America's Army ISN'T political?
;)
With tinfoil hat on, it could certainly be argued that every game based on a real-life situation is political, at least subliminally - think about it, how many games have you seen where you play a US Army / Secret Service / CIA / NSA / whatever operative, on a secret mission to stop those evil nasty gooks who are hell-bent on destroying freedom (aka USA) at all costs?
Couldn't it also be argued that every single one of these games contributes on some level to the message "America is great - it's those foreigners you should fear and hate. Stay at home son, and join the US Army!" ?
Just out of interest, how many games have you heard about where you have to stop domestic terrorists?
I'm not trying to claim a deliberate attempt to indoctrinate, just that if you take a step back and view it from the outside (confession:I'm a Brit) then market forces have dictated an unnerving consensus.
OK, OK, I'll take my tinfoil hat off now. Here, I'll even give you a start : -1 Troll
http://instantbadger.blogspot.com
One of the main challenges I came across in developing a political game was that politics aren't inherently very fun. A racing game or hockey game that leans to the simulation side can still be really enjoyable, but an accurate political simulation tends to be slow-paced and not scale well to large numbers of players. Of course the easy way out is to add fun stuff like assassinations, the mafia, etc....
- Allen Pike
Altering time, one time at a time.
So a few weeks ago the Republican National Committee comes out with Kerryopoly, apparently criticizing John Kerry for being rich. Yes, that's right, republicans criticizing someone for being rich. The response? Contractopoly from the Centre for American Progress, where you get to collect no-bid Iraqi rebuilding contracts. There's an expression to do with pointing out the splinter in your neighbour's eye while not noticing the plank in your own, I think it might apply here.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
Example: www.bushgame.com
:(
I've played it to the end, and the most annoying thing was how long it took to kill the Bosses.
It's meant to have a ridiculous plot, does have kinda cool graphics, and it got just a bit too preachy towards the end - but the reason I actually finished it was *for* the little info snippets.
E.g. the presentations on the Death Tax, and the percentage of tax breaks going towards the top 20% & 1% earners in the US.
The political bias is pretty open right from the start, but what I found really worrying is I'm not seeing how someone else could come up with a more positive spin on some of those stats - other than covering them up, of course.
And last note, the most disturbing thing about the Voltron sequences for me was - the balls move...
---- I've fallen, and I can't get up.
There's a flash game out there that's basically just an advertisement for the "punk" clothing store that hosts it. It has "bushgame" in the name. If anyone links something in this discussion containing "bushgame" in the name, DO NOT FOLLOW THE LINK. REALLY. TRUST ME. IT'S ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE. The graphics are ok but the game is awful and the message.. just... ugh. It has about the maturity level and persuasion of a decal of Calvin peeing on a picture of George W Bush.
Again: I'm not warning you against this game because it attacks GWB, I'm strongly in favor of attacking GWB. I'm warning you against this game because it attacks GWB and *does a bad job of it.*
- Super Ugly Ultraman
Be sure to check out Stardock's The Political Machine! It's free to their Drengin Network subscribers. The Corporate Machine and Galactic Civilizations were big hits, so they decided to make a political sim! Check it out! http://www.politicalmachine.com/
but this is an anti-bush side scroller. The gameplay is pretty boring, but the intro is hilarious.
Ever since Space invaders. This was a Japanese game, so the imagery is a little difficult for westerners to comrehend, but the metaphors are there for those who take the trouble to look.
More recently we've had Tomb Raider, which is an ironic campaign against the objectification of Women, (ironically, the irony backfired), and Grand Theft Auto, protesting against the innefectiveness of the criminal justice system.
I'm even more impressed with the other game, just below Tic Tac Toe: "Guess the number". Very nice game. I like the old-school spirit of your politicians.
... one of the Republican games???
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
We all know, that today even the process of getting "pure" facts is political.
I mean, there is nothing wrong with manipulating the process of aquiring and distributing data. I just think it's funny, that those same people manipulating the data, believe in their own manipulated data and base their decisions on that. And even funnier, are wondering why things are not working the way they want. (Weapons of Mass destruction anyone? Or manipulated corporate accounting?)
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
I followed one of the links, clicked around a bit and ended up bearing witness to this travesty .
It reminded me of a game that never quite made it to market. You can read about it at this highly educational site . [NOTE: Once you get to the page, please do a text search of the page for the words "cheers me up." Sorry for the inconvenience, but it's a long page and I can't figure out a way to link directly to the material.]
Clay
I'm sorry, I'm just not clever enough to come up with a signature line.
People often write a book in order to convince others to agree with them about something.
See religious books, textbooks, "popular science" books, travel guides, etc. for examples.
A lot of fictional works also exist in part so that the author can try to convince others of something (you know the "moral of the story"...)
