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."

Comments

Are you trying to tell me

[MikeDX]

That the only winning move in politics is not to play?

Re:Are you trying to tell me

[loyalsonofrutgers]

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.

Re:Are you trying to tell me

[loyalsonofrutgers]

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...

Re:Are you trying to tell me

[doodlelogic]

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!

Propaganda's greatest victory...

[wrinkledshirt]

Propaganda's greatest victory has been convincing the world it no longer exists.

Re:Propaganda's greatest victory...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Let's clarify something. This meme has gone far enough, I think.

First, there's speech. Any kind of communication is speech. It can be phone sex, it can be trading recipes, it can be the State of the Union address. Speech is the base class, if you prefer.

Then there's persuasive speech. The purpose of persuasive speech is, as the name implies, to persuade people of something. Maybe it's to persuade people to vote for that guy, or to persuade your boss to give you a raise. Whatever. Persuasive speech is a subclass of speech.

Propaganda is a subclass of persuasive speech. It's distinguished from other kinds of persuasive speech by one major characteristic: it's unconcerned with truth.

(There are other defining characteristics of propaganda, like its reliance on mass communication, but these are tangential to my point.)

Not all persuasive speech is propaganda. For example, let's imagine there's a proposition on the ballot in a local election, proposition 251. Proposition 251 will put a big tax on people who drive cars that get less than 30 miles per gallon.

If I take out a billboard that says, "Vote yes on prop. 251 because it's good to use less gas," that's not propaganda. Likewise, if I take out a billboard that says, "Vote no on 251 because the tax will hurt local trucking businesses," that's not propaganda either. Both of those arguments are based on valid premises, you see. Both of those arguments are true. And furthermore, it's clear from the message that the intent was to be truthful. So those aren't propaganda.

Contrariwise, if I posted a billboard that says, "Vote yes on 251 to beat the terrorists," that could be considered propaganda. Because it's an argument that's completely unconcerned with truth, you see. Will a tax on gas-guzzling vehicles really have an impact on terrorism? Probably not, or at least not a significant one. So that argument could be considered propaganda.

(It could also not be propaganda; it could also simply be wrong. When you see a message that's untrue, it's usually pretty clear from the context whether the intent was to deceive or whether the intent was to be truthful and the messenger simply got it wrong.)

BUT, and here's the important thing, if proposition 252 was an authorization for war against Terrorism-Supporting Country X, and I took out a billboard that said, "Vote yes on 252 to beat the terrorists," that would not be propaganda. You see, the same message can be propaganda or not depending on the context. It depends on whether the intent of the deliverer was to create a truthful message or not.

The bottom line here is this: you can't slap the label "propaganda" on any message that you don't like, or any message on a subject that you don't like. Calling something "propaganda" when it really isn't is... well, it's propaganda.

Being able to distinguish propaganda from other types of persuasive speech is an important part of critical thinking. Simply being skeptical of everything, simply putting the propaganda label on everything, doesn't cut it.

Re:Propaganda's greatest victory...

[demachina]

"The bottom line here is this: you can't slap the label "propaganda" on any message that you don't like, or any message on a subject that you don't like. Calling something "propaganda" when it really isn't is... well, it's propaganda."

I agree with Twirp on this. In the future try to do what he does. Slap the label "lie" on any message you don't like and call the person saying it a liar and a traitor. Its much more succinct.

Re:Propaganda's greatest victory...

[Trolling4Dollars]

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.

Re:Propaganda's greatest victory...

[op00to]

Propaganda is a subclass of persuasive speech. It's distinguished from other kinds of persuasive speech by one major characteristic: it's unconcerned with truth.

Too bad you're wrong. Propaganda has nothing to do with trueness or falseness. Really. Propaganda can be "good", "bad", "true", "false", or anything else. You don't get to make up definitions to words. Linguists and dictionary publishers do.

Propaganda (n): The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause.

Re:Propaganda's greatest victory...

[oldmacdonald]

This is an interesting post, but it's also wrong. Propaganda may be entirely truthful.

From dictionary.com (or use your favorite if you
don't trust that site):

Propaganda:

1. The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause.

2. Material disseminated by the advocates or opponents of a doctrine or cause: wartime propaganda.

3. Propaganda Roman Catholic Church. A division of the Roman Curia that has authority in the matter of preaching the gospel, of establishing the Church in non-Christian countries, and of administering Church missions in territories where there is no properly organized hierarchy.

