Games for Change 2009: Nicholas Kristof Keynote
May 28, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

I'm here at the Games for Change 2009 Festival in New York. Today kicked off with a keynote by New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winner Nicholas Kristof. Below is my rough capture of the session; my goal wasn't to capture what Kristof said verbatim, but the sense of it, so please treat it as such. ...

Bailout! the Board Game
May 20, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

In beautiful 1960s styling, here's Bailout! a new boardgame. You are the Chief Financial Officer of a bank; your institution is hanging on by a thread. You must reach BAILOUT Bank before it is too late. So, you take a chance and follow the money trail.Along the way you will be forced to undermine the competition, endure the uncertainty of the stock market, avoid hostile takeovers, deal with the instability of the housing market and your bank may even be forced to take a bank holiday. Hard to tell much more from the website, but it looks like an American-style ...

Debt Hole
May 10, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

A game after my own heart: political content and 6502 assembly. Garnet Hertz's Debt Hole is a little game about the treacherous path one's financial interests must take through 2009's "colon of debt." The player pilots a flashing pixel through a generated maze, attempting to avoid touching its walls. In fairness, the game is really just a revision of the "spacer.asm" sample game on the 6502asm.com emulator website, but it's a lovely little hack of that original. (thanks to Liz) ...

A Pig, a Watercraft, and a Credit Card
April 25, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

mtvU, MTV's college network, has held a contest each of the past three years, inviting college students to submit game designs that address a current social issue. The first of these was Darfur is Dying, about the Sudanese conflict, the second Pos or Not, about HIV. This year, the theme is debt, a most apt choice. mtvU is advancing this campaign on the website Indebted.com Brian Haveri of Milburn, NJ submitted the winning game concept in mtvU's Indebted Digital Challenge, and mtvU contracted with my studio Persuasive Games to complete the design and development. The game, entitled Debt Ski, was ...

Bailouts for your iPhone
April 22, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

PlayScreen Games has released a sort of newsgame for iPhone, a sendup of the recent financial market bailout we know about all too well. Bailout Bonanza is essentially a clone of the classic Activision game Kaboom! -- the player moves or tilts the iPhone to maneuver a bucket at the bottom of the screen, which catches money bags dropped by a Wall Street banker out of a neoclassical financial building. The game is available for 99 cents on the iTunes App Store. ...

George W. Bush Presidential Librarium
April 13, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

This isn't really a game, but it is a somewhat interactive map of a fictional theme park. From the creators of Goodnight Bush, behold the George W. Bush Presidential Librarium, offering such attractions as the Fox News Spin Zone, the Down Jones Rollercoaster, and the Prisoners of the Caribbean. All hope is not lost. We at Origen & Golan Architects are proud to unveil the plans for the George W. Bush Presidential Librarium! Themed attractions provide more entertainment than a library, and more accurately represent Bush's remarkable legacy—start by exploring The Stax, Supreme Food Court, Book BBQ, and the ever-popular ...

Layoff, the Game
March 17, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

Mary Flanagan announces a new game from her Tiltfactor lab, created in conjunction with the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) Game Design and Development program. The game, Layoff, is billed as "an examination of the current financial scandal." The game is more or less a Bejeweled clone in which players align similar workers to lay them off. There are a few important additions, however, that makes the adoption of this common puzzle design more apt. The most striking is a little biographical blurb, presumably somewhat generative, that personalizes each of the workers. It's an effective way to characterize. Another is ...

Vote for the Best Online Political Game of 2008
March 12, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

Every year at the Politics Online Conference, the Golden Dot awards are given for "best achievement in online politics." This year there is a category for Best Online Game. The two finalists are: Bush Move In Day and Dress Like Palin, both by the California Nurses Association. I'd not seen these before. Neither of them are games; they're both little drag and drop toys that give more detailed information about what could have been done with Palin's clothing budget, or about the reside of Bush policy after his departure from office. It's disappointing to see that this is the cream ...

Hit the Christies
March 10, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

The halted Christie's auction of two looted Chinese bronze figures has spawned a game, Hit the Christies. The game is, well, it's a punching bag emblazoned with "Christies" in Chinese. The player can hit it. According to the Wall Street Journal, the game has been played over 340,000 times. Despite Game Culture's claim that Hit the Christies offers more evidence that "videogames are becoming the political cartoons of the 21st century," one major difference remains between political cartoons and "games" like this one: to wit, political cartoons offer commentary (often wry or scathing) about an issue, rather than simply pointing at ...

Jetset Sale, Optional Fairness
March 3, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

I previously announced the release of Jetset: A Game for Airports for iPhone. We've finally done a formal press release about the game. As a part of that effort, we've temporarily reduced the price of the game to $3.99, so now's a good time to buy it on the iTunes App Store. We've also made a few small updates since the game since release. The most notable change involved enlarging the passenger for easier touch-removal of trousers and shoes. But the most recent update, to v1.2, is worth talking about further. More on it after the jump. ...

Executioner Tetris
February 13, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

In his book A Theory of Fun (now finally back in print), Raph Koster proposes a hypothetical modification of Tetris in which the blocks are replaced by human beings, Jews being dropped into a gas chamber by their Nazi imprisoners. In the book, the game is a thought experiment meant to illustrate the coupling between a game's abstract mechanics and its fiction or skin. I've elsewhere discussed this notion under the name "tight coupling." As Raph notes today, a Brazilian team, inspired by the idea from the book has realized the game as Calabouço Tétrico. The result features a "generic" ...

Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds
February 4, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

Rita King and Joshua Fouts send word that they have released findings from the "Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds project." The project explores how people can learn about Muslim cultures through Second Life. The report comes in three forms, one a written report about digital diplomacy through virtual worlds, one a mini-documentary (you can watch it on YouTube), and one a graphical novel produced with in-world screenshots. ...

Geo-Political Simulator
January 29, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

CNN reports on Commander in Chief, a game that lets you play the President. The title appears to actually bear the title Geo-Political SImulator 2009, and has been around at least since 2008, although I didn't know about it. The developer describes the game as "an extremely thorough and realistic simulation of the planet, at all levels: politics, the economy, environment, the military, science, culture, religion..." A trailer on the developer's website seems to depict a choice-based simulation game, but footage of army units may also suggest that it includes some RTS-like elements. I guess we'll have to try it ...

You Have To Defecate Upon King Bhumibol
January 26, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

You've seen IGF finalist You Have To Burn the Rope, right? Well, here's You Have To Defecate Upon King Bhumibol. That's Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej of course, and the game is presumably a statement of objection to Australian author Harry Nicolaides's 3-year jail sentence, handed down last week for defaming the king in a novel. (Thanks to Marcus) ...

Jetset: A Game for Airports
January 22, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

Over at Persuasive Games, we've launched our first iPhone game, Jetset: A Game for Airports. Here's the short blurb: A game for the frazzled globetrotter in all of us. Keep up with the changing rules of airport security on your iPhone or iPod touch. Play in airports to earn unique souvenirs to keep, give to friends, or redeem for prizes. The iPhone game connects to the Jetset Facebook App, where gifts and redemptions are handled. As Kotaku put it, now you can take an airport security game through airport security. Buy the game on the iTunes App Store (pretty ...

Goodbye Mr. Bush Game
January 20, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

Dare I hope this is the last vaguely political whack-a-mole clone we ever see? In honor of today's innauguration, The Huffington Post offers the Goodbye Mr. Bush game. There is a twist. You can choose items of "love" (daisies, candies) or "unlove" (eggs, boots) and see the tally of each after the game ends. Be sure to try the WMDs. (thanks to Doug) ...

The Bailout Game
January 14, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

Have you been wishing you had a say in how the government bailout of financial institutions went down? Now you have your chance in The Bailout Game, a cute-looking board-game themed romp down Wall Street in a truck full of money. The game itself is a repetitive and seemingly meaningless trudge from square to square (bank to bank), each offering the same basic question: Do you bail out: YES or NO? No matter your answer, you'll get an animation or video with some vaguely related news bit or textual riff. Occasional mini-challenges like a sweeping gas meter and a slot ...

Free Political Game for Politicians
January 5, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

Positech, the single-man UK developer of simulation games like Kudos and Democracy 2, has announced that it will give away copies of the latter game to any politician worldwide. In his Free Copies for Politicians announcement, Positech proprietor Cliff Harris describes the need thusly: The problem with running a country is that everyone who does it is entirely unqualified for the job. Every new president or prime-minister is having his or her first go at it. There are no 'practice' countries for people to have a go with before they try doing it for real. Thoery is great, but experience ...

Free Market Capitalism: The Game
December 15, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has announced a new Academy on Capitalism and Limited Government Fund, which has created quite a stir at the institution. Its supporters see it as a place to study "Western civilization and free market economics," while some faculty have accused the project of imposing ideology on courses and research. No matter, the case, here's something interesting: in Inside Higher Ed's September report on the center mentions the possibility that it will pursue educational videogames as a part of its charge: Another goal for the program is to develop video games for children — but ...

Thanksgiving Special! PETA's Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals
November 27, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

As those of us in the States gluttonize on Thanksgiving turkey, those of you who haven't seen it might want to try out PETA's "unauthorized" Cooking Mama satire Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals, which hit the web a week or so ago. Like PETA's KFC attack game Super Chick Sisters, Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals uses a familiar title's gameplay, imagery, and sound to draw fans into their desired message. In this case, the accuracy and quality of the Cooking Mama gameplay is remarkable. If only all serious games had this level of production value. ...

Missile in the HASTAC
November 19, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

The HASTAC consortium has just announced a forum hosted by their HASTAC Scholars fellows on digital games, entitled Participatory Play: Digital Games From Spacewar! to Virtual Peace to "explore game innovations that surpass violent first-person shooters and military training simulations." Here's a further description: Beginning with notable exemplars of imaginative game designs, such as "Virtual Peace," we will explore the theoretical and pedagogical issues surrounding video games. Among other topics, we'll consider the relationship between game play and game theory, changing trends in gaming culture, scholarly collaborations on game design, pedagogical uses of video games, and the social, political and ...

Pekid Oil
November 18, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Molleindustria has released a new game about the history and hypothetical future of oil, called Oiligarchy. The game feature's M's characteristic attention to detail in simulation, blended with satire and abstract cartoonishness. In some ways, the collision of procedurality and cartoon comes to a head in this game, as the devoted player will discover when he or she realizes that energy can be happily manufactured from human beings directly. Nervous about the issues of transparency in the game (a subject we're tackling head-on in the journalism project I mentioned yesterday), Molleindustria has written detailed postmortem of the game by its ...

Politics and Games at Harvard
November 14, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

It's been quiet around here! Next week I'll share the cause of it. Until then, I did a talk at Nicco Mele's seminar at the Harvard Kennedy School this week, which Gene Koo cs/">liveblogged over at his Valuable Games site. ...

One More Election Game
November 1, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

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 ...

My New Column: The Birth and Death of the Election Game
October 31, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, this one on the decline of election videogames in the 2008 cycle. Drunk on such video game election elation, I remember making a prediction in a press interview that year: in 2008, I foolishly divined, every major candidate would have their own PlayStation 3 game. MSNBC writer Tom Loftus made a similar, albeit wisely milder prediction in late October 2004: "Already tired of hearing politicians say 'visit my Web site' every five minutes? Wait until 2008, when that stump speech staple may be replaced with a new candidates' call: 'Play my game.'" ...

