> The role of play
> Videogames with a political message are being used to win hearts and
> minds. Jim McClellan meets the creators and asks: do they work?
> Jim McClellan
> Thursday May 13, 2004
> The Guardian
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1214955,00.html
> The bleeping sound tells you you're about to play a variation on one of
> the classics - Space Invaders. But when the graphics appear, it isn't
> green aliens advancing at you, but white blocks with dollar signs on them.
> And you shoot at them with... well, the disembodied head of a smiling
> George W. Bush. Pump enough bullets out of W's cranium and you clear the
> screen to leave the message: "You've saved the country from John Kerry's
> tax plans."
> John Kerry: Tax Invaders <http://www.gop.com/taxinvaders/> isn't the only
> anti-Kerry videogame you will find on gop.com, the web presence of the
> Republican National Committee (RNC). There's also Kerry vs Kerry
> <http://www.gop.com/kerryvskerry>, a boxing game with commentary from Don
> King. It shows the Democrat challenger fighting himself, to illustrate the
> way he has contradicted himself on various issues.
> These games aren't much fun to play, even if you are a Bush supporter.
> Nevertheless, it's significant that a major political party now sees games
> as a useful campaigning tool. Presumably, the RNC thinks Tax Invaders will
> get Bush's economic policy across to "the kids". But it's hard to say for
> certain because, so far, the RNC has not talked about the games to the
> press and they didn't respond to a request for an interview.
> However, others are talking about this new campaign strategy - in
> particular, Ian Bogost and Gonzalo Frasca, two game designers/ researchers
> who contribute to Water Cooler Games <http://www.watercoolergames.org >, a
> blog set up in October to track the development of "video games with an
> agenda". "I believe in this medium as a more efficient means of
> communicating social and political messages," says Bogost. "So I'm
> encouraged when anybody tries it, whatever their political persuasion."
> Unfortunately, the games aren't that good, says Frasca. "They look like
> they were programmed by Bush himself." In particular, Tax Invaders, with
> its South Park image of bullets flying out of George Bush's head, seems
> ill conceived. "Knowing his trigger-happy approach to international
> politics," says Frasca, "this is something that may well backfire."
> Last year, Gonzalo and Frasca created a web-based game for Howard Dean's
> nomination campaign. Players were cast as Dean campaigners, trying to get
> the vote out in Iowa, the first big primary. The idea was to communicate a
> conceptual idea about growing a grassroots movement from the bottom up,
> says Bogost. In the end, 100,000 people played. Feedback was good. "People
> said they understood the idea more and that they were motivated to
> participate."
> Bogost has a background in advertising and interactive media. Frasca ran
> his own games studio and has researched the idea that games could help
> people think about the everyday politics of their lives. His essay on the
> subject, Videogames of the Oppressed, is included in First Person, a new
> anthology of theoretical writing about games just published by MIT Press.
> Bogost argues in favour of games that deliver specific political
> commentary. "When you're playing a game, you are the actor," says Bogost.
> "Reading an editorial about why it's not a good idea to send missiles into
> Iraq as a solution for terrorism will be more difficult to get into
> rhetorically, than giving you the missile and saying, you fire it."
> That's exactly what September 12th
> <http://www.newsgaming.com/games/index12.htm> does. A controversial "news
> game" created by Frasca and a team of Uruguayan programmers, it shows a
> crowded town, where Arab terrorists mingle with ordinary people. Your job
> is to get terrorists without killing civilians. But no matter how
> carefully you aim, you end up with some collateral damage. When that
> happens, lots more terrorists appear. Think of it as SimChomsky.
> Frasca says the idea was to play around with gaming conventions. The
> sniper rifle is meant to suggest the idea of a surgical strike, but when
> you fire, in Frasca's words "you create a big mess". And, in contrast to
> most games, you can't shoot constantly - you are forced to wait and see
> the results of each missile fired. So players are denied their thumb candy
> and forced to think instead.
> Critics complain that the game simplifies a complex situation, that it is
> no fun to play and not really a computer game at all, more a kind of
> interactive political cartoon. "With news gaming," says Frasca, "we are
> trying to explore a genre somewhere between the game and the political
> cartoon. These games make a point rather than entertain. If the game is
> too good, the message might become invisible."