So, while propaganda need not be truthful (as you
say, it is unconcerned with truth, it need not be untrue either.

Re:Propaganda's greatest victory...

[demachina]

"At some point you just have to stop for a minute and think that maybe the problem here isn't US foreign policy, but rather terrorism itself."

Maybe you should stop trying to paint everything in black and white Twirp. The world is shades of grey. Maybe the problem is US foreign policy and Islamic extremists. Its pretty likely Al Qaeda danced a jig when Bush invaded Iraq, and when the U.S. soldiers humiliated and tortured Arabs. He knew he won a huge victory for his cause. He knew he won a whole bunch more recruits around the world, because he could say, see the U.S. is waging a war against Arabs and Islam, and humiliating us.

You refuse to admit it I know but the place to fight Al Qaeda was Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia first, and Iraq was near the tail end of the list. If the U.S. had stayed focused and fought harder in Afghanistan, where the world was behind the U.S. and pressured Pakistan to clean up the tribal regions, and pressured Saudi Arabia in to really fighting Al Qaeda three years ago then it would have been winning the war on Al Qaeda. As the original poster said the jury is still out but there is a great chance that Iraq was the worst thing the U.S. could have done if it was really trying to beat Al Qaeda.

Re:Propaganda's greatest victory...

[Free_Meson]

Same thing is at work here. If the US attacks our enemies, we strengthen the terrorists. If we don't attack our enemies, we strengthen the terrorists. If we support Israel, we strengthen the terrorists. If we withdraw support from Israel, we strengthen the terrorists. If we have corned beef on rye for lunch, we strengthen the terrorists.

At some point you just have to stop for a minute and think that maybe the problem here isn't US foreign policy, but rather terrorism itself.

I know it's a bad idea to feed the trolls, but I don't think you understand the situation at all. There are many thousands, if not millions, of sane, normal people who believe themselves justified in either sacrificing their lives to kill Americans, or in contributing to such actions. Sane, normal people don't normally do such things. Stark raving mad people don't normally do these things. Maybe if we figure out why these people are so angry and change the root cause behind that anger, we can put an end to this terrorist mennace? Merely attacking the terrorists after they've become terrorists (and committed acts allowing some "justification" in applying the US's violent antiterror methods)is not a tennable solution. Swatting the mosquito that just gave you malaria might make you feel better, and might prevent someone else from getting malaria from THAT mosquito, but it does little for you and doesn't prevent future mosquitos from giving you malaria again, once you've recovered...

Anyway, terrorism is, above all, speech. Some view it as a weapon intended to inflict psychological damage which should be shunned along with weapons meant to inflict biological or radiological damage beyond the scope of conventional weapons, but I feel this is the wrong approach. Terrorists generally fall into two groups:

1) The Voiceless. These terrorists have no voice at all in their governance. They are ruled by a government that is not compelled, constitutionally or otherwise, to listen to them, and responds to any dissent with great speed and force. Most of the Middle East falls into this group, including the Saudis, Iraqis, and the subjugated palestinians. Because they have no voice in their own government and any attempt to gain one would result in a sudden (and in many cases, US-backed) demise, they lash out at their oppressor's guardian. These "terrorists" are freedom fighters who happen to be fighting for freedom from us. Calling them terrorists is a political word game, much the same as when the British refered to American efforts at independence as terrorist acts. In most cases, all peaceful efforts have been exhausted or rebuffed, leaving these "terrorists" to ask for either liberty or death.

2) The Extremists. Extremists have a voice, but feel that they are right and that they should get their way even though the political system of which they are a part disagrees with them. The OKC bombers fall into this category, as do many of the green terrorist organizations and the American "civil rights terrorist" organizations spawned in the late 60's and early 70's. Abortion clinic bombers/snipers/etc also fall into this category, along with church bombers and others of that ilk. This is the more normal view of terrorism -- a group who loses an election but feels justified in taking violent actions to subvert the fair and just results.

The 9/11 terrorists, and most of the victims of our war on terror, are terrorists falling within the first class. While they may be extremists in the literal sense, they never had a voice, and they didn't have that voice because of the United States (and, historically, Europe). Because the U.S. props up despotic, dictatorial regimes in the middle east, supplying them with weapons, training, and aide, it is the target of these terrorists. These terrorists are fighting to have a hand in their own government, something that the U.S. theoretically views as an inalienable r

More of the same...