Truth Invaders
October 30, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

From Tax Invaders to Pork Invaders, the classic coin-op Space Invaders has been a popular source for political game reskinning. Here's yet another one, but with a twist. Truth Invaders refashions the game's aliens as factually inaccurate statements from both Presidential campaigns. As the player destroys these, segments of the sentences reveal the factually accurate version of the statement. Interestingly, the game also offers a disclosure statement about its own bias, although its method of citing sources is a bit vague. ...

In-Game Obama
October 15, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

According to the AP, Barack Obama has become thefirst presidential candidate to buy ad space inside a game. Nine video games from Electronic Arts Inc., ranging from the extremely popular "Madden 09" football game to the street racing "Burnout: Paradise," feature in-game ads from the Obama campaign. The ads — they appear on billboards and other signage — remind players that early voting has begun and plug a campaign Web site. It's sort of sad that this might be the highlight of politics in games for the 2008 election cycle. (thanks to Netika) ...

Robotron without the guns
October 14, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Such is how the creator of Consumer CULTure describes the game, which also offers "a satirical middle finger to consumerism and commercialism." The player moves around an enclosed space attempting to avoid an ever-increasing barrage of consumer objects and messages. While it doesn't take on a specific company like Disaffected! or the McDonald's Video Game, I think we can also call Consumer CULTure an anti-advergame, since its purpose is to criticize corporate practice. Also noteworthy, the game seems to have appeared originally from Retro Remakes, a forum site focused on new versions of or variations on classic games. (thanks to ...

New Game: Campaign Rush
October 4, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

My studio Persuasive Games developed a new game that CNN International has just published. Campaign Rush is a light-hearted game on the theme of politics and the current election. It's a casual click-management game in a campaign office, in which the player helps volunteers respond to the barrage of incoming phone calls, emails, letters, and the like. In addition, you can create an account and choose your party to compete for the best score. You can play the game online at CNN International ...

Palin Generator, Chatterbot
October 2, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Two similar Sarah Palin generators have burst onto the scene like a moose-bound shell from a shotgun. The first, Interview Sarah Palin is a text generator that crafts answers to a few fixed interview questions, each varying slightly as it generates itself from the same base of Palin material. The second, PalinSpeak, is a simple Palin chatterbot that derives its materials from the now-infamous Katie Couric interview, and presents that situation as its scenario. Both use Markov chain models for text generation, although as the chatterbot demands, PalinSpeak also deploys the typical inversions and defaults of that form. PalinSpeak was ...

Debate Bingo Cards
September 30, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Did you watch the Presidential debate last week? And are you gearing up for the veep debate in just a few days? You might want to stock your debate party with these lovely debate bingo cards (PDF), created by UC Irvine doctoral student Lilly Irani and Chris Countryman. (thanks to Doug) ...

US Army Invades Schools
September 18, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

The US Army has announced a "partnership" with a group called Project Lead The Way to "to enhance student curriculum by using a variety of Army technologies to promote student interest in the engineering and technical fields." Project Lead The Way is a 501(c)(3) focused on science and engineering education for middle and high school students. From the press release: The platform for the new curriculum is the America's Army PC game, a free online game that provides civilians with a virtual role in the U.S. Army by introducing them to Army technologies, Rules of Engagement, training and missions. Used ...

Free Culture Game
September 17, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Take a look at Molleindustria's fascinating Free Culture Game. The game bills itself as "a playable theory," and the theory in question is a loose amalgam of critiques of knowledge capitalism, the principle that ideas are owned and subject to control. Through its rules, the game advances the idea that the complete privatization of knowledge is impossible, however without active opposition the market will coopt new ideas for its own sake. Apart from being an interesting abstract specimen, Free Culture Game also promotes the Spanish activist collective exgae, which advances principles of free culture. This in mind, Molleindustria's Paolo Pedercini ...

Gonzalo's Obama Game
September 15, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Gonzalo Frasca, WCG editor emeritus and collaborator on theDean for Iowa Game, has just released Debate Night, an unofficial game his studio Powerful Robot created in support of the Obama campaign. Gameplay is derived from Zuma-type games; the player chooses a key issue (represented iconographically) and then uses a match-and-move gesture to swap their positions. Match three or more and they disappear, the equivalent of volleying successfully in the debate. The game both acts as a quality piece of interactive media in support of the campaign and a subtle critique of the process itself, since the issues themselves matter less ...

The Clintons on SNES
August 14, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

For some reason, it was possible to select then-White House occupants Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, or Al Gore as players in NBA Jam Tournament Edition for SNES. The White House routinely issues cease and desist notices for using the President's likeness for marketing, but this wasn't exactly marketing, exactly. One of the features of NBA Jam TE were hidden characters from outside of sports, including Will Smith, the Beastie Boys, and Prince Charles. It's unclear to me what if any likeness reproduction rights Acclaim acquired for these characters back in the early 1990s. I'd love to know. (Thanks to Dakota) ...

Atari Licenses Too Good to be True
August 11, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Our readers probably know well my interest, even obsession, with both the Atari VCS and licensed games. As Nick and I put the final touches on our forthcoming book on the Atari, I've been doing a lot of final fact confirmation online. In the process of doing so this weekend I fell upon some of the best ideas that, alas, never really were for the system, thanks to the Van Gogh-Gogh's comedy site. The first: Interactive 8-tracks! We've discussed music-game tie ins before (1, 2), but nothing compares to the concept of a double-ender 8-track/Atari VCS game. The fake ad ...

Local Conflicts
July 30, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

The Jerusalem Post has published a very negative, dismissive review of Serious Games Interactive's Global Conflicts: Palestine. Apart from noting that the paper does game reviews, at least when the topic is close to home, it's fascinating to see how a "local" player reacts to the game's "global" framing: The graphics are awful, and "Jerusalem" doesn't look very much like the city I have called home for 35 years. To find your way around "Palestine," check the irrelevant maps of the 1947 UN partition plan or the Gaza Strip in 2000. The review is short and I'm giving too much ...

Yes Men Exhibition
July 16, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Culture jamming collective The Yes Men are holding their first exhibition of work, starting this November at the Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University. While the group's work is not necessarily game-related, some may remember their spoofing of a serious games conference in the UK two years ago. Details on the exhibition after the jump. ...

McCain's Pork Invaders
July 11, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

As Gonzalo says, not again. Not another Space Invaders clone campaign game. But, alas, it's true: the McCain campaign offers Pork Invaders. It's a game about pork barrel politics, the appropriation of government funds for pet projects or constituents. Thus the pigs, which are indeed very cute. Unlike the bizarre 2004 game Tax Invaders, Pork Invaders' hero is a McCain logo rather than a disembodied head, and it fires vetoes rather than projectiles. Still, the game is forgettable in all the usual ways. The production value is better than Tax Invaders, but that's not saying much. The metaphor is cute ...

Simulating Torture
June 26, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Thanks to an article by regular MSNBC game columnist Winda Benedetti about it today, Torture Game 2 has been popping up on blogs and in my inbox. In the game (which is really more of a toy, if that's a fair word for it), the player can inflict a variety of bloody punishments on a rag doll physics-driven character dangling from a rope. Torture methods include spikes, gunfire, razor, ropes, and chainsaw, among others. In the article, Benedetti waxes discrepant, first admitting her disappointment upon learning that the game's 19 year-old creator had seemingly little in mind when he created ...

Rohrer sketches on Police Brutality, Immortality
June 16, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Last year I wrote briefly about Jason Rohrer's excellent game Passage. Since then, in addition to a couple more small games, Rohrer has been writing a monthly column at The Escapist called Game Design Sketchbook. Among them, two are of particular interest to readers here. The first is Police Brutality, a game about resisting police in the wake of a University of Florida student who was tased at a John Kerry rally in 2007. The game starts from the premise that inaction is cowardice, and then offers a suggestion of a process participants might have enacted. This process, the enacting ...

Randy Balma: Municipal Abortionist
June 11, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Randy Balma: Municipal Abortionist is a trippy, disturbing game from Messhof, aka Mark Essen. It's very abstract, often frustrating, and will likely make you physically ill. The compelling title is indeed tied to the game's themes, although don't expect them to cash out in a tidy fashion. You'll have to work on this one. (via Rhizome, thanks to Gene) ...

Pictures for Truth, an Amnesty International Game
June 9, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Pictures for Truth is a game about human rights violations in China, and also the first game developed for Amnesty International, according to its developers. Created by a group of professional game developers and volunteers from Quebec in their off time, the game puts the player in the role of a journalist called to help a Chinese colleague detained by police. Somewhat like Global Conflicts, you must investigate via conversation and exploration to obtain enough information to write stories that publicize the problems at hand. like every game that takes the journalist's perspective, the player gets an outsider's sense of ...

Danny LeDonne and Jack Thompson on Free Talk Live
May 26, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

On Saturday, libertarian talk radio program Free Talk Live aired an interview with Super Columbine Massacre RPG creator Danny LeDonne and well-known attorney Jack Thompson. LeDonne promoted the special edition release of his documentary film Playing Columbine, about the game and video game controversy more generally. Jack Thompson, the hosts of Free Talk Life, and myself all make appearances in the film (which is very good). You can read a near-live comment thread coincident with the program's airing over at Game Politics. For me, the initial segments without Thompson, in which LeDonne discusses the film, went well. The rest of ...

Free Pixels for Obama
May 22, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

One of my former students, Andrew Trusty, has created an online quiz game called Click 4 Obama. For each question about American history and government you answer correctly, the site donates 500 pixels of online banner ads to Obama, which they buy on the web. If you think it sounds like Free Rice, you're right, it's identical. In fact, it even looks identical, a concern I expressed to Trusty when he showed me a prototype. But perhaps I'm wrong and the online quiz donation game is now a genre with a standard look and feel. Update: there's also a Facebook ...

Budget Hero
May 18, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Budget Hero is the new serious game about balancing the federal budget, from American Public Media. I've been out of commission recently, so instead of writing my own thoughts on Budget Hero I want to encourage you to read a thorough review by Georgia Tech Digital Media Ph.D. student Ben Medler. Budget Hero is not the first budget game, but it makes a number of improvements over previous efforts, making the experience of budget choices more deliberate and less arbitrary. The main complaint one could offer is the same one that someone mounted against The Redistricting Game at the GDC ...

Boxing Politician Games. Again.
May 5, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

It happens every election cycle, it seems. Games that allow players to make their favorite candidate box against their least favorite candidate, or some variation on a theme of same. We had Kerry vs. Kerry back in 2004, as well as the mobile game Bush vs. Kerry Boxing that same year. Not to mention the Osama vs. Bush boxing toy puppets. Here's the salvo for this year so far. Kewlbox released Hillary vs. Obama. "The faster you click, the more punches you throw!" Then the New York Post offers 2008 Democratic Fight Night (via Kotaku). Both of these are clickfests ...

Libery City Satire
April 30, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

In case you didn't notice, Grand Theft Auto IV was released yesterday. The coverage is predictably overwhelming, although standing out among the noise about sales records and politicians is Heather Chaplin's piece on NPR's All Things Considered, which includes a series of interviews with GTAIV writer Lazlow Jones. I've criticized Rockstar before for failing to put people in front of the media to discuss their games, so this is a welcome change of pace. Jones's thesis about the game is summed up in the call-out quote near the top, "It's a satire of not only New York, but of American ...