In fact I suspect most works of art (using the term art generally) do this. Sure some paintings exist solely so that the painter could try a technique out, but many of them are also making a point be it political, social, philosophical, or just an observation.
In fact lots of works of art were created with the main goal being the "preaching of a message". See those hollywood films of WWII vintage that were made in order to "raise moralle" and inspire the populace to fight against the forces of evil.
Simcity says something about the costs and benefits of various power generation techniques (whether it is vaguely correct or not), and "the environment" is certainly a political issue these days. Simearth did so (the environment not power generation) to an even greater degree.
Making a game in which the "message" is the primary motivator isn't an issue to me, lots of other things are made that way...
'Mr. Blaser considers the game to have been a success. "The bang for the buck was worth it," he says, pointing out that $20,000 buys little television time, which is fleeting anyway.'
I probably would to, if I had that sort of advertising budget, but the games are not a new idea, putting a message in them, not really.
Example: Elf Bowling
Theres millions of people looking for cheap, easy, short term entertainment and relaxation. These are games that have piratically no learning curve. (maybe read what keys do what, after guessing a few common options) and can be easily put away when the boss is walking down the hall, or to take care of whatever home matters that need intimidate attention when they arise.
People happen to be browsing a website, theres something entertaining to do, if only for a few seconds (even I'm guilty of netting the monkey in the banner add for whatever product it was, to see if it was somewhat interactive) It was a few seconds more, that the longer 'impression' was there. If nothing else,it's less time that they have to spend on their competitors website.
If they can get someone to listen to their point, in an unobtrusive, truthful manner. Deceptive advertising is bad advertising. All the better.
The real question would be, what message are they preaching?
Why can't we just try to negotiate with the spawn from another dimmesion. If they can't be communicated with at least they deserve to be protected as endangered species. Shooting something with a nailgun simply because it has several rows of teeth and is charging is pure military industrial facism.
Cue the debate on if mrs. pacman was a front for womens liberation...
my other sig is a commando
anti-republican fix at BushGame.com. Requires flash, but quite hilarious.
-- My hovercraft is full of eels.
The character cut-scenes were hilarious and so are their super-powers. The Howard Dean scream attack and the Hulk Hogan attacks had me rolling. The Republican Evil-Boss caricatures were funny as well.
Hello,
Your tic tac toe game is too difficult. I cannot win.
Cheers
well said. "US Army" or "Bad Guy". Hmmm, and people wonder why some countries are nervous of the USA? ...
Mind you the parent post does make the good point that a valid point of games is try out alternate scenarios within a historical context, "what if's".
Do they refuse to hire coders, graphics people, sound people etc, if they disagree with them politically? These people put their heart and soul into the game. I don't suppose the easter eggs from a different-minded employee would go over well.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
If you read business newspapers, they compare game turnover with movie turnover etc. Games are like TV, or music or whatever. Of course they are going to get political. All media are.
Furthermore, if you deconstuct them, ALL games are political. Games involving trading are pro-capitalist, right? War games and street fighter games promote the use of violence to resolve conflicts, a very political statement (see the transatlantic Irag discussion). Barbie games are anti feminist, etc etc
Also, the points don't matter. That's right - the points are like writing letters to your congressman.
We're gonna start this election with a hoedown...
Note that Deus Ex plot already predicted the government/terrorist cross dependency and public manipulation, in 2000.
There you are, staring at me again.
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." - Kristian Wilson, Nintendo VP, 1989
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Soul-sucking registration no longer required to read the NY Times online! Check out BugMeNot.com for usernames and passwords -- there's even a Firefox plugin, or a JavaScript bookmarklet for those of you who haven't seen the light yet.
I just don't believe it! The president will be elected based on who has the funniest game? Or at least games are used to influence votes?
Politics isn't about games. It's all but a game. It people think about politics as a game or is they are influenced by it, then where will this world go?
Matters are far to complex already on a local scale let alone on a nationwide or worldwide scale.
Privacy is terrorism.
...that being "in the game" also costs time, money and effort.
"Remember: politics is the conflict over the distribution of values and burdens."
Politics is a shim layer over the real conflict - the conflict between those who contribute to society and those who consume from society. Not just on an economical level, but also culturally and socially.
The same effort you could put into politics, you could also put into becoming a creator of value for society. That is power too, as great or greater than politics. And even politicians have learned that you don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
WINNERS DON'T DO DRUGS!
I remember being told not to do drugs before playing a disembodied face running through a dark maze, eating pills and ghosts. Do they still have that splash screen on arcade games? I remember a satirical rendition of George Bush Sr. saying that on an arcade machine in the Simpsons a while back...
It would be really funny to see GWB Jr. do a public service announcement like that. "Remember kids - Winners do lots of drugs, clean themselves up to be an oil executive, and become President!"