[random_culchie]

Seems like nothing these days isn't politically influenced. Documenteries, games , news reports. /me puts on tinfoil hat and goes to russia

bushgame

[infiniteedge]

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

Tic Tac Toe

[tomknight]

Well, I guess it's one way to get people to put a cross in a box. More people need to vote..... ;-)

Tom.

nice

[_newwave_]

Tic-Tac-Toe...I guess that's appropriate for the intelligence level of most of our politicians of today.

Re:nice

[JuggleGeek]

Tic-Tac-Toe...I guess that's appropriate for the intelligence level of most of our politicians of today.

You're a bit overly optimistic, IMO.

People are bored

[suzerain]

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.

Re:People are bored

[Moraelin]

You are partially right. Yes, a lot of companies are just focused on milking as much money as possible out of their customers.

(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 :) 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.

Re:Tic Tac Toe

[imyourfoot]

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

Political games

[Anonymous Coward]

You can find links to several political games here.

At least they are upfront about it

[velo_mike]

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.

Re:At least they are upfront about it

[fucksl4shd0t]

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.

Hmm, isn't that called 'theme'? Isn't it, like, let's see, a requirement? Otherwise what's the point of the entertainment? I'd be interested if you could dig up a few books/movies/whatever that completely lack a theme of some sort.

Maybe I've just been reading too many classics lately, but I'm happy to finally be reading 20k Leagues under the sea! ;)

Re:At least they are upfront about it

[LMariachi]

Yeah, god forbid they pollute our Entertainment with meaning and relevance.

Re:At least they are upfront about it

[Bishop]

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.

Why? Are you worried that it will make people think and change their opinions? Some philosophers would state that the whole purpose of entertainment is to make people think.

Ever since the first story telling all froms entertainment has been coloured by the creator's (or performer's) opinions and politics. An obvious example is the best selling book of all time: The Bible. Likewise the Written Torah, and the Holy Qur'an. The Roman games were designed to placate the masses so that they would forget about the struggles of daily life. In Hamlet a play is performed to draw out Hamlet's Uncle the userper. Entertainment is a form of art. All art is basically a representation of the artist's world view. It is only recently that media executives have tried in vain to remove all messages from entertainment to "apeal to a broader market."

Re:At least they are upfront about it

[Moraelin]

There's a differemce between having a teme, and having a political message or ideology to force-feed you.

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. You're not playing a Republican mayor, nor a Democrat mayor, you're just playing A mayor trying to plan your city.

E.g., take the games "Capitalism" and "Capitalism 2". Regardless of what you might infer from the title, the game actually refrains from any political comment. 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." It doesn't even try to show you any long term effects and lessons from your paying bigger salaries, or raising the prices, or whatever.

Heck, it doesn't even try to convince you that that capitalism is the best thing. It just is the premise of the game. You're an ideal capitalist, in an ideal capitalist market. (Something as inexistant IRL as ideal communism.) The game doesn't even try to model the RL or its events, but sticks to a theoretical capitalistic world, where there everything is a commodity, there are plenty of suppliers directly competing with each other, and entry barriers in any industry are low. (E.g., quite literally in the game it costs exactly as much to research and produce CPUs or TFT displays as to research and produce roller skates or biscuits.) The world just _is_ that way, there is no greater ideological enlightenment in it, now go make some money in it.

E.g., Steel Panthers. It's probably the most detailed WW2 strategy/tactics game. The theme is WW2. Yes, we all know what happened back then, we all know who were the evil guys, etc. But the game refrains from making any comment outside the scope of military combat. Whether you want to lead a battallion of German Tigers, or one of Soviet JS-2 tanks, or American Shermans, is up to you. The game keeps track of their armour slope, not of their ideology.

And so on.

Basically, again, it _is_ possible to have a theme without turning it into a lame lecture in "my ideology is better than yours." And I wish more people refrained from preaching when they design a game.

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.

Re:At least they are upfront about it

[Politburo]

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.

Re:At least they are upfront about it

[Moraelin]

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.

Tic-Tac-Toe

[Beolach]

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.

What is the difference between...

[keoghp]

Q> What is the difference between a board game and a politician?

A> The board game doesn't lie to you.