Our Article on the Dean Game Goes Online
April 16, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

A couple years ago, Gonzalo and I wrote an article, Videogames Go To Washington, about the creation of the Howard Dean for Iowa Game. The article appeared in Pat Harrigam amd Noah Wardrip-Fruin's collection Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, which was published last year. Pat and Noah have arranged to publish the articles from the book online at the Electronic Book Review, and our piece just went up there. Happy reading: Video Games Go to Washington: The Story Behind The Howard Dean for Iowa Game ...

Wark on Debord
April 15, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Following our coverage of the legal flap around Alex Galloway's digital adaptation of Guy Debord's Game of War, McKenzie Wark (author of the excellent book Gamer Theory) has published a short, thoughtful essay on Debord's original. The piece is forthcoming in Wark's new book project, 50 Years of Recuperation: The Situationist International 1957-1972. ...

The Revolution will be Litigated
April 5, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Friend, theorist, and author Alex Galloway, working with several collaborators under his software art shingle RSG, recently created a cracking digital version of Guy Debord's Kriegspiel, a little-known board game created by this famous Marxist and key figure in the Situationist International. Debord is best-known for his influential book Society of the Spectacle, about the intersection of capitalism and mass media. But Debord also became interested in games in the 1970s. During this time he designed Kriegspiel, a strategy wargame, and wrote a book about the game, recently translated into English as A Game of War. The book focuses ...

Play the News Game
April 3, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

ImpactGames, creators of PeaceMaker, have just soft-launched a public version of their title Play the News. new web-based news prediction game. It's a bit like fantasy sports, in that you play by predicting future performance, but instead of assembling a custom news docket, you play smaller mini-games for each story. These smaller games cover the gamut of news coverage, from politics to entertainment. Here's some of their boilerplate on the game. Impact Games developed a web-based platform to bring interactive gaming elements to the online news media industry: "Play the News" is an engaging, community-driven experience - imagine fantasy sports ...

Out Overfishin'
April 1, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Ocean Survivor is an advocacy game created by Conserve Our Ocean Legacy, a nonprofit campaign to reduce the rate of bluefin tuna decline in US waters. The game is simple but well done. The player takes the role of a swimming bluefin tuna. The core mechanic is borrowed from the web-classic Helicopter Game: hold the mouse button to make the fish swim up, release it to let the fish fall. Instead of avoiding abstract obstacles, you must avoid the hooks and nets of various types and sizes lowered by trawlers at the surface of the water. The topology of nets ...

Eurogamer on Wafaa Bilaal
March 27, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

I've been following but not yet writing about the controversy at RPI regarding Wafaa Bilaal and his hacked version of Night of Bush Capturing. (If you need to catch up on the project, check out GamePolitics' extensive coverage). Eurogamer just published an article, including an interview with the creator, which offers both a summary and a set of new material on the controversy. One of the observations reminds me of a point I made about America's Army in Persuasive Games: That Night of Bush Capturing had only to change some textures to turn the message against the original creator reveals ...

We pwn free games
March 26, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

PC World's new list of "101 Fantastic Freebies" is out in the forthcoming May 2008 print issue, also available online now. There's a category for games, and I'm happy to say that two of the nine on the list are Persuasive Games titles. One is our send-up of the TSA, Airport Security, and the other our satire of Kinko's, Disaffected. Woo! ...

Knowledge is Nothing. Tenure is Everything.
March 21, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Thanks to David Wessman on the IGDA Education SIG mailing list for pointing out Survival of the Witless, a card game about the academic tenure process. The title above was the game's tagline. It’s a brutal game, where the most common card is "ass-kissing" (to simulate the most common action in academia). Three to eight players try to collect enough writing cards and a contract to finish their book, and enough influence with committee members to win a tenure decision. In addition to Ass Kissing, other cards you could play in the game included Seduction, Bold New Theory, Student Boycott, ...

Review of I Can End Deportation
March 17, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Last month a human rights organization called Breakthrough released a videogame that makes claims about the lack of equity in today's U.S. immigration laws. The game, called I Can End Deportation (or just ICED, which is also the acronym for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department) is a free PC/Mac download. The result is a missed opportunity, demonstrating both the promise and problems with social issues games in general. ...

World Without Oil wins at SXSW
March 10, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

The Alternate Reality Game World Without Oil, in which thousands of people simulated their lives after a major oil crisis, won in the "activism" category at the SXSW Web Awards. Congrats to friends/colleagues Jane McGonigal and Cathy Fischer, and comrades-in-spirit Ken Eklund, Dee Cook, and others who were involved in the project. ...

Politics Online Conference
February 26, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Next week I'll be running a panel at the 2008 Politics Online Conference hosted by the Institute for Policy Democracy and the Internet. The Panel, Designing Outreach in Virtual Worlds, will include me, Ben Sawyer from the Serious Games Initiative, and Sue Singer from Linden Lab. The conference is March 4-5, and the panel is Tuesday, March 4 from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Description after the jump, and you can register here. ...

GDC 2008: Out of the Box, EA Fuels New Ideas with Madden and Sims Titles
February 18, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Presentation by Rob Moore, Steve Seabolt (EA) at the Serious Games Summit, Game Developers Conference 2008. Moore got stuck in bad weather but sent along some materials about A number of EA Sports titles are used by athletes, including by NASCAR drivers to get used to tracks, by pro basketball and football players to memorize. These were just unexpected uses of the ordinary commercial versions of games. More recently, sports training professionals have become interested in using versions of these games for their purposes. One such company went to EA with this idea. The result is Madden Play Action Simulator, ...

My new column: Videogame Vignette
February 12, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, this one on a student game from USC Interactive Media called Hush, an unusual game about an unusual historical and political moment. The article uses Hush as and the idea of adapting the vignette style to videogames. In literature, poetry, and film, a vignette is a brief, indefinite, evocative description or account of a person or situation. Vignettes are usually meant to give a sense of a character rather than to advance a narrative. ... Hush offers a glimpse, as it were, of how vignette might be used successfully in games. You ...

How Wrong I Was about Political Games in 2008
February 6, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

During the height of the 2004 election, when Persuasive Games had released a few officially endorsed games about various issues and candidates, and after this website was scarcely six months old and everything about mainstream political games seemed new and shiny, I remember making a prediction in a press interview. In 2008, I divined, every major candidate will have their own PlayStation 3 game. I was very wrong about that. I can't find the quote -- it may not have made it to print, mercifully -- but I did find other similar sentiments. Here's one from an article late in ...

CNN Political Market
February 4, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

I've been a bit out of it thanks to new projects taking the place of completed ones, but I just noticed that CNN has launched CNN Political Market, "where you get a chance to predict the future of 2008 presidential politics." After logging in you get $5,000 virtual dollars to invest in election markets. It's a pretty straightforward idea, similar to the old Hollywood Stock Exchange. I know we live in a society that thrives on exchange value, but I've always found these virtual markets to be offensive. If there's anything we don't need, it's collapsing the already broken electoral ...

Molleindustria's Faith Fighter
January 23, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Molleindustria's at it again, this time taking on religion. Faith Fighter aims "to push gamers to reflect on how... sacred representations are often instrumentally used to fuel or justify conflicts." In other words, a critique of the exchange value of religious figures and icons. It's a much less controversial topic than their last title about religion, Operation Pedopriest, but perhaps also less direct and biting in its commentary. Remembering controversy over the Danish muhammad cartoon controversy, Faith Fighter offers "Normal" and "Censored" mode, the latter with Muhammad's visage blocked out. ...

Harpooned, an anti-whaling game
January 18, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

As a statement against and satire of Japanese whaling, three Australians have created Harpooned: Japanese Cetacean Research Simulator. The tongue-in-cheek creator's statement amounts to a sentence: "You play the role of a Japanese scientist performing research on whales around Antarctica." It's probably one that will . Additional coverage at NineMSN. The game is a shmup in which the player controls a whaling vessel that fires harpoons at whiles while avoiding protesters. Some gameplay footage appears below. The adaptation of shmup to whaling is pretty effective. Like the recent Mega Man-themed game-like video about Robert Dziekánksi The sarcastic commentary may be ...

White House Joust 2008
January 17, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Blockdot/Kewlbox have dusted off their four year-old concept White House Joust and renewed it for this election cycle. You guessed it, White House Joust 2008. Sigh. ...

Fat Monday
January 14, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

As mentioned last week, today Fatworld lives. Trailer below. Press release here. ...

Prepare to Fatten
January 11, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

The same week McDonald's is blaming videogames for obesity, we're preparing to release a videogame about that topic. On Monday January 14, Fatworld will be released. It's a game about the politics of nutrition created at my studio, Persuasive Games, published by ITVS Interactive, and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting . We don't blame McDonald's for it, at least we don't believe it's that simple. The whole idea behind the game is to complicate the issue. As we explain in our creator's statement, Fatworld explores the relationships between obesity, nutrition, and socioeconomics in the contemporary U.S.. The game’s ...

Center for Social Media Event
January 7, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

The Center for Social Media is hosting an event, Making your Media Matter, on February 7-8 2008 at the American University in Washington DC. Among the panels is Games for Social Change: How Games and Video are Playing Well Together, which will be held the 7th at 5:30pm and moderated by Suzanne Seggerman of Games for Change. Panelists include Heidi Boisvert (ICED! I Can End Deportation), Eric Brown (PeaceMaker), Ivan Marovic (A Force More Powerful), Dennis Palmieri, (World Without Oil). Registration is a fairly modest $100 for the whole event. ...

Mega Man-styled Video is not Game nor Parody
January 3, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

As reported at Game Politics, a Vancouver man has created a video based on the popular Mega Man series that comments on the tragic taser killing of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekánski at the Vancouver airport. You can watch the video over on YouTube. It depicts a classic Mega Man boss scene, with Dzekánski as the boss. When Mega Man approaches, a menu pops up with three options, "Use restraint," "Call a translator," or "Tazer mercilessly." The video shows the hypothetical player choosing the last option. One shot kills Dziekánski, but Mega Man fires a few more just for good measure, ...

DC Smackdown
December 8, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

DC Smackdown is the latest vaguely political PC game out on the market. It's a satirical fighting game, in which players pit Presidential candidates and political pundits against one another in Street Fighter-style battles. Each character has a special move, of course, from Hillary Clinton's "Intern Trample" to Bill O'Reilly's "No Spin Zone". Even though I too have created games with this theme, I'm always a little disappointed to see yet another political game that's just a cute nod to the idea of politics rather than taking on political issues or personalities directly. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the ...

Playing Columbine Screening, Rejection
December 5, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

While I was in Montreal at MIGS last week, the IGDA hosted a special screening of Danny Ledonne's documentary Playing Columbine, which tells the story of Super Columbine Massacre RPG!'s creation and subsequent controversy, including the now infamous pulling of the game from the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker competition. The version I saw wasn't the final cut, and while I think a number of changes could improve the final version, the film is very good (disclaimer: I make more than one appearance in the film). So when will you, our loyal readers, get to see it? Well, not at Slamdance 2008, ...

Another Political Whack-a-Mole Clone
November 26, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Matt Blunt: Document Destroyer is a simple game about Missouri Governor Matt Blunt's alleged destruction of official documents. It's another -- yes ANOTHER Whack-a-Mole clone. Go ahead, search this site for more. I thought that Whack-a-Mole was a stepping stone for political games, but it seems that its the one mechanic that applies to all circumstances. "Find", "catch", and "hit" are verbs that seem particularly suited to simplistic gripes with candidates or issues. Check out how deftly the Missouri Republicans shifted the frame on the game though. A great example of how deftly the GOP can respond to the Dems ...