There was one political game I remember playing on the Commodore 64 called Tyrant. But there were other ones called "Dictator 64" and "Banana republic" as well
Anyway, in Tyrant you played the dicatator of an impoverished third world country, which is slowly falling to pieces and going into higher debt and inflation. You had to survive as long as you could before the next cout de etat. The game was *just* about impossible to win. You would try and stave off the coutry's problems as long as you could, but eventually you would bankrupt the country and get ousted.
Finally, I played the game enough to find out a secret on how to actually MAKE money and become a really wealthy country. I don't think the authors intended anyone to be able to do this, but anyway.... the methods needed to do this in the game were, well,... shocking to say the least.
What you had to do first was to get a huge army and smash all the surrounding countries with an iron fist. Then slowly convert your army into a huge secret police force. Then convert from Communism to a Democracy and hold elections. Then tax the population of everything they have (100% taxation) until the population was really angry. At election times, you spend a fortune brainwashing the populace to vote for you... and somehow that worked to get you relected again. To counter unemployment and deal with population growth, you send everyone into the secret police force. Crime is not an issue because you've effectively got a big brother police state.
Somehow the game mechanics let you amass money every year doing that, and you could stay in power indefinitely. So you end up with a police state which conquers all the other countries with a powerful army, taxes its citizens through the nose and takes all its property, pretends it's a democracy and then brainwashes its citizens during election times.
It shocked me because it sounded almost too close to home.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
That gag actually came from British comedian called Marcus Brigstocke.
See this page on his website for details.
Pepsi presents "Electoral Math!"
Oblig. Simpsons quote:
Troy: [on TV] Now turn to the next problem. If you have three Pepsis and drink one, how much more refreshed are you? You, the redhead in the Chicago school system?
[a window opens up on the screen to show the girl]
Girl: Pepsi?
Troy: Partial credit!
Noam Chomsky's punch out; Do CD (Civil Disobedience) in one of 5 locations and try to get yourself knocked out by state troopers or arrested.
Sim Iraq - Try to Govern an Iraqi province amidst street wars, bombings, and counter insurgents. Will opening that Liquor store pacify residents or will it create a band of brigands who want to kill you? Find out in Sim Iraq.
Axis and Allies; The Cost of Empire
Play as the United States and England against most of the rest of the world. Try to finish your game within the time limit or you may not be re-elected.
Bill Clinton's Dating sim;
Includes "Arkansas Governor" and "U.S. President"
levels. As you raise your profile (and other things) your ability to attract increases, but you'll also face more politically powerful enemies.
Try our new 'hentai' expansion pack. Includes Asian girls and tentacles.
Conflict appropriate custom chess sets.
Warcraft mod pacs to change the characters into political figures with appropriate slogans.
Bush
"I'm a reformer with results",
"Saddam. 9-11. Saddam. 9-11"
"They misunderestimated me"
"All your votes are belong to us"
*and if you keep clicking*
"Hey Rovie, what do I say next"
"I'm a uniter not a divider so you're either with us or against us"
Political Jeapordy
Any kind of trivia game is easily attapted to any political persuasion. I can see it now. Get Bill O'Reilly hosting "who want's to be a Republican Millionaire"
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
All the tedium of canvassing in one flash game. And they wonder why voters are so cynical? ;)
What would be more interesting is if they'd avoided the obvious arcade-style game and created something that made the player think about the consequences of voting yea or nay on a particular issue. There's an old edutainment (yuk) title called Hidden Agenda that puts you in the role of a newly-elected president of a South American country, giving you the chance to appoint your own cabinet, influence policy and make decisions affecting your country. The game is exceedingly difficult, and is thought-provoking precisely because it's nigh-impossible to "win" - every decision angers someone.
In the same vein, the old Yes Prime Minister game showed how policy can be distorted and seemingly innocuous decisions could become controversial in a much more thoughtful manner than these Flash efforts.
Okay, so the games are probably a gimmick to increase site hits more than anything, but I'm disappointed they didn't see the scope for doing something different.
As these games might have an undue influence upon the moral character of our youngsters, and sap the productive hours of our adult labor force, I move that they be banned.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The EU is launching a game called honoloko that teaches young kids to be environmentally sensitive.
"How...about...global...thermonuclear...war?"
blog |
Here's a very simple flash game: John Kerry Medal Toss (mirror)
"With John Kerry's Medal Toss you get to throw your military medals over the fence onto the White House lawn just like he did. Now you might not think it is right to throw you medals away in some kind of symbolic action, but that's okay they're not really your medals."
This is probably off-topic, but IMHO you're applying the lessons from the dot-com boom in the wrong context.
It's a different goal here.
What dot-coms had as a goal, and where they failed, was making money. That was their failure.