Nothing new under the sun

[Young Master Ploppy]

.....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

;)

Re:Nothing new under the sun

[meringuoid]

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!" ?

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.

Re:Nothing new under the sun

[CGP314]

Grandparent: 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!" ?

Parent: 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.

I think your use of the phrase 'bad guy' serves to reinforce the grandparent's comment, not contradict it.


-Colin

Re:Nothing new under the sun

[meringuoid]

I think your use of the phrase 'bad guy' serves to reinforce the grandparent's comment, not contradict it.

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...

Developing a political game

[timealterer]

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....

Re:Developing a political game

[loyalsonofrutgers]

What about corporate sponsorship.... Pepsi presents "Electoral Math!"

The "problem" with politics is that, on a national level, they're more akin to those hardcore war games than anything that's really mainstream fun. Command and Conquer was a lot more popular than whatever the ultra realistic World War 2 battle simulation of its day was. Not that there's anything wrong with that, though. No one wants to need a degree from the Kennedy School of Government in order to do well in a game. The key is just to seek out the parts that ARE fun and discard the rest.

Re:Developing a political game

[HBI]

Are there classes in driving your vehicle off a bridge with a woman in the passenger seat? Advanced swimming? Avoiding Authorities 101?

Seems to me that a "Kennedy School of Government" degree could be a lot of fun if structured properly!

Turnabout is fair play

[Space Coyote]

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.

Re:Turnabout is fair play

[mpost4]

well, I think it is the fact that Karry is claming to be one of the working class. And to know the problems of the working class, I don't think he can if he is rich. So I think the problem is, is that he is a hipocrite.

Re:Turnabout is fair play

[Aaron_Pike]

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.

Re:Turnabout is fair play

[protein folder]

well, I think it is the fact that Karry is claming to be one of the working class...I don't think he can if he is rich. So I think the problem is, is that he is a hipocrite.

You mean like W? "Don't pay any attention that I basically got handed Harken Oil and the Texas Rangers 'cause of my daddy. Look! I've got a ranch! I'm a regular guy!"

I don't know how the republicans can claim this sort of populist mantle in this way. Seriously, saying "John Kerry pretends to understand the working class, but is loaded with Cash Money. Who is the real John Kerry?" implies that John Kerry is pretending to be blue-collar so that he can implement some sort of nefarious scheme to dick the working class over. Meanwhile, W, who's just as loaded (on the same order of, at any rate) and is actively implementing nefarious schemes to dick over the working class gets to pretend that he is fighting for the little guy. Ridiculous.

Bushgame

[SanGrail]

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...

Re:Tic Tac Toe

[mrjb]

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?

I'm too lazy to register to read the article...

[brett42]

but this is an anti-bush side scroller. The gameplay is pretty boring, but the intro is hilarious.

Games have always been political.

[91degrees]

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.

Re:Games have always been political.

[91degrees]

Tombraider as ironic campaign against the objectification of women my arse, cynical cash in on "Girl Power" more like.

That's where it backfired. Marketing people have no concept of irony. The designers thought they'd make a strong female character with exaggerated features, and then make her totally sexless. Then marketting got involved and realised they could push the whole sex angle.

Re:Games have always been political.

[AliasTheRoot]

Lara Croft: Feminist Icon or Cyberbimbo?
On the Limits of Textual Analysis

by Helen W. Kennedy

As the title suggests, the feminist reception of Lara Croft as a game character has been ambivalent to say the least. The question itself presupposes an either/or answer, thereby neatly expressing the polarities around which most popular media and academic discussions of Lara Croft tend to revolve. It is a question that is often reduced to trying to decide whether she is a positive role model for young girls or just that perfect combination of eye and thumb candy for the boys. It is also increasingly difficult to distinguish between Lara Croft the character in Tomb Raider and Lara Croft the ubiquitous virtual commodity used to sell products as diverse as the hardware to play the game itself, Lucozade or Seat cars. What follows then is an analysis of the efficacy and limitations of existing feminist frameworks through which anunderstanding of the kinds of gendered pleasures offered by Lara Croft as games character and cultural icon can be reached. I will begin by analyzing Lara primarily as an object of representation - a visual spectacle - and then move on, considering the ways in which the act of playing Tomb Raider as Lara disrupts the relationship between spectator and "spectacle."

