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Are Browser Games Filling the Same Role As Political Cartoons?
Amazon's Game Room Blog is running a piece asking whether modern browser games are coming to occupy the same purpose as political cartoons. The article was inspired by the variety of shoe-tossing games that sprung up after President Bush's recent run-in with an irate Iraqi journalist, as well as the games satirizing aspects of the presidential campaign and candidates. Quoting:
"The games are certainly no works of art, but they were not designed to be awe inspiring. They were instead designed to capture the moment, and immortalize it from a particular point of view that people in this particular time can appreciate, or at least recognize. ... just like the satirical editorial comics of our own past, these snippets of code will offer a window into the past, and the individually conceived past moments that it consists of."
These little flash-based games come a dime a dozen these days, and the fact that they are starting to fill such subtle niches are no surprise. That said, political cartoons are arguably read by a larger portion of the population due to their printed nature, but I could easily see the internet (a.k.a. "a series of tubes", Al "manbearpig" Gore's creation) completely replacing printed materials, especially newspapers, in the very near future making something like this inevitable.
Games, despite the prevalence of these little Flash-based ones, will probably not replace printed political cartoons as quickly as regular images and videos over the internet, but I could easily be wrong if I underestimate their popularity among regular (e.g. over age 12) users.
That said, does anyone here have a link to a website that propagates these Flash-based satirical games on a frequent basis for my own personal evaluation?
Doh. Not the same role as political cartoons in particular. This is called political satire. Yes, cartoons, web games, caricatures, it's all part of it. Why the comparison to cartoons in specific? Watch the big picture, please.
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In the academic field of game studies (analogous to film studies, though much smaller), the idea of games as rhetoric/etc. has been discussed for several years. Probably the most prominent academic who also makes games in that vein is Ian Bogost, who explicitly describes a lot of what he does as making "playable editorial cartoons". The New York Times for a while was actually publishing them on its online editorial page, strengthening the analogy (until a change of editor). He also happens to have a book on the somewhat broader subject of games as a means of commentary/expression/rhetoric, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (MIT Press, 2007).
There is also an index here of editorial-style "newsgames", i.e. games about recent news events released in a timely manner that make some editorial commentary about the event.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
There are games that plausibly serve some sort of editorializing function, and then there are games that just reference recent events, usually as a gimmick. Many of the recent Bush-shoe-throwing games are of the second sort---there is no real editorial commentary going on, it's just a generic arcade game that's been skinned with Bush and shoes. There were similarly content-free games that came out after 9/11, mostly based around revenge fantasies where you got to punch bin Laden or something.
There are some good examples of games that actually use the gameplay to make some sort of editorial point, though. From a right-wing perspective, in Al Quaidamon, you can treat a terrorist prisoner well or poorly, and a meter shows his current status. The political point is made in the balance: unless you coddle him continuously, you fall below the levels market as Geneva Convention standards (which are, incidentally, depicted as being above average U.S. living standards). From a more left-wing perspective, Airport Security satirizes the post-9/11 airport security measures through its gameplay, by depicting the changing standards of what's banned this week as absurd and impossible to follow.
(I got both of those examples from this list.)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
no works of art ... instead designed to capture the moment, and immortalize it from a particular point of view that people in this particular time can appreciate, or at least recognize.
Perhaps it's not beautiful or refined, but I'd say that's art, almost by definition.
Political satire has always found enough outlets. The web is just the modern equivalent of a guy with a basement mimeograph churning out pictures of politicians with their heads up their parties. And lowering the barrier to entry and the increasing the exposure/audience just adds up in a way that the baby boomers aren't used to (IMHO). Yeah, web is basically a complex with a mansion upfront, a huge backyard & enough fences to slow down the more agile.
On a related note, I keep occasionally hitting Sock & Awe, just for kicks. Ironic that nobody jumped in front of the shoe.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
I think Flash political games will unfortunately fall to the dustbin of history. Just the mere fact that technology changes and Flash (.swf, etc) will almost certainly become obsolete in favor of the latest and greatest file format of the future. Flash will become the .mov or .avi of the internet world. Will Flash games be preserved? Who will take the time and effort to convert them to the new file format? How many times have you encountered a Flash error even today?...Much less the future.
As for static cartoons in .jpg or .gif format, at the very least, these tend to survive because of their stability and wide-spread acceptance that doesn't seem to be waning.
Besides, those Flash games can be a little...childish(?). Whereas a cartoon has a long history of being "acceptable" to adults. Ironic, but true.
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