They (or enough of them) did not fail at getting readers on their site. All those forums and chatrooms and flash games actually worked monumentally well to get people to visit the site often.
The dot-com problem was that noone had a plan to make those people pay. You had a horde of people trolling your forums, reading your articles and clicking on your site all right. In some cases enough of them that the bandwidth costs alone piled up like crazy. You just didn't have them reaching for the wallet.
In this case, however, the goals are a bit different. You don't want necessarily people to pay a monthly fee to access the site. You want them to at least come back and read the candidate's boring "news alerts".
And I'd say that to that end some of those dot-com tactics weren't _that_ bad.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Middle, bottom right,bottom middle, top middle.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
From the source for each page:
<!-- Copyright (c)2002 Site Meter -->
// numberguess is by Lancer - written 4 Jan 1999
// lancer@kp.planet.gen.nz
No mention of any open or free license.
Tax breaks for the top earners (or you if you get that far) help:
Draw the top earners to the country. (there's a reason they get so much money, and it's not because there crap.)
Allow the top earners put more invetment into the things they think are good to invest in.
and probably a few other things.
The prople is, when the 'top earners' got there by being in someones pocket, or being the child of xyz and not by being shit hot.
Oh.. and I'm liberal far left. (In my world you wouldn't have to be in someones pocket, everything would be free).
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
even have one on their site
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
I'd like to point that the game doesn't use an optimal strategy. You can actually win with this implementation!
Now to say that a politician is too dumbe to win a tic tac toe game...
> the conflict between those who contribute to society and those who consume from society
> you could also put into becoming a creator of value for society
But would you really want to create value for society which only consumes and gives you nothing in return?
> And even politicians have learned that you don't bite the hand that feeds you.
You shouldn't count on this. Politicians do not necessarily know which hand feeds them, and they certainly do not know how it does it.
In Rainbow 6 you fought domestic terrorists and foreign. In Swat 3 (I think it was 3), you fought all sorts of people from foreign extremists, to trailer trash (One of my favorites). In Pac-Man, you fought ghosts, which one could assume were of local origin. Does the last one count?
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
But considering how polarized the country is right now, arena red states vs. blue states might be better than a civil war.
What about making a political version of GTA?
... and many more! (The Rastas, The Pacifists, The Moral Minority, etc. etc.)
:-)
GTA Capital City D.C.
The factions:
- The Dems: they'll approach you to tax you (lose money)
- The Reps: they'll kill you on-site if they see you steal an expensive car.
- The Greens: they drive electric cars only.
- The Reds: drive Lada and run vodka stores.
- The Krishna: always on foot. Street cannon fodder.
- The Maos: they ride bikes and wear the same shirts.
-
The missions:
The Reps will ask you to drive over members of all other groups, and once the neighborhood is clean they will call Hall & Burton to run every store there is and charge you extra. You will meet the Reps boss Dub-U (a.k.a Dumb-O) and its two uberlieutenants: Chain-E and Rhum-E. Be careful not to anger them or you will get 8 stars (stealth bombers will appear).
The greens will give you a golf buggy (electric, of course) and ask you to close down all gas stations in town. Once you do that, everyone will be forced to use a golf buggy. The nuclear plant is also on their list, but that is another mission.
Come to Capital City! The people will give you a big smile, a hearty handshake (and while at it, will pick your pocket with their free hand).
Capital City, where you literally eliminate your opposition.
U want a political game, check
http://www.emogame.com/bushgame.html
(its all Flash, btw)
Game Walkthrough: ...
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
Click 5, 9, 8, 2. You Win! always
It makes the correct (i.e. by the book) second move, but it can't followup. It also falls for the other triangular traps:
Top right, lower left, lower right, middle right.
and
Middle, bottom right, bottom left, bottom center.
So it's a real politician: Simple ideas about how to things work (based on a cursory examination of what the experts have to say), but no deep understanding... which leads to the floundering failure of the incompetent.
You had to survive as long as you could before the next cout de etat.
Coup d'état
I'm not trying to be a spelling Nazi, just spreading the knowledge.
--LordPixie
Here I am a Long Island resident and I had not hear of or played these wonderful games they provide absolutely free! Long Island Politics for President!
the Judaean Peoples Front! or was that the Popular Front for Judaea?
as i was reading your comment, i though someone should really make a video game based on all the leftists bickering about procedure in the Life of Brian. there's one side of the left you won't see in michael moore's new movie... (i've dropped out of enough groups to know. as soon we have a meeting about process i know it's all over...)
Are you trying to tell me
More like, "It's not enough for me to win; Everyone else must lose!"
Soon you'll see that in Soviet Russia the Tin Foil Hat puts on you.