Right-Wing Swiss Political Games
October 30, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

The Swiss Volkspartei (Swiss People's Party, abbreviated SVP or UDC) has created some truly unbelievable political games. Help Zottel the goat keep Swiss passports out of the brown and yellow hands of immigrants, or help him kick "black sheep" foreigners over the border. And there are more (thanks to Marie-Laure Ryan for bringing them to my attention). To understand the games, though, you have to first know something about the party itself. It was once a centrist agricultural party, but took on right-wing populist interests in the last twenty years. Since 2003, the party has been very strong in the ...

Game Installation about Northern Ireland
October 1, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

An interesting installation from Northern Ireland, called Block H. It features a FPS game built as a Counter-Strike mod, which uses environmental cues from Northern Ireland, including the sectarian murals that are fast disappearing from that landscape. The installation also hopes to ask questions about media, memory, and "militainment." Here's how the game works: via local network or Internet connectivity, teams are split into Loyalists and Nationalists. Players wear Celtic and Rangers jerseys, denim jackets and anoraks. The game is set in a housing estate split by a peaceline and watchtower. Each side has its own versions of sectarian symbols: ...

Terrorist Attack Disasters
September 16, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

University of Colorado student Devin Monnens sometimes sends around thoughts by email about topics of interest to a few of us. Recently he brought up New York Defender. In a part of that discussion, Josh Fishburn asked if you could conjure a terrorist attack in new versions of Sim City. There are aliens and monsters, but as far as I know, there are no terrorist attacks available. It would be an interesting addition both from a cultural and a planning perspective; one of the things I talk about in Persuasive Games is how government emergency response simulations fail to take ...

Army of Two's Political Agenda
September 9, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

There's a good interview up at Gamasutra with Chris Ferriera, lead designer of the forthcoming EA Montreal shooter Army of Two. Fans might know the game for its innovations in collaborative play, but Ferriera discusses the title's political content and inspiration -- private military contractors (PMCs) -- in encouraging detail. We take [the characters] from their days in Delta Force, and their days as Navy SEALs, and their start as PMCs and how they get trained. We unveil the corruption behind the military privatization, and we explain the problems that poses to society and to America, and the world, when ...

Strong Speech in Film and Games
August 27, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Just as Take Two announces that Manhunt 2 has been "revised" and ESRB rated at M, news comes that Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee's new film Lust, Caution has been rated NC-17 by the MPAA, for graphic sexuality. The difference is, film studio Focus Features is going to release the film uncut, with the rating, while Take Two will release a crippled version of the game to meet financial pressures. ...

PETA's KFC Anti-Advergame
August 24, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I've previously suggested the term anti-advergames, games that critique a company's products or business practices rather than promoting them. Disaffected! is one, as is Molleindustria's McDonald's Videogame. Here's a new anti-advergame from PETA, the animal rights organization, created as a part of their ongoing campaign against KFC's breeding and slaughtering practices. The game is Super Chick Sisters, and it's a detailed, high production-value platform game that copies not only its premise but even its characters from Super Mario Bros. The plumbers are replaced by chicks, and the princess is Pam Anderson (who serves as a spokeswoman for the campaign in ...

Tactical Iraqi's Wikipedia Spin
August 15, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

A year and a half ago, Gonzalo ignited a debate here on WCG about Tactical Iraqi, a game funded by DARPA and created at USC ISI. Gonzalo's took the position that there is no moral way to support U.S. military aggression, even if it seems Sometimes I follow referral links into the site, and today I noticed that we were getting some clicks from the Wikipedia page about the game (officially titled, Tactical Language & Culture Training System). Imagine my surprise upon reading how it concludes: There has been little controversy about the use of the software in the serious ...

Skinning Politics
August 6, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

There are a number of forthcoming mainstream commercial games that seem to contain meaningful political commentary. One is Midway Austin's forthcoming BlackSite, lead designed by Harvey Smith, formerly of Ion Storm. Another is the forthcoming Sim City Societies, which promises social simulation that will change the way your city operates. There are lots of other examples from games recent and long past, from Grand Theft Auto to Balance of Power. All of these games incorporate political commentary in some way. As someone who is strongly, perhaps primarily, interested in political commentary in games, I was intrigued by the email I ...

Playing Columbine Trailer, Reactions
July 31, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

As several other sources have already noted, Danny Ledonne has launched a website for his forthcoming documentary Playing Columbine, along with a new trailer for the film. Kotaku's Brian Crecente, who published the first mainstream press coverage of the game, makes an interesting observation: "it feels like the documentary is a little too much about Ledonne and not enough about the very real and complicated issues involving both the shooting and the idea of tacking serious subject matters with video games." A number of readers at Game Politics seem to agree. A trailer is just a trailer of course, but ...

A Taste of Our Own Rhetoric
July 19, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

The big story this week in political games is Rescue the Nuke Scientist, the Union of Students Islamic Association's videogame response to Kuma\War's Assault on Iran. Most of the coverage I could find described the game's basic premise: In "Rescue the Nuke Scientist," U.S. troops capture a husband-and-wife team of nuclear engineers during a pilgrimage to Karbala, a holy site for Shiite Muslims, in central Iraq. Game players take on the role of Iranian security forces carrying out a mission code-named "The Special Operation," which involves penetrating fortified locations to free the nuclear scientists, who are moved from Iraq to ...

Italian Government bans Operation Pedopriest as child porn
July 1, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Recently we covered Molleindustria's Operation Pedopriest, a game we suspected would cause controversy. And it has. Molleindustria has removed the game from their website after a point of order in the Italian Parliament move to call the game "virtual pedo-pornography" under an Italian law that makes it illegal to depict sexual acts with children. Molleindustria offers more on this, with links to the laws in question. As they said in an email to us, who says that Italian government is slow and bureaucratic? The game itself is still available on Newgrounds. Meanwhile, WCG friend Liz Losh has written an extensive ...

Molleindustria's Operation: Pedopriest
June 25, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Molleindustria, one of the only outfits that has devoted their entire artistic practice to videogames with an agenda, has released a new game, and this one's a doozy, bound to be either hated or mildly appreciated, but maybe never loved -- and that's by design. Operation: Pedopriest is a game about child sex abuse in the Catholic church. Paolo tells us that the game is based loosely on the BBC documentary Sex Crimes and the Vatican, which you can watch on YouTube if you want the backgrounder. The documentary is about a secret procedure for dealing with child sex abuse. ...

Denver Police Test Racial Bias with Videogame
June 20, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

The Denver Police recently conducted a study of racial bias using a videogame. The idea was to determine if officers were more likely to fire on assailants with firearms if they were black or white. The game itself is rudimentary and somewhat disturbing. Here's how it works: +5 points for holstering your gun on an unarmed man +10 points for shooting an armed man -20 points for shooting an unarmed man -40 points for being shot The game clearly and weirdly encourages shooting rather than holstering. A Denver radio news program covered the study, and you can read the full ...

Click to Gerrymander
June 18, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

My colleagues at the USC EA Game Innovation Lab and the USC Annenberg Center released The Redistricting Game last week, not just at the Games for Change Festival but also on Capitol Hill (via NPR). Comments on GamePolitics, as well as in an article from last Sunday's Washington Post (in which I am also quoted). Redistricting is a great example of a political issue that's wonderfully gameable. It's an underdiscussed, probably largely unknown topic that significantly affects the way legislation works, and it's a complex system of interrelated conditions. ...

My new column: Designing for Tragedy
June 14, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, Designing for Tragedy, about V-Tech Rampage and making games about profoundly tragic events. Today, a month after Lambourn first released the game, discussion of it has all but disappeared. Some might point to this fact in an argument for the game’s insignificance; it spurred little reaction save shock and disapproval. A web forum set up by a third party to discuss the game has logged no more than five total posts. But I do not believe we ought to forget, or hide, or disavow this game. Read the whole thing over at ...

Games for Change 2007 (day 2)
June 12, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Continuing coverage of Games for Change Festival 2007. Yesterday's coverage is here Funding Perspectives Connie Yowell, MacArthur Foundation Diana Rhoten, NSF Allyson Knox, Microsoft Lucy Bernholz (moderator) Games, Civic Education, and Engagement Joseph Kahne, Mills College Doug Thomas, Tiltfactor Angela [did not get her last name, sorry], Hunter College/Tiltfactor Ben Stokes (moderator) Gaming 21st Century Play - Are Games Rewiring Our Culture and Vice Versa? Frank Lantz, Area Code Karen Sideman, Parsons Strategies for an Ecology of Change Greg Costikyan, Manifesto Games Katie Salen, gameLab institute of Play Ken Wark, New School, Eugene Lang College Carl Goodman (moderator) ...

Games for Change 2007 (day 1)
June 11, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I'm in New York at Games for Change Festival 2007. I'm going to attempt to liveblog some of it here. Keynote Conversation with Chris Melissinos and Alan Gershenfeld Alan Gershenfeld, CEO of Netomat and former head of Activision Chris Melissinos, Chief Gaming Officer, Sun Microsystems Virtual Activism: Exploring Nonprofits in Second Life Susan Tenby, Tech Soup Evonne Heyning, Amoration Jeska Dzwigalski, Linden Lab Beth Kanter, moderator Market Sector Impact Alex Chisholm, ICE3, MIT, NBC Eric Brown, ImpactGames Stephen Friedman, mtvU Heather Chaplin (moderator) Serious Games & Games for Change: Then and Now Ben Sawyer (out of power for a while, ...

Shoot an Iraqi over the Internet
May 21, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

No, it's not what it sounds like. In this unusual exhibition by Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal, called Domestic Tension, website visitors can shoot a paintball gun at the artist. From his statement: Bilal's objective is to raise awareness of virtual war and privacy, or lack thereof, in the digital age. During the course of the exhibition, Bilal will confine himself to the gallery space. During the installation, people will have 24-hour virtual access to the space via the Internet. ... Domestic Tension will depict the suffering of war not through human displays of dramatic emotion, but through engaging people in ...

Playing with Oil
May 10, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Gas prices are back up in the States, and with them more predictions of just how high they might rise. CNN/Money published an article a few days ago, Get ready for $4 gasoline, predicts that prices will rise above that psychologically significant figure. The culprits include the ongoing geopolitics of oil producing regions, but more subtle factors like low refinery output that can be traced all the way back to hurricanes Rita and Katrina two years ago. We explored the relationship between gas prices and factors like refining and distribution (as well as geopolitics) in Oil God, a newsgame released ...

World Without Oil
May 1, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

A new Alternate Reality Game called World Without Oil has launched, taking on the end of oil. As described in a recent article on the game, in the game's fictional world, "gas prices will skyrocket, a dwindling food supply will rot, and the oil crisis literally will stop Americans in their tracks. How can you and your loved ones survive a crippling breakdown?" The game is created by Ken Eklund and is a part of PBS's Independent Lens and its Electric Shadows programming, which in turn are presented by iTVS, the same group that funded our forthcoming game Fatworld, about ...

Art does not take exit surveys
April 16, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I should be frank: I'm actually a bit tired of hearing about Super Columbine Massacre RPG. That's not because I don't support the game -- I was one of its earliest supporters, and I remain impressed and intrigued by the way the game attempts to put the player in the disturbing shoes of Harris and Klebold. Rather, I'm tired of seeing conversations sparked by SCMRPG that only advance theories about games in general, instead of making actual critiques of this particular game itself. The latest volley is from Will Interactive CEO Sharon Sloane, who recently wrote an opinion piece about ...

