As the final days of the US election wind down, there's one more election game to report. Debate Smash 2008 was created by students at the ITU Copenhagen. Yes, it's "another" Presidential debate game, one that also borrows the core mechanic of the classic coin-op Pong. But in Debate Smash, the player has to choose a bat that corresponds with the position the selected candidate takes on an issue, which in turn is represented by an icon inside the ball. The game can be played single player against the computer or by two players on the same keyboard.

The tennis bat quick-change is challenging because it's hard to remember which icons correspond with which positions, but after a while this variation adds something quite interesting to the core ping-pong gameplay. While the game doesn't offer a detailed explanation of the political differences between Obama and McCain, it does at least offer some explanation, a welcome respite from a deluge of Sarah Palin shooting games.

One of the topics that came up in the comments section of my recent Gamasutra article on election games was the relative difficulty of making a significant political game under the time constraints of an election. Like many such games, this one was created in short order; Alex Hartfelt, one of the developers of Debate Smash, told me around three days total. Gonzalo and I have written about our experience working under time constraints on the Dean for Iowa game in 2003, and it's a problem I appreciate. But thinking more generally, beyond this particular example, perhaps one of the problems with political games is precisely their tendency to hide behind the time constraint as an excuse for not having delved deeper into the issues. Certainly there is a place for simple games created in short order, but I remain disappointed that fewer games take on political topics more genuinely. One game from the last year that I left out of the column is Democracy 2, an interesting example of a more complex game political game, albeit one with a more general focus, rather than one directed at the present election.

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