In Huckmaster you play film maker Michael Moore, played onscreen by a giant round blob, who has to wonder around the landscape of Hollywood duping moviegoers that your film really is a documentary and not just a pack of half truths while leaving out facts that could impugn you're own political party. The boss on the last level is an audience you have to convince that "This Is Spinal Tap" was a real documentary as well.
What, they have already done that....nevermind.
Censorship, I say! Censorship!
Remember all the "in 2001 AD, war was beginning" spoofs?
Yes, the only winning move is not to play.
Yeah, you have a point. Especially as it works on Safari :-|
Still its a moot point that Microsoft and apple are together making a system that protects me from propagande... :)
> (Been there. Had the boss royally pissed off at me when I told the customer that, no, they don't need an uber-sophisticated custom solution to solve their problem. "Are you nuts?!! Are you out of your mind?!! We're trying to take their money, not tell them that they could solve that cheaper!!"
;)
mistake by your boss. after you tell your costumer he does not need to do this and that you say and he is happy because he just earned much money, you tell him that he DOES need to do some other thing (that is much more expensive)
> On the bright side, after that he never took me to those 6 hours meetings any more.)
hmmm. well done
Maybe, just maybe, the higher percentage of intelligent people here shows you that more intelligent people are left-leaning than right-leaning. I bet that scares you. It should do :)
> > > [
> > > you could also put into becoming a creator of value for society
> >
> > But would you really want to create value for society which only consumes and gives you nothing in return?
>
>Some people have already done something like that. They call their contribution Open Source Software
Not the same thing. People who write F/OSS do so of their own free will. Politics isn't about free will; it's about obtaining the power to force others to do your will.
Open Source: We create software and can therefore freely declare that "We're going to give things to you for the common good".
Politics: We create nothing and therefore have nothing to give. So "We're going to take things away from you for the common good."
- Hilary Clinton, 06/29/2004
I'll give Hilary this much: Hers are probably the first honest words spoken by any politician in my lifetime.
In answer to both questions: Apart from software that I write for my employer, I'm happy to give it away. I get something out of that, namely the joy of seeing my code being used.
As far as having my things taken away from me "for the common good" goes, I deeply resent it. Should I ever accumulate sufficient wealth to provide for my own needs (which is pretty fucking hard to do when much of what you earn is "taken away from you for the common good"), I'll stop producing value for my employer, for the sole reason that I'm sick and tired of feeding people who not only see me as nothing more than a milch cow, but who hate me for being a more productive milch cow than they are.
This isn't a right/left thing.
I happen to lean to the right and resent my money being taken from me by force and sent to millions of unproductive food tubes in both the bureaucracy and the underclass.
If you lean to the left, ought you not to be just as resentful that your money is being taken from you by force and sent to defense contractors, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and soldiers?
You must break the word down. Poly is the greek word for many. Tics are blood sucking parasites. Politicians then must be many blood sucking parasites.
Any suggestions on creating a political Tetris game?
/ home.tiscali.be/zoetrope/wintris
_______________________________________
http:/
>
> No, I don't want games to lecture me in global warming. No, I don't really need a lecture in whether corporations are good or bad, and which kind of party would best defend me from them. Etc
Have you tried NationStates? Online, browser-based, country-simulator. Power corrupts. Absolute power is kinda fun. Sign legislation based on randomly-generated controversial issues, sit back, and watch your country take shape under your benevolent guidance, iron fist, or both.
> It doesn't tell you stuff like "bleedin' heart liberals are costing the economy a fortune", nor "greedy right-wing powermongers are pushing everyone into poverty."
The fun part of NationStates is that it the consequences of your decisions are always portrayed positively relative to your biases. So instead of the two examples you chose, you'd see something like "Bleeding-heart liberals that formerly cost your economy a fortune are being rounded up and sent to Wharton Business Camp's mandatory MBA re-education programme", and "With tax rates of 100%, greedy right-wing powermongers' kids have been reduced to selling lemonade on street corners, but the government has begun cracking down on that."
Examples:
- The petition you are trying to get signed is a "Petition to get whiney congressmen to play video games".
- At the Compound, the Sign hanging on the side of the building reads, "Lieberman, God Sees your lies"
I thought it was pretty funny.How could I say to men: "Speak louder, shout! For I am deaf!"? -Ludwig van Beethoven
[...]
Everyone notices the obvious built-in political bias, whatever that is. But everyone sees it from a different perspective, so nobody agrees what its real political agenda actually is. I don't think it's all that important, since SimCity's political agenda pales in comparison to the political agenda in the eye of the beholder.
Some muckety-muck architecture magazine was interviewing Will Wright about SimCity, and they asked him a question something like "which ontological urban paridigm most influenced your design of the simulator, the Exo-Hamiltonian Pattern Language Movement, or the Intra-Urban Deconstructionist Sub-Culture Hypothesis?" He replied, "I just kind of optimized for game play."