PeaceMaker
March 20, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

We've been remiss in failing to mention the release of PeaceMaker, the game about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict created by former Carnegie Mellon ETC students under their new shingle ImpactGames. I want to write a more detailed review of the game, but I haven't yet played it enough to be prepared to do so. Until then, you can read a lengthy review from Ernest Adams over on Gamasutra. It's also a very positive review. ...

Take a survey on videogames and political engagement
March 1, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

University of Amsterdam Masters student Joyce Neys is working on a master thesis about online political games. You can help by participating in a survey that will become a part of the research. From Joyce: My research focuses on online computer games that are not made by commercial companies but by "ordinary people." More specifically I am looking at online computer games that are not just concerned with the entertaining element of this medium, but also want to put forward a message to fellow citizens. Such a message can be diverse. For example, it can be informative (i.e. to tell ...

Serious Games book for Japan
February 27, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Toru Fujimoto let me know that his new book Serious Games: Transforming Education and Society Through Digital Games has just been published by Tokyo Denki University Press. If you don't know Toru already, he's the source for serious games related material in Japan. So it's not surprising that he wrote the book on it! Here's a (bad) Babelfish translation of the book webpage (my favorite mistranslationism is "Dull fool is dyeing"). The book is in Japanese and written for the Japanese market, but Toru also knows everything about what's going on in serious games in Japan. ...

Politics in Commercial Games
February 26, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

MTV News games reporter Stephen Totilo is one of the best and most prolific game journalists out in the field. He recently write two stories about politically-charged themes in commercial games, a welcome topic. The first is an interview with Harvey Smith of Midway Austin about giving political teeth to the forthcoming FPS Black Site: Area 51 The second is an interview with Criterion's Alex Ward, which includes a meditation on the difficulties of getting gamers to care about the political narrative in Black. ...

Enemy dolls: my new column at SGS
February 16, 2007 - by Gonzalo Frasca

A big part of my upcoming PhD dissertation (I'm working hard to remove the "upcoming" part from that sentence) deals with toys. I'm convinced that there is a lot of knowledge and design wisdom in toys that can be extremely useful for videogame design. This also applies to issues of rhetoric and ideology and that's exactly the topic from my latest Playing with Fire column. It deals with a bin Laden doll that I found for sale on a street market in Singapore a couple of years ago. ...

The Watergate Game
February 1, 2007 - by Gonzalo Frasca

This is just too pretty. An old arcade machine called the "Watergate Caper" which, according to its brochure, "stimulates the larceny in all of us to see if we can break in and not get caught". The machine is from 1973 and according to KLOV it's very rare. Here are Watercoolergames we are very fond of any cool water-related games. ...

Article on the Dean Game in a New Anthology
January 23, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip Fruin recently announced the availability of a new anthology, Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media. The table of contents demonstrates the richness and variety of the book, covering topics from tabletop role-playing games to improvisational theater. Contributors include Greg Costikyan, Chris Crawford, Nick Fortugno, Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern, Jane McGonigal, Talan Memmott, Nick Montfort, Jill Walker, Eric Zimmerman and many more. The contribution Gonzalo and I wrote for the volume might be of particular interest to our readers. "Video Games Go to Washington" is a detailed look at the design ...

President Forever updated for 2008
January 22, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

If you've been reading Water Cooler Games since the beginning, then you may remember the bevvy of election games from the 2004 election cycle (to wit, Frontrunner, The Political Machine, President Forever: 2004, and Power Politics). President Forever has been updated for 2008, and now you can buy President Forever + Primaries to try your hand at a Hillary Clinton or Bill Richardson prexy campaign. I'll make the same statement here that I've made before: these games are excellent simulators of campaigning, but they are not simulators of politics. That is to say, they demonstrate just how divorced from policy ...

Slamdance Panel Discussion
January 21, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

As Kotaku reported a couple days ago, Slamdance updated their official statement on the controversy surrounding their removal of Super Columbine Massacre RPG! from the festival. Today at 5pm MT, they'll hold a panel discussion about the issue. I'm not sure who is participating, but Slamdance president Peter Baxter and games competition head Sam Roberts will be a part of the discussion. My friend Ed Cunningham, who produced a film premiering at Slamdance next week (King of Kong, about competitive Donkey Kong), will also join the panel. Here's the vague summary from the Slamdance website: And now this decision must ...

Alien Hominid developer withdraws from Slamdance
January 19, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Just in case you haven't been refreshing our Slamdance updates, here's the latest (and maybe last?) salvo. The Behemoth, developers of the hand-drawn 2d GameCube and PS2 hit Alien Hominid, have withdrawn their forthcoming XBLA title Castle Crashers from the Slamdance Guerilla Games Competition. You can read their short statement about the decision on the game website. Although they don't list the reasons for their withdrawal, from what they tell me yesterday's DigiPen incident was just the straw that broke the camel's back. ...

DigiPen forces Slamdance Reinstatement
January 17, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Slamdance finalist Toblo, a capture-the-flag style game in which players use the world as weapons, withdrew their game from the competition in protest of the SCMRPG removal, on Jan 9. The Toblo team let us know today that they have reinstated the game. Apparently they were forced to do so by DigiPen Institute of Technology, the college at which they created the game. From their statement: On January 16th, the DigiPen Institute of Technology -- the college we attend -- overwrote our decision and readmitted Toblo to the Slamdance Festival. We still have very strong feelings regarding the removal of ...

Clive on SCMRPG
January 16, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Wired published a really good article by WCG friend Clive Thompson on Super Columbine Massacre RPG. We've been talking mostly about the Slamdance controversy, but he takes the time to actually discuss the game. ...

Super Slamdance Excuses
January 15, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

A week has now passed since the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition pulled Super Columbine Massacre RPG from its list of finalists. If you're just coming to this story now, we've tried to keep a running update of news and commentary. In short though, six finalists and one sponsor have subsequently withdrawn from the festival in protest, at least one member of the Slamdance games jury has decried the decision, and editorial about the situation abounds online. Despite all this, Slamdance's rationale for pulling the game has not become clearer since last week, but rather ever more murky. Below I present ...

USC Withdraws Slamdance Sponsorship
January 10, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

USC Interactive Media Division, whose students created last year's Slamdance "design philosophy" winner Cloud and this year's former finalist flOw, has just withdrawn their sponsorship of the festival. Says USC professor Tracy Fullerton: In some of the blog posts responding to this action, reference is made to requests or pressure from “backers” to remove Super Columbine Massacre RPG from the festival. We wish to clearly state that, as sponsors, we neither made any such request, nor were we consulted about this action prior to it being taken. On the contrary, our requests to re-instate the game were denied and our ...

Updates on Slamdance Controversy
January 10, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I had originally begun to catalog updates to this story in my analysis of the situation last Friday. Since then, there have been so many updates that I decided to create a new place for them after the jump. As of now, four five six finalists have withdrawn in protest. I'll keep a couple recent updates of special mention here before the jump; find the rest after the jump. I'll update this list as more transpires. (Jan 18) The Behemoth (Castle Crashers, also developers of 2005 Slamdance finalist Alien Hominid) have withdrawn from the competition. (Jan 17) Toblo, which had ...

Slamdance Judge Statement
January 10, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

As we cover the continuing controversy around the Slamdance festival's removal of Super Columbine Massacre RPG, we've heard from the festival itself, former winners, former finalists, current finalists, and a whole host of pundits and commentators. Yet to speak about the issue is a member of the Slamdance 2007 game festival jury. We are therefore happy to host the following statement, from 2006 Slamdance Finalist and 2007 Slamdance Guerilla Game Competition judge Joe Bourrie: ...

Slamdance: SCMRPG removal was personal, not business
January 7, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I've moved updates on this story to another page Also read a statement from a member of the 2007 Slamdance game jury Yesterday I reported that the Slamdance festival had pulled Super Columbine Massacre RPG from its lineup of game finalists. Based on conversations with creator Danny Ledonne and the statements he received from the festival, I concluded (as did Brian Crecente) that the decision was driven by pressure from festival sponsors, who it seemed had threatened to pull funding if the game remained in the festival. The public response on sites like Kotaku, Slashdot, and GamePolitics has been ...

Super Columbine Massacre RPG pulled from Slamdance festival
January 5, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

In what is apparently a first for any exhibitor, film or game, Slamdance has pulled Super Columbine Massacre RPG (read our previous coverage: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) from the Guerilla Gamemaker Competition. The decision was apparently driven entirely by pressure from festival sponsors, some of whom pulled funding after learning that the game was to show in Park City. Brian Crecente has a more detailed version of the story over at Kotaku, including some responses from me, and I recommend you read that for now. We'll be following up on this story over the coming days. Update: N'Gai Croal ...

Super Columbine Massacre RPG Trailer
December 27, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

In preparation for its appearance as a finalist at Slamdance 2007 (more on that in a future post), SCMRPG creator Danny Ledonne has created a game trailer, which you can now view on YouTube. If you haven't been reading WCG for the last six months or so, you can catch up on our coverage of the game (1, 2, 3, 4), and some of my words and voice also appear in Danny's trailer. Danny is a filmmaker by trade, and I think the trailer he made effectively presents the game, particularly the range of responses the title has elicited and ...

War on Terror: The Boardgame
December 17, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca

I'm briefly emerging from my dissertation-writing cave to let you know about this boardgame about the War on Terror. Too bad it's too late for it to ship in time for Xmas (unless you live in the UK). Not that I would have any time to play. The best thing is that the site includes a pdf with the ruleset, so you can get an idea on how it works. Too bad the board seems not to include neither Uruguay nor Denmark, two of the major players in the WoT :( Oh, btw, their blog links to a piece of ...

Preview Bogost's New Book, Persuasive Games
December 11, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

My new book, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, which will be published in spring 2007, now has an official page up at the MIT Press site. This is the major research project I've been working on for the last couple years, and I'm really excited about getting it out there. The main argument in the book is that videogames exemplify a new form of rhetoric, which I call procedural rhetoric. Then I look at a multitude of examples, from early arcade games to very contemporary games. The book is very readable and should appeal to researchers, developers, and ...

SCMRPG creator Danny LeDonne on violent games
December 5, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Danny LeDonne, creator of Super Columbine Massacre RPG (previously discussed on WCG: 1, 2, 3) was on KPBS public radio (San Diego) recently, where he discussed the game, as well as violent videogames in general. Danny's explanation of the game is thoughtful as usual. You can listen to it here. A number of other games come up in caller discussions, including Postal and America's Army. Dr. Karen Dill from Lenoir-Rhyne College and the Committee on Violence in Video Games and Interactive Media weighs in in the second half of the program, repeating the old, tired idea that games lead to ...

Call for Games: Computers and Writing Online 2007
November 27, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Computers and Writing Online 2007 has announced a call for games in which they seem to welcome small scale, online political games and newsgames of the sort that interest many readers of this site. The theme of the conference is "Technoculture" and games should address that theme in some way. Full call after the jump. ...

Serious Games Simpsons
November 21, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Liz Losh gave me the heads up on a recent episode of the Simpsons in which the army uses videogames to recruit elementary school students. Homer ends up joining up, somehow. The episode is G.I.(Annoyed Grunt), Episode 5 of Season 18 (#383), and you can now watch it on YouTube (Part 1, Part 2) (sorry, YouTube links are now down). Man in car to soldier invading Springfield: "Is this war?" Soldier: "No sir, just a simulation." [tank crushes car] ...

