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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."

9 of 329 comments (clear)

  1. bushgame by infiniteedge · · Score: 3, Informative

    you mean a game like this? ;-)
    Bush Game

  2. Re:Tic Tac Toe by imyourfoot · · Score: 3, Informative

    Erm... it's easy. Go middle, lower right, lower left, middle for the win.

  3. Political games by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can find links to several political games here.

  4. get your by Organism · · Score: 2, Informative

    anti-republican fix at BushGame.com. Requires flash, but quite hilarious.

    --
    -- My hovercraft is full of eels.
  5. Wrong attribution by Some+Bitch · · Score: 2, Informative

    That gag actually came from British comedian called Marcus Brigstocke.

    See this page on his website for details.

  6. Re:Are you trying to tell me by doodlelogic · · Score: 3, Informative

    The grandparent is joking. It's a reference to War Games, quite a good hacker film about a computer applying its realisation that it is not able to beat itself at tic tac toe to its simulated model of world nuclear conflict. It realises then that "the only way to win is not to play the game".

    A computer that could perform abstract comparisons of that type would be a superb form of AI!

  7. Bush Game by SparafucileMan · · Score: 4, Informative

    U want a political game, check
    http://www.emogame.com/bushgame.html

    (its all Flash, btw)

  8. Re:Turnabout is fair play by Aaron_Pike · · Score: 3, Informative

    The parent was written by Rich Lowry, an op/ed writer for the National Review magazine. The original article, published 22 Sep 03. Lowry appears several times on Spinsanity.

    To be fair, I should mention that the National Review is not on my list of trusted news sources. But then, so are a lot of sources. Meh.

  9. UK Guardian article on same subject by pfafrich · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.