Then there was the oil company who wanted "Sim Refinery", so you could use it to lay out oil tanker ports and petrolium storage and piping systems, because they thought that it would give their employees useful experience in toxic waste disaster management, in the same way SimCity gives kids useful experience in being the mayor of a city. They didn't realize that the real lessons of SimCity are much more subtle than teaching people how to be good mayors. But the oil company hoped they could use it to teach any other lessons on their agenda just by plugging in a new set of graphics, a few rules, and a bunch of disasters.
And there was the X-Terminal vendor who wanted to adapt the simulator in SimCity into a game called "Sim MIS", that they would distribute for free to Managers of Information Systems, whose job it is to decide what hardware to buy! The idea was that the poor overworked MIS would have fun playing this game in which they could build networks with PCs, X-Terminals, and servers (instead of roads with residential, commercial, and industrial buildings), that had disasters like "viruses" infecting the network of PC's, and "upgrades" forcing you to reinstall Windows on every PC, and business charts that would graphically highlight the high maintanence cost of PCs versus X-Terminals. Their idea was to use a fun game to subtly influence people into buying their product, by making them lose if they didn't. Unlike the oil company, they certainly realized the potential to exploit the indirect ways in which a game like SimCity can influence the user's mind, but they had no grip on the concept of subtlety or game design.
[...]
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Yeah, it's supposed to be a funny quotation. It's also supposed to be ironic. Ever been to a rave? It's people from the pacman generation, running around in poorly lit rooms popping 'magic pills.'
The joke is that the least likely of all games to be influential turns out to have "caused" the modern rave scene.
Make sense?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Micropoly is the Microsoft Monopoly Game! It's a parody of Microsoft that's fun to play, a free board game based the rules of Anti-Monopoly, and a political statement protected under the First Amendment.
[...]
The Goals of the Micropoly Project:
To make a political statement about the effect of Microsoft's monopoly on the economy.
To raise awareness of the original folk game monopoly invented by Quakers and illegitimately patented and pirated by Parker Brothers.
To promote the alternative Anti-Monopoly rules, invented by Ralph Anspach in 1973, that teach why monopolies are bad.
To distribute the graphics and rules of Micropoly as a free "open source" game, true to the spirit of the Quaker who originally invented monopoly.
To develop a computerized version of monopoly, that can be customized with any local theme and artwork, and played over the Internet.
To imitate life imitating art imitating life imitating art, and so forth.
Micropoly synergistically illustrates several important points, by drawing parallels between the time of the Great Depression and the end of the Twentieth Century:
Monopolies are bad, and competition is good. The original rules of monopoly require everyone to play as a monopolist. That's why companies like Microsoft and Parker Brothers like the lesson it teaches: being a monopolist is good, and in order to win you have to make the biggest monopoly. But the rules of Anti-Monopoly divide players into monopolists versus competitors, resulting in a dynamic, unpredictable, more interesting game. Competition has the same benefits in real life!
The "open source" philosophy has been around a long time before computers. The Atlantic City Quaker woman who invented the original board game spread it around to her friends for free. She would invite people over to play, and they loved the game, so they made their own copies with crayons on oil cloth. This free folk game spread around the country and was played by many people, long before Parker Brothers knowingly decided pirated it. Today we have computer networks, desktop publishing, color printers, and the "open source" model of software development, so it is much easier to spread the free Micropoly game all over the world.
Big companies abuse the patent and legal systems to pirate and exploit other peoples original ideas. Parker Brothers pirated monopoly from its original inventors, illegitimately patented an "open source" folk game, perpetrated an extremely successful propaganda campaign to convince the world that Monopoly(TM) was invented by Charles B Darrow, and aggressively drove other companies out of business with frivolous lawsuits.
They waged a nasty 10 year legal assault on Ralph Anspach, inventor of the "Anti-Monopoly" game, ruining his successful game company, even though his case finally made it to the Supreme Court and won!
As a result of his hard fought victory, the true story of Parker Brother's Billion Dollar Monopoly Swindle has been published for all to read, and it's safe to call a game "anything-opoly".
We are very grateful that he never gave up, and won in spite of Parker Brothers' dirty tricks. We thank him, because he made it possible for us to publish Micropoly, and generously offered to let us use his superior Anti-Monopoly rules, which so perfectly illustrate the point of Micropoly.
The similarities in the monopolistic behaviors of Parker Brothers and Microsoft should be obvious.
[...]
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Bush Age : Soldier of Fortune 2 (with godmode on, and no political backlash)
That guy is so damn weird. Sea of fire, here we come!
As ever you ammericans are behind the times on this! The Guardian published a similar article a couple of months back: The Role of Play.