> There are hundreds of web-based games inspired by 9/11 and the war on
> terror. Many are simple Flash-based affairs and can be found on New
> Grounds <http://www.newgrounds.com>. "For political video games, September
> 11 was the trigger," says Frasca. "If it had happened in the sixties,
> people would have grabbed their guitar and written a song about it. Now
> they're making games."
> Technology writer Clive Thompson <http://www.collisiondetection.net> has
> argued that simple Flash games are like online graffiti, quick and dirty
> personal messages delivered in the language of the web. Certainly, most of
> the 9/11 games on New Grounds feel like so much adolescent scrawl - crude
> revenge fantasies centring on beating up Osama bin Laden.
> That said, some seem to share some of the aims of September 12th, such as
> New York Defender, created by French outfit Uzinagaz
> <http://www.uzinagaz.com> and played by more than 1.5m people since
> October 2001. The game shows the Twin Towers intact. Planes approach them
> and you have to shoot them down before impact. Easy at first - but so many
> planes come, you can't get them all, so you always lose.
> Uzinagaz's Jonathan Pitcher says they didn't set out to make a political
> point. "We only meant to fight our feeling of impotence. We reacted to
> September 11 like kindergarten children, by drawing planes crashing into
> buildings. It's just some kind of release. But looking back, we find there
> is a political statement to it. Since there is no way to win this game,
> you could say that violence cannot stop violence. Or that you cannot win
> against terror by using force." That said, Pitcher does not buy the news
> game idea. "Books, not games, are a good way to deliver a political
> message."
> Molleindustria <http://www.molleindustria.it/home-eng.php>, a team of
> Italian "cognitive workers" takes the opposite view. Its site features
> games such as TuboFlex, which is about surviving in the dynamic labour
> market (more fun than it sounds) and Orgasm Simulator, in which you play a
> woman trying to keep her boyfriend happy by faking an orgasm.
> Like Frasca, the team suggests that playing with expectations makes gamers
> think. "In the real world, there's no opportunity for flexible workers to
> move up the job ladder. In TuboFlex, we show this by creating a
> frustratingly random level structure, in which there is no progression."
> Though you can't win, Molleindustria's games are fun because of the
> amusing graphics. Humour balances the limited gameplay in political games,
> suggests a spokesperson. "But we do believe it's time to get rid of the
> obligatory connection between videogames and fun - what we call
> 'dictatorship of entertainment'."
> Molleindustria says that activist games first appeared as alternative
> media flourished online after the anti-corporate protests in Seattle in
> 1999. For some time, campaigning groups have used Flash movies to spread
> their ideas virally online. Moving into games was the next logical step.
> Hence sites such as Global Arcade <http://www.globalarcade.org>, which
> uses variations on classic games such as Pong to satirise globalisation.
> Similarly, the long-running British site Urban 75 <http://www.urban75.com>
> features anti-corporate cover versions of old gaming classics. As Urban
> 75's Mike Slocombe says, his Brick a Brand is basically a variation on
> Breakout. After indicating their "brick-throwing ability" - student,
> protester or anarchist players get to bounce bricks at familiar-looking
> brand logos.
> The natural home here for political gaming (the site hosts the satirical
> beat-'em-up, Downing Street Fighter), Urban75 could perhaps lay claim to
> have pioneered the genre of interactive political cartoons, with its
> Punch/Slap games. Online since 1996, these simple Java animations let
> players virtually punch politicians and celebs by clicking on their faces.
> A click comically distorts the (over) familiar face.
> "They're horrendously simple but phenomenally popular," says Slocombe, who
> sees the games on his site as a bit of cheeky irreverence. The hope is
> that they might draw people into the Urban 75 community where they could
> find out more about the issues.
> In contrast, Frasca and Bogost think political games might be a way for
> games in general to develop into more complex expressive forms. Two days
> after the Madrid bombs, Frasca created Madrid, a game where you try to
> help candles - held by crowds commemorating the dead - burn a little
> brighter by clicking on them. "At first, people were critical about the
> idea of making a game about this, but then they realised the game was
> about solidarity and hope. I got many emails from people saying it was the
> first time they were moved by a game," says Frasca.
>

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