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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."
Seems like nothing these days isn't politically influenced. Documenteries, games , news reports. /me puts on tinfoil hat and goes to russia
Actually, that's about the surest way to lose. Remember: politics is the conflict over the distribution of values and burdens. If you're not in the game, that just means more of the former for the rest of us, and more of the latter for you.
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.
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 are only 362880 possible games of tic-tac-toe (of which some are mirror images of others), which takes a cray about 5 minutes to play (of course most of the processing power goes to the advanced graphics). What about a nice game of chess?
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
but this is an anti-bush side scroller. The gameplay is pretty boring, but the intro is hilarious.
No. I think you're trying to suggest a logical relationship between him having lost the vote and then winning the presidency. There is no such logical relationship: he won the presidency in spite of losing the vote.
Furthermore, had he never run for office the odds of him being elected would have been nil. Being in the game doesn't guarentee that you'll win, but not being in the game will guarentee that you lose. Of course, American politics are pretty simplistic (in terms of the depth of the issues)... so your interests might coincide reasonably with someone who is "in the game" ("lower taxes"), so your odds aren't completely nil. In a more generalized political system, however, each individual has distinct interests that conflict with everyone else ("tax everyone else, give me the money").
In the end, politics are kind of like armament. Sure, the best way to win a war is not ever to fight one. But if the other guy is amassing tanks on your border...
But then again, everyone I knew who ever had a copy of Command & Conquer always preferred to play as the Soviets. I played an in-store demo of Medal of Honour - the Pacific war game - and was terribly disappointed that in the excellent Pearl Harbour sequence I could only play as the Americans. I WANT TO BOMB PEARL HARBOUR, DAMMIT!
Much of the fun of historical war games is what might have been. I want to march into Rome with a thousand elephants. I want to lead the Golden Horde to Paris. I want to hang Washington for treason. I want to land Spanish troops in England and dethrone the heretic queen.
Games in which you can only follow the glorious patriotic line are just not complete. You've got to have the chance to be the bad guy once in a while.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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...
Possibly - though since history is written by the winners, any counterfactual campaign would probably be 'being the bad guy'. One scenario I mentioned that I'd like to play out was the Spanish invasion of England in 1588: it could certainly be argued that England at that time was a rogue state openly sponsoring terrorist attacks, and Spain was quite justified in acting against Elizabeth's illegitimate regime. But the Armada was defeated, and in English minds to this day King Philip was undoubtedly the bad guy...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Except that the Javascript "AI" is really good :)...
If it can win in one move, it does it. If you can win in one move it blocks it. Otherwise it calls AI() to do a predefined sequence. Perhaps it would give the wrong message if it didn't let you win.
function AI()
{
vari()
if(document.tic.sqr5.value == " " && turn == 1)
{
document.tic.sqr5.value = " O "
turn = 0
sqr5T = 1
}
else if(document.tic.sqr1.value == " " && turn == 1)
{
document.tic.sqr1.value = " O "
turn = 0
sqr1T = 1
X-Has-Sig: yes
...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
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
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.
You are partially right. Yes, a lot of companies are just focused on milking as much money as possible out of their customers.
:) Of course, it probably wouldn't get past the beancounters and marketeers, who'll likely instead want something which just screams "VOTE FOR X!!!" in your face. But still, just showing that a subtle and relatively effective politically tainted game would be possible. At least theoretically.
(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!!" On the bright side, after that he never took me to those 6 hours meetings any more.)
On the other hand, I'd disaggree that it is a waste of time. Games can be a very immersive experience, and can get a subtle message accross _very_ efficiently.
Now I'm not talking about ham-fisted smacking someone over the head with your political message. "Shoot money with president bush's head" is too unsubtle IMHO to actually do anything.
As another poster wrote, "Propaganda's greater achievement was convincing the world that it doesn't exist." I.e., the ideal propaganda (game or not) is one which doesn't look like propaganda at all. Failing that, you'll want one that can pass for non-propaganda.
The way I'd design a political game, if I had to, would be pretty much following the structure of a political speech. I also assume a big-ish budget game.
1. Start with some truths. Not necessarily good for you. Neutral stuff is good. Gets people in a mood to nod to the rest of the stuff too.
E.g., it's a fact that there's been a war in Iraq. Or it's a fact that there are homeless people. Or that there are gang wars. Etc.
Start the game with that. Don't even try to colour it it politically, unless it comes very naturally.
2. Continue with some truisms. Stuff which is technically true, but not necessarily even relevant for your message or in other ways supporting your conclusion.
By this time you start colouring stuff your way.
3. Feed them the conclusion. If you did a good job of convincing them to nod through 1 and 2, they'll swallow it too.
Remember it's about being subtle. People are more eager to believe what they think is their own conclusion, than yours. And it still has to seem a game.
Don't give them directly something like "vote for us because we'll protect you from evil offshoring corporations." Give them something which might fit the game. E.g., protecting a candidate from an assassin, sent because said candidate is opposing international corporations.
