Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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
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.