Ignoring things as a political game mechanic
November 20, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

This is a bit old, but one of my students, Brian Schrank, made a nice observation about it. On YouTube you can find this video mock up of a videogame in which the player takes the role of Kim Jong-Il. It's a platformer, but in addition to the common core mechanics like jumping and running there is a "special move" that must be regularly used to get past certain obstacles, such as starving people or the UN -- "ignoring them." ...

Political Games for Election Day
November 7, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

We've probably been remiss in not pointing readers to Jay Bibby's excellent site on casual games, CasualGameplay (aka JayIsGames). In observance of Election Day here in the States, the crew over there has been reviewing political games, for the first time I think. Among those reviewed are Newsgaming.com's September 12th, Persuasive Games' Oil God and Airport Security, and the Global Kids/Unicef/gameLab game Cost of Life. I've weighed in in some of the comments over there, and I invite our readers to do so too. P.S. - Americans go vote! ...

Simulation says Iraq Invasion Doomed
November 6, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

According to Desert Crossing, a secret military simulation built during the Clinton administration in 1999, an invasion and occupation would require around triple the resources the U.S. has invested. "The conventional wisdom is the U.S. mistake in Iraq was not enough troops," said Thomas Blanton, the archive's director. "But the Desert Crossing war game in 1999 suggests we would have ended up with a failed state even with 400,000 troops on the ground." There are about 144,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, down from a peak in January of about 160,000. Here's the story, and here's the newly released documentation from ...

Cost of Life: a life-in-Haiti sim
October 27, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Global Kids has launched Ayiti: The Cost of Life, a game about the challenges of everyday life in contemporary Haiti. The player must manage a small family, trying to make ends meet while providing a better education for the kids and avoiding illness and disaster. The game (developed by veteran casual game developers gameLab) has high production value and strategic depth. It feels a bit like Oregon Trail in its conception and play. I have only played once, so I'm not yet sure if certain strategies are doomed to failure (or if all are, which is a common design approach ...

Arabs and Muslims in Digital Games
October 13, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca

I just returned from the Mediaterra Festival in Athens, Greece, probably one of the best art-meets-academic game events that I've ever attended. There was plenty of interesting presentations and artworks -Ian could not make it but his Disaffected game was on display on the show. Among the articles that were presented at the conference, there's Vit Sisler's Representation and Self-Representation: Arabs and Muslims in Digital Games (pdf), a very useful panorama that explores both political and entertaining games. Originary from the Czech Republic, Sisler's background is law and he specializes in Islam and Islamic Law in Cyberspace. I have previously ...

Persuasive Games: Games Phone Home
October 12, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

The latest iteration of my "Persuasive Games" column is up at Serious Games Source, entitled Games Phone Home. In the article I discuss the game Darfur is Dying in relation to commercial games old and new. In particular, I try to recuperate the unfairly maligned Atari VCS game E.T. No matter their frequency, complaints about E.T. are all framed from the perspective that games must fulfill roles of power; that they must put us in shoes bigger than our own. Spielberg’s film was not about the tremendous power of aliens invading—E.T., it should be noted, was a space botanist, not ...

Iran releases state-funded oil disruption game
September 30, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

According to the NY Times, the Iranian government has funded a videogame that illustrates how to disrupt world oil supplies by blowing up a U.S. tanker in strait of Hormuz. This recalls Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's warning that oil exports might be put in jeopardy if the U.S. doesn't back off Iran's nuclear program. The game, called "Counter Strike" (no relation to the Half-Life conversion) was produced by eight people in three months. I had a hard time categorizing this entry. Is this a newsgame? Is it an educational game? Is propagandist, or is it perhaps the first example of a ...

War on Terror Boardgame
September 28, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

There is a really nice-looking war on terror boardgame now available. I haven't played, but it's got an Axis of Evil spinner, you can play as or against the terrorists, and there's even a balaclava of evil that players have to wear in certain circumstances. Here's the official blurb: The goal of War on Terror, the boardgame is to liberate the world, ridding it of fear and terrorism forever. Naturally, only the biggest and strongest Empires are up to this task and so a certain amount of dominance needs to be shown. Alternatively, you can play as the terrorists, fighting ...

Political games in Paris this Friday
September 27, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca

I'll be giving a talk at the Science Museum of Paris (La Villette) this Friday at 15:00 as part of their Digital Villette Festival (La Villette Numérique). I'll be talking about political games but there's plenty more on this 3 day festival, including demos, art games exhibits and workshops. If you are lucky enough to be in Paris, you should be enjoying French (or should I say "Freedom") food and wine instead. But if you are not hungry (or if you happen to be already drunk) then I'm looking forward to seeing you at the talk. A bientôt! ...

Night of Bush Capturing
September 21, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Both Ian and myself have been incredibly busy, so -it happens- this game went under our radar. I'll simply tell you that it's a FPS where you have to capture Bush. It's a mod for another political game, called Quest for Saddam, and according to sources, it's been released by an organization called the Global Islamic Media Front. All the info, including links to download + gameplay video, can be accessed at Ed Halter's blog. Halter- who is the author of From Sun Tzu to Xbox- has posted an update on the game and wonders if there are any other ...

Montreal Gunman Aftermath
September 14, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

If you've seen the news in the past 24 hours, you've probably heard that a gunman, Kimveer Gill, opened fire at a Montreal college yesterday, killing one person and injuring 19 others. If you've read the headlines this morning, you may also have seen that the press has been highlighting the fact that the man posted on websites that he played Super Columbine Massacre RPG, a game I have discussed (positively) here before (1, 2). I feel compelled to say something about what this shooting says about the game and our response to it. ...

Have a Paris Riot
August 17, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

I've been increasingly interested in so-called documentary games (or docu-games), such as JFK Reloaded and Escape from Woomera and Waco Resurrection. In fact, Cindy Poremba and I wrote an article on documentary games that should be out in the coming months (click over to her blog for more links on the topic, to which she is devoting her Ph.D. research) So, I was excited to learn about a new game that sounded documentarian in nature. Paris Riots is a mod of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault in which the player takes the role of police mustered to respond to rioting ...

Surgically remove the Bush Administration to win Ice Cream
August 12, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry's fame)-created TrueMajorityAction has created a cute little web-based political game. Operation: Cure the Cabinet is a reskinning and digitization of the popular board game Operation. Instead of removing body parts, the player extracts key components of the Bush administration, which have been cleverly mapped onto Bush's own anatomy (brain: Karl Rove; voicebox: Scott McClellan). The game features very high production value, and the core Operation mechanic is nicely implemented. As a bonus, the fastest player of the week will be entered into a drawing to win a 1/2 year worth of ice cream (up ...

Bush Backrub
August 4, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

A new little newsgame over at AddictingGames.com, this one taking on the much-publicized impropmptu backrub Bush performed upon German chancellor Angela Merkel. The game, Bush Backrub, is simple enough: move Bush around behind cleverly selected world leaders. Click rapidly to offer a "Texan backrub." Keep the comfort meters full or you lose. As with many of these little games, not really political in content, but an adequate and rapid interpretation of a news event that got a lot of media attention. ...

NY Times on Serious Games
July 23, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

I've tried to avoid posting every single press mention the field or we personally garner, but videogame stories in the Grey Lady always get a nod. WCG friend and Clive Thompson wrote a story about serious games for the New York Times, which appeared in print today (and online, here). The article covers my and Gonzalo's work, as well as Peacemaker, Darfur is Dying, and Super Columbine Massacre RPG. Familiar faces Henry Jenkins, Jim Gee, and Doug Thomas make appearances as well. ...

Mexican Campaign Games
July 11, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Unless you have been living under a rock (or watching the World Cup) you may have heard that Mexico recently had Presidential elections and, surprise, the tally was way too close. Officially, Felipe Calderon (right-wing) has been declared the winner, but Lopez Obrador (left-wing) is contesting the results under claims of fraud. Let's hope that the Mexicans are better in math than the neighbors from the North. In any case, I wanted to point out to Calderon's official website, which features campaign videogames. The biggest one, Carrera por la presidencia (Presidential race) is a Mario Bros. clone where the political ...

Global Conflicts: Palestine
July 9, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca

The Serious Games Source interviews Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen about his upcoming game, Global Conflicts: Palestine. Simon is my colleague at the IT University of Copenhagen and has recently finished his PhD thesis on educational games. The game is scheduled to be launched in 2007 and deals with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. ...

Top 10 Disaffections
July 4, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Since we launched Disaffected! back in January, we've enjoyed a continuous stream of feedback, some good, some bad, all interesting. I've shared portions of it in private presentations, but when I showed the game at the Games for Change Exhibition last week in New York, I reminded myself to write about it here. For those of you just tuning in, this January my studio Persuasive Games released Disaffected!, a videogame parody of the Kinko's copy store. Probably the fastest way to read up on the game is in this MTV News article, by Stephen Totilo. I'll spare listing the press ...

Nightline on the Terrorist Video Game
June 23, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Last month we reported (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) that consultants from SAIC testified before Congress, mistakenly identifying a fan video created by a Dutch Battlefield 2 player as terrorist propaganda. Nightline ran a story on the topic last night, in which they both show the absurdity of the whole series of events and expose the Pentagon's simple-mindedness about such issues. I was interviewed for the story, which you can read or watch at ABC's website. Also covered at Gamepolitics and Kotaku. It's a good story, and I'm glad Nightline put this sort of report together. I'm also glad I ...

Boot the Bigot
June 21, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

From the Human Rights Campaign comes Boot the Bigot, a game purportedly about Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who has recently been derided for his public statements against homosexuality and sexual privacy. Santorum is up for re-election this year, so it's not surprising to see a little extra digital bling from his detractors. The game itself isn't much of one. It's another example of skinning a common and simple game with a political figure. In this particular example, the game skinned is whack-a-mole (or pick your favorite variant). Santorum heads pop out from behind the Capitol, and the player controls a ...

Review of Cyber-Budget, the French Budget Game
June 12, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

I mentioned the French Cyber Budget game a week or so ago, but I couldn't find the actual game until Mark Nelson sent me the link this week. You can play Cyber-Budget online, but keep in mind that it's in French only, and pretty language-heavy. Budgets are comprised of multiple allocations in conflict. They are abstract--numbers on balance sheets--but their effects are concrete. It's hard to personalize them and create empathy around them. This game is an interesting attempt to make budgeting playable. The main strategy is to contextualize the budgeting process in the material world through a map interface ...

Conference organizers unknowingly set stage for McDonald's Interactive hoax
June 9, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Stephen Totillo of MTV News has written a great story on the McDonald's Interactive hoax we covered a couple days ago. Here's what the real McDonald's had to say: Reached for comment Friday (June 9), McDonald's spokesperson Julie Pottebaum said, "This is an outright hoax and a complete misrepresentation of our people and our values. Anyone who knows the facts about McDonald's' social responsibility track record knows that we're a recognized leader on the environment." And apparently the connection to La Molleindustria's fantastic McVideogame was in fact accurate, although not in the way we expected. It was born out of ...

McDonald's Interactive Sticks it to McDo... or do they?
June 7, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

This post has been updated, please see below. This story has also been updated, please read here According to their website, McDonald's Interactive was founded to help the parent company strategize about future markets. Yesterday, they announced their "intention to split from McDonalds." Why? Said co-director Andrew Shimery-Wolf: "We can no longer stand by while McDonald's corporate policies help lead the planet to ruin." According to Shimery-Wolf, the group had created McMarketplace, a simulation of the global effects of the burger business. It worked well for training, but in long-term predictions, business ended in 2050, when everyone died due to ...