Don't give them something like "Vote for us, because we'll stop pollution." Give them a game set in a world, which, absolutely incidentally, is destroyed by polution and plunging into anarchy.
Also remember that games are rather long affairs and played in episodes. I don't think many people sat and played, say, KOTOR for 30 hours straight, from beginning to end. So you don't necessarily want a linear snowing the audience, stretched over the whole game. Several snow-jobs, following the same truths-truisms-conclusions paths, might work better. E.g., one per game level or episode.
Just an idea
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The EU is launching a game called honoloko that teaches young kids to be environmentally sensitive.
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.
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.
But would you really want to create value for society which only consumes and gives you nothing in return?
The entire philosophy of Socialism is that it is possible to persuade people, by whatever means, to do this. The reason Socialism always fails is that productive people soon figure this out, and the non-productive are helpless without them.
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
politics is the conflict over the distribution of values and burdens
I think that's much too narrow a definition, even for discussion purposes. I'd define politics as the interaction between the individual and the group.
The reason I bring this up is that this definition of politics puts the lie to the assertion that folks can just opt out of the whole thing. If you're an individual and you interact with one or more groups, you're participating in politics. You might not be aware of it, but you are.
I write in my journal
You can have a theme while mostly avoiding politics. E.g., probably the most obvious example is SimCity. Even though you're playing a political figure (a mayor), the game is actually not about politics, and doesn't try to convince you that one political side is better than the other.
I disagree. I think SimCity does show some bias, but probably not intentional. Most of my references are SimCity 3000 based, since that is the one I most recently played, but some go all the way back to SimCity Classic.
The game is clearly in support of mass transit. The game's goal may not be to get you to 'believe' in the idea, but you can't deny that the game has a message of "mass transit good" since it is impossible to grow beyond a certain size without it. Yes, it can also be explained as "That's just being realistic/gameplay," but the game still has the clear message: big cities need mass transit.
The game is also anti-corporation, very much so in SimCity 3000. There are no good business deals you can make. IIRC, they're all bad. Toxic dump, Prison, MegaMall, Casino, Defense research. They're always objected to by the citizens, and the business people are slimy caracatures. Some of them will blantantly lie to you.
There are other minor points: Smart growth and green power are featured, and pollution from industry is greatly exaggerated. Again, some of these are gameplay related. It would be silly to have to wait 50 years (half of a normal game) to go by before pollution started having effects on your city. Also, the game does not force you as much into some of these other items, but there are subtle hints here and there.
The thing that matters here is the intent. Pretty much any city simulator you come up with will have little biases built into based on what you believe and to spice up gameplay. I agree that the designers of SimCity have done a good job of not being overtly political, but it is still my opinion that SimCity doesn't, and couldn't, avoid politics.
However, the "truth" and "lie" labels aren't the only measures of propaganda when it comes to complex matters of politics, business and government. As you like to say ad nauseum when you are losing an argument, "it just isn't that simple". Not only would propaganda lie. But propaganda also tries as hard as possible to conceal things that are damaging to it's instigators. This is something the current crop of Republicans and their spokespeople are extremely good at.
For example. In my state, the Republican governor has cut tons and tons of funding that went to public schools and libraries. He is also working to undermine another source of funding for libraries in my state (LLGSF). All of this is being done, ostensibly, to save money. The people who support this are telling people that it will lower their state taxes. They are trumpeting that message loud and clear so that people say, "Oh good! I won't have to pay as much now! I'm all for it!" However, they aren't telling people that it means their public libraries and schools will be even more poorly funded than before. They aren't telling people that libraries and schools will have to drop programs and cut back on hours. They aren't telling people that a good chunk of the population who do a very important job (teachers and librarians) are going to lose their jobs. So they aren't "lying" per say when they say that these funding cuts will result in lower taxes. But they are omitting when they don't tell people that they will experience a noticeable loss in quality of life. That omission is still propaganda. The right is far more guilty of it than the left.
You're move.
Un-news
The thing about SimCity is IMHO that, basically, it's a bunch of gameplay decisions to balance, rather than bias. You can view it as either "it proves that low taxes are good" or as "it proves that you need high taxes, or you can't evolve" or anything in between.
But in the end it's your bias you're projecting, rather than the game's. I could very well play without mass transit, for example.
Most of the positives and negatives of any action exist realistically, rather than necessarily trying to hammer some political point.
E.g., overpopulation, no highways and low funds, you can see the effects in some of the urban concentrations in Eastern Europe: some of those cities ended up with their streets looking like after a level bombing in barely a few years. Very literally. Extremely high traffic and not enough maintenance does that.
Industrial polution? You can see that very well in Eastern Europe too. Some mining towns for example were literally covered in black dust. And for an example of mis-placing industry, some of those ended up with silly stuff like cement factories without filters _in_ the city. Not only were the buildings covered in dust, but just passing through the area would get your face covered in dust. It didn't take years, it took less than an hour to covere everyone in pollution.
The reason you don't see it that bad in most western towns are precisely those regulations and ordinances.
I.e., all those problems are hardly something left-wing or right-wing or whatever. They exist IRL.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.