My personal favorite idea for a political game would be a god game with the whole world instead of a city. You would play the UN,WTO and other global orginisations. Missions might be things like: "Feed the world", "Eliminate Poverty", "Stop Climate Change" but I've a feeling these might be a bit tricky.
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
"From the names of our fallen soldiers to the gradual withdrawal of our allies to the growing insurgency, it's become all too clear that facts in Iraq have an anti-Bush agenda."
Games like Super Mario Brothers gave kids something to do and brought them together. Making games overtly political might, instead, polarize kids against eachother, because of how their parents will be buying the games. Instead of deciding whether a game is too mature or too childish, the parents will decide whether a game fits in with their political ideology. However, the child will be unaware of that decision--it's just a game to them. I'd rather see children understand via argument why government is too big or too small, for example, than have a pleasure-reinforcement mechanism encode it into their brain.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
Of course, the real beauty of this game is that it has multiple means of getting to a victory.
For instance, you can also go
3, 7, 9, 6
Or even, if you want to see things from a different point of view
7, 3, 9, 6
Quite complex really.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
The best and funniest game I've ever seen is Bushgame. It's an extensive Flash-based game with tons of educational content. In the game you get to play a host of characters including Howard Dean, Michael Moore, Howard Stern, Rosie O'donnel and each has special powers to destroy enemies... it's worth playing just to see the special moves each character has... totally hilarious.
Just in case someone decides to try to patent this. As far as I know, the idea was first mentioned in Donald Kingsbury's novel "The Moon Goddess and the Son" in the early 80's. He had the Americans building games as political propaganda distributing it in the Soviet Union to undermine faith in the Soviet Union.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Nope, I just think everthing isn't about politics or at least it shouldn't be. I can't think of anything less fun that a Bush or Kerry video game...
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
Command & Conquer; while on the surface, it provided two options, "Playing the Good Guys or the Terrorists", thus appearing balanced, what it really did was make people salivate at the jaw when operation 'Iraqi Freedom' launched. --Cuz everybody who played knew two things; 1. 'terrorists' are very bad and have their own tanks, 2. The endorphin rush of winning a tank battle is as good as sex.
Grand Theft Auto. . ? Come on. More political mind-programming; "Bad guys are really bad guys, and we need fascist laws and lots of big prisons to keep them all in check! Heck, if I get my rocks off by killing hookers, then what about people who are actually criminals? Ooooh. Scary!"
The Sims "Money! Materialism! Pretty People! This is LIFE, and you are a LOSER if you do not strive to emulate these false markers of 'success'." --Follow the model of the 'Sims' and you are on a one-way ticket to a soulless existence and financial slavery. With all your time and energy eaten up chasing materialist bullshit desires, your chance for soul development, the reason we're all here, is shot. And again, this is a goal of the Powers That Be.
Video games are one of the most powerful mediums of mind-programming and behavior modification in current use. This is not a new thing.
-FL
The problem is really with subliminal messages in games, and when they try to represent "real" life, like when you raise taxes in Sim City. Sure you can also see political messages in all media that you see/read/listen. Its better to bring the biases upfront so everyone can judge for himself.
You should know better than this Trollip. Cite your source!! While that's a pretty nifty definition you've got there. Why don't you tell us where it comes from? Since I work in a library, if it came from a print source, I can always go and verify it. I'd be more than happy to do so.
A note on your definition. It sounds like a perfect description of Bill O'Reilly, Fox News, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, et al.
You can try to ignore me all you want, but it's not going to make me go away little man.
Un-news
Check this thing out. It's cute and informative, but be wary!
Howard Dean? John Kerry? These guys are not saviors. Not even close. Dean was a ranking member of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League before he got into the presidential race. This guy was one of Israel's pawns, and it's a good damned thing he got washed out of the electoral process.
J. F. Kerry is worse. He's got two grandparents of Jewish descent, and is being promoted by the Zionist-owned media, (ie, ALL media), as the only logical choice. A video game? I'd love to know more about who financed and created, 'Bushgame'. ANY money says it leads back to Israel.
The lunatics in charge of Israeli foreign policy are NOT representatives of sane Jewry. Zionist policy, despite its outward claims, is very, very much anti-Jew. Rothschilde money, and darker sources, were instrumental in originally setting up Israel and putting all the Jews in 'one basket' for later termination. The current world herding techniques are leading towards a spectacular bit of mass-genoide of all Semites, with the destruction of the Jews aimed as being the crowning achievement.
Watch the patterns.
John F. Kerry, ('JFK'; yes, these stupid Hollywood techniques at emotional manipulation work; that's what 9-11 was all about), is as hard-line as Bush Jr. with respect to the Semitic peoples of the world; the destruction of the Arab nations will continue and increase under Kerry. And when the chaos is at peak levels, Israel will finally be attacked and overwhelmed.