Columbine, Videogames as Expression, and Ineffability
May 21, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

A few weeks ago I wrote about Super Columbine Massacre RPG. The game puts the player in the shoes of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and attempts to paint a picture of their motivations, plans, and actions on that terrible day. It's a controversial topic to be sure, but exactly the kind of subject we should be taking on in videogames: hard problems for which there are no easy answers. I knew that public reaction to the game would be largely negative. I've received plenty of hate mail just for talking about the game. But I don't think I was ...

Drive Like a Kennedy
May 16, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Frequent WCG ire target Blockdot has just released Drive Like A Kennedy. The game challenges players to avoid guardrails and traffic to reach the Capitol while under the influence. From the press release: A new online political parody pokes fun at Congressman Patrick Kennedy, who took a mysterious spin around the block and ended up totaling his car last week. The “Drive Like a Kennedy” game features father and son, Senator Ted Kennedy and Congressman Patrick Kennedy, as they veer and steer through the streets of D.C., picking up Lobbyist Coins for points. Nabbing pharmaceutical pills or pink elephants along ...

Columbine RPG
May 3, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

I've just learned about the Super Columbine Massacre RPG. It's a deep and complex account of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre interpreted in the style of 2D role-playing games. The game has been out for at least a year, but this is the first I've seen it. After Gonzalo's recent mention of Border Patrol, I can imagine that our readers might have strong reaction to this game. While it is a challenging subject, I think the effort is brave, sophisticated, and worthy of praise from those of us interested in videogames with an agenda. The purpose of this game ...

Border Patrol, a.k.a. "the racist" game
April 20, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Update: For some reason I started getting a lot of hate mail recently from people wrongly assuming that I am the author of this game. I am not. I had nothing to do with it. So, please, keep sending me love mail, as usual. Thanks.Update 2: The link at PCDevils now points to alternative links, along with a disclaimer saying that the game was developed by Zine14.com - circa 2002. I am not surprised that the game is that old. It makes sense that it became popular now given the fact that Mexican immigration is a particularly hot topic nowadays ...

bin Laden toys
April 17, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Last year, I found this bin Laden doll for sale in Singapore. A quick search through flickr shows that it is not the only one. There's even Osama toys for pets ("You can't get even but your pet can".) You can also get soap bubbles through Osama's ass. In Hong-Kong, you can even watch Osama and Bush puppets boxing each other. This is just a small, random sample, but it is quite interesting that all the pictures were taken in Asia. I am sure you could get one of these dolls in the Western world but chances are they would ...

Whack-a-Politician
April 8, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

According to The Washington Post, a group of researchers at the Stanford political communication lab are using an online whack-a-mole game to measure players feelings about politicians. They built whack-a-mole games with politician heads instead of rodents, then measured the effects of "cathartic whacking." The results? ...political independents had a significantly less sour view of Bush and the GOP after spending 45 seconds whacking images of Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro and other rogue leaders. In addition to the politician version, featuring the likes of Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, and Fidel Castro, the group also has a version with ...

A Force More Powerful Released
March 9, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

The International Center for Nonviolent Conflict and BreakAway Games have released A Force More Powerful, a game about nonviolent conflict. Some of you might remember from last year's GDC presentation and my subsequent opinions about the game. From the game website: A Force More Powerful is the first and only game to teach the waging of conflict using nonviolent methods. Destined for use by activists and leaders of nonviolent resistance and opposition movements, the game will also educate the media and general public on the potential of nonviolent action and serve as a simulation tool for academic studies of nonviolent ...

Dick Cheney's Texas Takedown
February 17, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Hot on the heels of yesterday's Huffington Post Cheney game, now there's Dick Cheney's Texas Takedown. This one is much more of a game, basically you have to shoot as many orange vest-clad hunting partners as possible within a time limit. The characters are cute (did I just call something related to Dick Cheney "cute"?) and the play mechanic, while simple, gets the point across. Personally, if I were going to make a Dick Cheney game (yes, despite the temptation I'm way too busy), I'd want to have some action orthogonal to shooting Harry Whittington(s), namely shooting quail. The trick ...

Living Game Worlds + Dick Cheney Quail Hunt
February 16, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

The Living Game Worlds Symposium is on here at Tech. You can watch a live stream, or watch recaps of the sessions, including Will Wright's keynote, on the conference site. Raph Koster is also blogging it (1, 2). In other news, The Huffington Post (yes, that Huffington) has posted Dick Cheney Quail Hunt, a game about the recent Dick Cheney quail hunting debacle. The game is, well, barely a game if it's a game. It deploys a one-button mechanic and a rhetoric of failure. Go play it, it'll just take a minute and you'll see what I mean. I think ...

All Things Africa
February 8, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

A few bits of Africa-related videogame news to report. First, you can now play and vote for the four finalists in the MTV crisis in Darfur student game design contest, which we mentioned last year. The contest asked student teams to design a videogame to build awareness about genocide in Darfur, Sudan. The network is offering a $50,000 prize to develop the game, although the students don't get to develop it, but rather a professional agency. The students will be invited to New York to advise and participate. Anyway, you can play the finalist games and vote at www.darfurisdying.com. The ...

Molleindustria's McDonald's Game
February 2, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Just two weeks after we released Disaffected!, WCG amici italiani Molleindustria have released another specimen in the now-rapidly-growing anti-advergame subgenre, this one a scathing critique of the McDonald's corporation. Visit the "official" website to play. The game requires the player to learn and master all the complex techniques of a big international corporation like McDo. You'll bribe South American officials for the rights to clear rainforests for cattle and soy; you'll plump up cattle with additives; you'll coerce and influence government and scientific interests back home; and you'll manipulate your employees to achieve the highest profits. From the game: Making ...

Ragdoll Bush
December 3, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Not really a game, but certainly a fun little toy for you to enjoy as the US approaches its third year in Iraq: Ragdoll Bush. ...

New IF work Book & Volume explores consumerism, work
November 26, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Nick Montfort, who also blogs on Grand Text Auto, has released Book & Volume, an interactive fiction (IF) piece about one night in the life of a sysadmin for nWare, the curious and increasingly dubious corporate hub of the fictional world nTopia. Nick is one of the foremost authorities on IF, both as a practitioner and a theorist, having previously released Ad Verbum (2000) and Winchester's Nightmare (1999), and also having authored Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction (MIT Press, 2003). Nick was kind enough to let me play several pre-release versions, and I completed the game to ...

Persuasive Games Announces the Release of the Mobile Game 'Airport Insecurity'
November 8, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

I'm very happy to announce that my studio Persuasive Games has just released Airport Insecurity, a mobile game about inconvenience and the tradeoffs between security and rights in American airports. The game is available for purchase for the low, low price of $3.99, and it's currently compatible with Nokia Series 60 handsets (that includes the popular 6600, 6620, 6630, 7610, and even the ill-fated N-Gage, among many others if I'm not mistaken). Those of you with Series 40 or non-Nokia handsets: encourage your friends to buy a copy so we can afford to port the game to your device. Or ...

iBelieve - social commentary goes meta
November 7, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

I'm breaking the rules a little with this post. It has very little to do with videogames. But it's too good to pass up, and it does relate to the broader themes of our project. In a brilliant move, artist Scott Wilson created iBelieve, a cross-shaped lanyard and cap for iPod shuffle. Its purpose was social commentary: Inspired by the world's obsession and devotion to the iPod, ... [iBelieve] is a social commentary on the fastest growing religion in the world. But much to Wilson's surprise, religious organizations have started buying the iBelieve in bulk! Incredible! I've been thinking and ...

Contest: Conflicts, War and the Culture of Peace
October 26, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

The contests runneth over. This time it's Italian group aniMoweb, who offer an "interactive animation contest" on the theme of conflicts, war and the culture of peace. Among the categories is "peace videogames." Entries will be judged and prizes totaling € 8,800 will be awarded (€ 1500 for first place in the game category, € 700 for second, and € 300 for third). Winning entries will also be published online at aniMOweb, on a DVD, and in a CD-ROM accompanying the magazine Computer Graphics and Publishing. All entries must be created in Macromedia Flash and be no more than 2mb ...

Funding for Student Political Games
October 22, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

I'm up in New York (way up, at 207th st.) at the Games for Change conference. A number of interesting things to report from the conference, which I'll do in the coming days. For now, I want to catch up on a couple of funding opportunities for students, both directly related to the topics that interest you, our stalwart readers. The first comes from MTVu, a new university-targeted MTV network that will be distributed exclusively online. Stephen Friedman, the general manager of MTVu, was here at Games for Change to explain the contest. He echoed come sentiments Gonzalo has said ...

Game the Terrorists
September 16, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Where-next.com asks, "Are you sick of betting only on Nasdaq, on the price of oil, or on football games?" -- the site allows you to bet on where the next terrorist attack will take place. The Google maps-driven application accepts bets via webform that allows you to specify your name, a comment, and the type of attack (bomb, suicide bomber, air hijack, car bomb, bio attack, or a "brand new" type of attack. When the next terrorist attack happens, the closest prediction wins a t-shirt like the one at right. Like We're Not Afraid and I am fucking terrified, which ...

Bull Chip Toss
September 10, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Here's Bull Chip Toss, created by Gabriel Jensen. It's a satyrical game about the Bush administration's relationship with the media. I think it is a really good example of newsgame -no matter if you agree with its points or not. The gameplay is decent, the match between gameplay and content works well and it is fine also on a technical level. If online publications were to have small satyrical games, Bull Chip Toss would be a perfect example (listen up, my old pals at CNN: Cartoon Clicks is sooo 20th century...) ...

Sink City
September 6, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Take a look at it (update: the original image is gone so we are hosting it meanwhile.) It's basically a screenshot of a city simulator with an error message. Simulations allow us to explore different scenarios within a safe environment. The can be used for fun, they can be used as predictive tools. Sometimes the scenarios are totally crazy, sometimes they bear some resemblance to reality. This screenshot seems to be being emailed around (thanks Jo Eldoen) probably not because it is funny -I do not think it is- but rather because it is one of those "reality beats fiction" ...

Destroy Zimbabwe in Simbabwe 1.0
September 2, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Simbabwe 1.0 is a satirical commentary on contemporary politics in Zimbabwe by Australian developers The Daily Grind. The developers call the game, available only on Mac OS X, a "strategic board game." Players take the role of Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and Rhodesian Front bigwigs. The player competes to seize property and rise to power through nepotism and oppression. Welcome to Simbabwe, where the property is already owned and the houses built and you compete to burn and dispossess them. Bounce around the map plundering farms, denying grain silos to opposition supporters and robbing the community chest. I'm ...

Anti-Japan War Online
August 25, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

According to Interfax China, a Chinese online gaming company called PowerNet is creating Anti-Japan War Online, about the Japanese invasion of China during WWII. Players can only play as Chinese in the game. Here's what the article says about it: "The game will allow players, especially younger players, to learn from history. They will get a patriotic feeling when fighting invaders to safeguard their motherland," a PowerNet Project Manager, surnamed Liu, told Interfax. What's more, it sounds like this is the start of something bigger. The China Communist Youth League (CCYL), who cooperated in the development of Anti-Japan War Online, ...

The Israeli Disengagement Game
August 22, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

A while ago we told you about Wild West Bank, the Israeli anti-settlement game. Well, now there's a (sort of) pro-settlement game, The Disengagement Game. Israeli newspaper Haaretz describes the game in a recent article: The game ... puts the player into Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's shoes. Sharon, sitting in a bulldozer, has to remove orange-clad children protesting the pullout. Behind him, dozens of cars are waiting to pass. The prime minister has to run into a protesting child with the bulldozer's shovel. Every child caught becomes part of a kind of sticky mass, and Sharon has to move as ...