There is no doubt that Tomb Raider marked a significant departure from the typical role of women within popular computer games. Although a number of fighting games offer the option of a female character, the hero is traditionally male with females largely cast in a supporting role. In this respect alone Lara was a welcome novelty for experienced female game players. "There was something refreshing about looking at the screen and seeing myself as a woman. Even if I was performing tasks that were a bit unrealistic... I still felt like, Hey, this is a representation of me, as myself, as a woman. In a game. How long have we waited for that?" (Nikki Douglas in Cassell and Jenkins 1999).

When Tomb Raider hit the games market, it did so with a good degree of corporate muscle behind it: indeed the game was launched as a significant part of the Sony Playstation offensive. It was a game which deployed the latest in technical advances in games design. Featuring a navigable three-dimensional game space, a simple but atmospheric soundtrack and a level of cinematic realism previously unattainable.[1] The game also made use of a familiar and popular adventure-based narrative format. A great deal has been said already about the extent to which Tomb Raider pillages the Indiana Jones movies for its narrative structure and setting. The success of the game is arguably attributable to this synchronicity between new techniques, a highly immersive and involving game space and game narrative and the controversial (and opportunistic) use of a female lead. Lara is provided with a narrative past appropriate to her status as an adventurerwhy ital? and an aristocratic English accent - a greater degree of characterization than the norm. Certainly, fans and critics suggest that none of these factors alone can explain the world beating success of the first game and its many sequels. "Lara's phenomenal success wasn't just about a cracking adventure, other games had that too. Lara had something that hooked the gamers like nothing has before. At the center of Tomb Raider was a fantasy female figure. Each of her provocative curves was as much part of the game as the tombs she raided. She had a secret weapon in the world of gaming, well... actually two of them" (Lethal & Loaded, 8.7.01). For this fan, judging from the tone, it seems that Lara herself is at least as significant as the story or gameplay. This comment also signals Lara's status as an object of sexual desire, a factor which the marketing/advertising of Tomb Raider was keen to reinforce.

It is clear that the producers of Lara wanted to market her as a character potentially appealing to women; her arrival on the game scene dovetailed nicely with the 9

Political Data Gathering

[ooze]

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?)

Who cares

[sholden]

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...

hmm...

[(1)down]

Cue the debate on if mrs. pacman was a front for womens liberation...

get your

[Organism]

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

To: Anthony Manetta, President Roosevelt Strategy

[Snaapy]

Hello,

Your tic tac toe game is too difficult. I cannot win.

Cheers

Deus Ex

[Maljin Jolt]

Note that Deus Ex plot already predicted the government/terrorist cross dependency and public manipulation, in 2000.

Obligatory pac-man comment

[PsiPsiStar]

"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

Re:Tic Tac Toe

[A1kmm]

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

Don't forget...

[Kjella]

...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

Tyrant

[Neo-Rio-101]

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.

Wrong attribution

[Some Bitch]

That gag actually came from British comedian called Marcus Brigstocke.

See this page on his website for details.

Ideas for political Games

[PsiPsiStar]

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"

Wow...

[murky_lurker]

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.

The EU is doing this

[jsebrech]

The EU is launching a game called honoloko that teaches young kids to be environmentally sensitive.

Had to say it...

[superdan2k]

"How...about...global...thermonuclear...war?"

About dot-coms

[Moraelin]

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.

Copyright permission

[femto]

I presume the politicos are playing by their own rules and have copyright permission for those games?

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.

the beastie boys

[squarefish]

even have one on their site

But do you really want to produce value?

[Chemisor]

> 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.

Re:But do you really want to produce value?

[JWW]

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.

Re:But do you really want to produce value?

[sql*kitten]

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.

Bush Game

[SparafucileMan]

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

(its all Flash, btw)

Re:You can beat THEIR politics every time

[Sgt. Pepperoni]

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.

Great Games

[rspress]

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.

Re:To: Anthony Manetta, President Roosevelt Strate

[GoogleBot]

Yes, the only winning move is not to play.

Re:Postal 2

[silverbax]

Ah, Lieberman. The Republican who accidentally registered as a Democrat and still doesn't know it.

Politics of SimCity

[SimHacker]

From Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games. A summary of Will Wright's talk, by Don Hopkins:

[...]

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

Micropoly: The Microsoft Monopoly Game

[SimHacker]

From Micropoly: The Microsoft Monopoly Game:

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

UK Guardian article on same subject

[pfafrich]

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.