Voting is not going solve anything. There are other ways of surviving the unfolding trap which has been planned for us by the farmers of humanity. But they require one to learn as much as possible about ALL matters regarding history, society, money, mind-control, spiritual energy, and the 'wierder' stuff, like aliens, crop circles and the occult and various religions. It's all interconnected, and only through understanding it all will you be able to grow from the whole experience that the Earth and human race is going through right now.
-FL
As I recall, in Leisure Suit Larry, if you didn't wear a condom, you died. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was being brain-washed by the liberal establishment with their pro-contraception, sexually -tolerant ideas.
The game logic of the tic-tac-toe game linked to by this thread is flawed. I was able to repeatedly win by starting in the center square.
...quicker, easier, more seductive the darkside is...but more powerful, it is not.
Really now? Given the overwhelming political corruption on Long Island, corruption that has its tentacles into every part of public life, the game should be re-named Tic Tac Dough.
Julia Cameron
Oich ù agus hiùraibh éile
> The reason Socialism always fails is that
> productive people soon figure this out, and the
> non-productive are helpless without them.
That is not the reason. The reason is that eventually non-productive people create enough legislation, police, and excessive population, that productive people find that either their labor is completely devalued, or hated (as it was in the early days of the Soviet Union), or legally impossible (ever tried starting an airline?). So they go out of business; but I doubt that most of them ever figure it out.
> They call their contribution Open Source Software.
People write free software for their own pleasure, but they give it away because it costs them nothing. They would never be able to sell it, since most OSS is not good enough for anyone to buy, so there is little reason for them not to give it away. Sharing code that has no value does not impoverish the sharer in any way.
Yeah, just like half-life. Sounds like some "great Cristian Action"(tm)
Whoa whoa... settle down there Twirlip. You're getting all hot and bothered now. That leads to irrational thought. Count to ten or something.
Look. It's all about balance. Since life is complicated, we'll talk about this in simple terms. Imagine a world where the resources were evenly split amongst all of it's citizens with much of the resource left over to account for some population growth. For the good of their fellow citizens, these people have agreed that they will take only what they need and give back what they don't. They have also agreed that when the population begins to increase to a treacherous point, they will forfeit the right to procreate until the population comes back down to manageable levels. The system works and it works well because people are truly responsible. But it's not "self responsibility" as a lot of libertarians like to rattle on about. It's global responsibility. The acknowledgement that each of their fellow citizens is their responsibility. It's a beautiful thing because it keeps everything balanced and in harmony.
You and I both know that this kind of system is impossible in this world. But, the thing that makes you different from me, is that I actually strive to achieve this. This is why I work in a public library instead of for a corporation. I'm doing something for my fellow citizen. There are other people who agree with me and also try to achieve this. Doing this doesn't require wars or ugly politics, it just requires a few ounces of compassion. That is what you and your kind lack. You aren't interested in achieving balance. From your perspective, balance is a bad thing. You are interested in making things better for the people at the top and then throwing the scraps to the people beneath you. Then you tell them that they are so lucky to get those scraps. You use propaganda (yes, I used that word) to convince them that having a pickup truck and an AOL account is prosperity even if they live in a poisoned town and can't depend on anyone to improve the lives of their children. You see, that's the kind of lie that many Americans are having force fed to them. It's OK to be illiterate! It's OK to be uneducated! It's OK that you can't go to the library and learn something on your own! Who needs knowledge anyway when it's all too easy to use knowledge to escape from under the thumb of the culture of fear and lies that define corporate America? What little they are given is just enough to placate them, but never really satisfy them. However, they are starting to get restless. This is a good thing. I am eager to get more of these people to realize that they've been duped. Duped by the Bushes. Duped by the conservative mouthpieces of the internet, radio, television and print. And most of all, duped by people like you.
Twirlip, as much as it pains me to say this, you do seem to be an intelligent person. But you are all too eager to perpetuate propaganda (dammit, I can't seem to avoid that word when it comes to you)! That intelligence is wasted on a self-serving campaign that really DOESN'T have the well-being of other people at it's core. You tell people one thing but leave out all the other problems that come with that thing. As soon as someone disagrees with you, you suddenly become "tired" of that person or you call him a liar. Or worse yet, you don't respond. I find your lack of responses interesting as I believe it means that you are incapable of spinning those particular responses to your advantage. The user List of FAILURES is right. You are a failure. You really are a lot like that Comic Book Guy on the Simpsons. Arrogant (which you've admitted to in the past), partisan and completely selfish.
Un-news
First-Person shooters, in which the player controls an elephant with a Bush head and a Kerry face on its posterior? Or a donkey with the faces switched?
... presidential elections!