Slate on Islamgames
August 14, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

A few weeks ago I wrote about Islamgames and NYT columist Thomas Friedman's strangely stern reaction to them. Last week, Slate published an article by regular columnist Chris Suellentrop that comes to roughly the same conclusion: Tom Friedman is right: We're in a war of ideas. In that war, it's a bad idea for a prominent American columnist to panic over innocent games with an Islamic theme. Video games do matter. Just not the ones from IslamGames. (via Jesper) ...

Political games... unplugged
August 8, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Israeli settler kids play "Cops and Jews" (cops try to get them out of their homes) while Palestinian kids play Martyrs and Soldiers (they get to explode in order to kill the soldiers). Children have dealt with traume through games for ages (see René Clements' Forbidden Games for a movie about two kids playing during WWII). The New York Times reports about these Israeli/Palestinian games. It is harder to know, however, how popular these games are. I mean, just the fact that a few kids play it makes it a great story to publish but this doesn't mean that most ...

"Mind the Bombs" and what makes games political
August 4, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Gonzalo, Ren Reynolds, and I have been talking informally over the past month about the London bombings and what, if anything, could be done to represent them in game form. Neither Gonzalo nor I nor both of us together made a game about the bombings. But Fieler Media did, and the unfortunate result is Mind the Bombs. For those of you keeping score, Fieler also produced Bin Laden Liquors, which I'll let speak for itself. Mind the Bombs is "dedicated to the good people of Great Britain," and appears to be an earnest and deeply naive attempt to produce some ...

Whack-a-Miner
August 1, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Welcome to Whack-a-miner, a retro political game dealing with Margaret Thatcher's repression against miners during the 80's. I was a kid at the time, but I do remember that Maggie was evil and a disgrace to the female gender - Condie Rice is Mother Theresa next to her. Last time I heard of her she was sending presents to mass murderer Augusto Pinochet, so I guess I understand that people may dislike her enough to still make games about things that happened two decades ago.Anyway, leaving Maggie alone, Whack-a-miner may be a simple Flash game but it's gameplay suits perfectly ...

Islam games, Christian games, ...
July 28, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

We recently reported on the 4th Christian Game Developers Conference, happening this week in Portland. On a related and unrelated note, I recently came upon this op-ed (thanks to Andrew), by NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Friedman cites a WCJ report that the Iqra Learning Center, a site investigated after the 7/7 London bombings was the sole UK distributor of Islamgames, "a U.S.-based company that makes video games [featuring] apocalyptic battles between defenders of Islam and opponents." The op-ed cites Ummah Defense I, in which "the world is 'finally united under the Banner of Islam' in 2114, until a revolt ...

Serious Jobs
July 13, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

SeriousGames.dk is a Danish game development company based at the IT University of Copenhagen. They are currently working on Global conflicts: Middle-East, a videogame about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They currently have 2 open positions (fulltime 3D animator and Modeller and fulltime programmer). So, if you think this could be for you, go ahead and send them you CV. ...

Newsringtoning?
June 22, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Certainly, this is not game related but it may be a hint for cellphone game developers out there. It seems that the Philippines went crazy after a ringtone featuring a political recording from its president was published (CNN story.) This is simply another example about entertainment and "serious" content going together. People do care about reality and they want to make it a full part of their entertainment-related activities. Once more, serious and fun can go together. ...

Streeet Survivor
June 20, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

By way of Rebecca from SelectParks.net, we got word from an upcoming Australian game: Street Survivor. They have a trailer on their site, so you better check it out. As urban adventures go, the idea behind this one is certainly exciting. You are a 15 year old girl, run away from home to Melbourne, in order to find your sister. A homeless teenager in the big city, sounds exactly like the kind of game that I want to play. Meanwhile, I just got my copy of Electroplankton (beauuuutiful) so I'll be playing it until my copy of Nintendogs is delivered. ...

I love U boats
June 18, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

I spent a lovely couple of days in Paris and I brought this gem back for you. Actually, it was Emmanuel Guardiola from Ubisoft who mentioned it to me, so be nice to him and buy a copy of Prince of Persia :) It's a beautiful example of political game circa 1915. It's a U-Boat board game called "Unsere U-boote". According to the German Historic Museum, "This board game celebrates the victories of the German submarine fleet. On February 4, 1915, the German Reich had announced an unlimited submarine warfare to all its enemies. The German war propaganda glorified submarines ...

Israeli Anti-Settlement Game
June 17, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

An Israeli anti-settlement group has launched Wild West Bank, a game intended to underscore the problems of Israeli occupation in Palestinian land. The game uses the theme of the American Wild West to demonstrate the continued promulgation of settlements in the West Bank despite official government withdrawl. The game is entirely in Hebrew, so I'm relying on this BBC article for a description: In the game, the player acts as a sheriff tasked with dismantling illegal settlement outposts before they get turned into fully-fledged settlements ringed by Israeli soldiers. As soldiers are taken away from the occupied territories, they greet ...

Power Politics free for Educators
June 3, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

WCG regular Randy Chase has just announced that his prexy election sim Power Politics III (on WCG: 1, 2) is now free for use in the classroom. The new version will also have likely '08 candidates. Click through for the full press release. ...

California Budget Challenge
May 9, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

A nonpartisan California organization called Next Ten has created the California Budget Challenge, a sort of interactive application that lets the user make highly structured decisions about the California budget. It's not really a game, but another example of an interactive representation of the tradeoffs of budgeting. (thanks to Bridget) ...

Under Siege demo
May 2, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Under Siege is the sequel to Under Ash. Under Siege is a pro-Palestinian FPS shooter developed by Afkar Media. The original game got its share of media attention, since it portrayed a first person shooter game from the perspective of Palestinian (you had to kill Israeli soldiers). It was an interesting case of study for serious games, since in the Western World we usually brand as propaganda all games where you have to kill Israelis but we call "entertainment" games where you have to kill Arabs. Certainly, the fact that the Palestinians want to kill their own real-life enemies on ...

More dead Australians means more points
May 2, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Here's a double-whammy: a scathing political game that is also only available on Linux. In Gallipoli, the player recreates six scenarios on the Gallipoli Penninsula in WWI. The gameplay resembles Lemmings, but the player's goal, "as an authentic WWI commander" is "to wipe out as many diggers as possible." (thanks to Neil) ...

ibogost% ./commandlines
April 29, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

I'm in Milwaukee for Command Lines: The Emergence of Governance in Global Cyberspace, which starts today. The conference isn't game-specific, but it does feature a host of virtual world researchers, including Terra Novans T.L. Taylor, Ted Castronova, Richard Bartle, Greg Lastowka, as well as Linden Labber Robin Harper. To balance out the virtual communities folks, I'll be talking about simulated politics based on procedural representations, rather than virtual politics based on real people's online interactions. Not sure if I'll be blogging or not, but stay tuned for some updates. ...

Hammer the Hammer misses the nail
April 28, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Democracy Radio, the self-proclaimed "pioneer of progressive talk," now has a game. Hammer the Hammer is a whack-a-mole style game where the player bludgeons US house majority leader Tom DeLay. "The Hammer" is a reference to DeLay's nickname, a testament to his unwavering enforcement of Republican party lines in House votes. When you hammer The Hammer in Hammer the Hammer, DeLay utters a pithy phrase from his repertory (e.g. "I am the federal government."). Interestingly, after every few hits, the game stops to explicitly solicit the user's email and zip code, presumably for further progressive marketing and tracking. Hammer the ...

Roadkill to the Whitehouse
April 24, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

We're a little late in reporting this post- 2004 prexy election game, but here it is. Roadkill to the White House: Mission Extreme Move-On Over from Innermation is a "political satire racing game" that the developers describe as "a sidesplitting collision of Extreme Home Makeover and Simpson’s Hit N’ Run." In the game John Kerry sends an unsuspecting George W. Bush on a wild goose chase looking for his new home. The game is built in Virtools, a 3D rapid development environment that my Georgia Tech colleague Michael Nitsche has used and praises. FWIW, I couldn't get the game to ...

Feeding the beast: more on Food Force
April 21, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Well, well, well. For some reason, I was not expecting it, but Food Force is gathering some controversy. Maybe not as much as we've seen with JFK Reloaded (a great game, too bad its business model made it look like exploitation, which I do not believe it was), but we are starting to hear some voices against it. The Independent has something to say about it, as well as Gelf Magazine. If you are familiar with this site you know that I am used to speak my mind, so keep in mind that my only relationship with the producers of ...

Trade Center Defender
April 19, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

I just learnt about a videogame where you are supposed to defend the World Trade Center from the attack of planes that try to crash into it. No, I am not talking about the (in)famous New York Defender. The game in question is called Trade Center Defender and it seems that it was made before 9-11. As usual, this has fueled the minds of some conspiracy theorists, but the fact is that this is the first time that I know of a game -quite a lousy one, by the way- that is somehow "prophetic", so I tought it was worth ...

Iraq budget sim
April 11, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

First, disclosure: I haven't played with this application. It looks more like a sim than a game, but I thought that readers may enjoy giving it a try. A group called "Liberal Democrats" has launched Iraq War Cost, an app for mobile phones that allows you to redistribute the costs of the war into things like education, environment, health, etc. The results can be watched online (via The Guardian's Games Blog). ...

A Force More Complicated
April 6, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

I haven't had a chance to share my impressions of this year's Game Developers Conference, now a month past, mostly because I've been so busy. However, a couple recent articles cover issues that came up during the third Serious Games Summit at the GDC. The Nation just ran a piece on Playstations for Peace, including a mention of Gonzalo's Newsgaming.com and Water Cooler Games. And Personal Democracy ran a story on Political Sims that mentions the Summit, Persuasive Games, and a host of other things, including the new US Budget Game I've been working on with Dave Rejeski, Ben Sawyer, ...

News from Australia
March 29, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

I am back from Melbourne, after a really really long flight back to Denmark. It could have been a trip marred by jetlag –which haunted me for 5 whole nights in spite of my best efforts- but it turned out to be just plain fantastic. Keep reading for news on Australia's game scene, political games and a really cool museum... ...

We do need another hero
March 14, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Brenda Laurel at GDC dixit: we need heroes, but what kind of heroes are we making? Where’s Malcolm X, or Chavez? There hasn’t been a game about geopolitics that was worth a shit since Hidden Agenda! We should be giving people rehearsals for citizenship and change. I have to tell you, Microsoft is the walking dead. DRM is a wet dream. It’s not gonna work! Cat’s out the bag! When this happens, you have to let the cards fly in the air and fall where they may. GIVE IT UP ABOUT DRM. GIVE IT UP ABOUT OWNERSHIP. Cleave to open ...

D&D not kosher enough
March 10, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Ok, this is a first. The Israel Defense Forces (a.k.a. the guys who tear down houses with bulldozers) discourage the recruitment of soldiers who enjoy playing Dungeons and Dragons because the tend to be "detached from reality". Do they hire Counter Strike players instead? Sadly, the article won't say. Maybe, if you are an RPG player and want to be part of one of the bloodiest, neverending conflicts on Earth, you could play the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy (yes, that means not hanging around with a LOTR T-shirt which not only discloses your geekness, but would also make a ...

Game exhibit in Melbourne
March 7, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

While Ian is enjoying sunny California (well, San Francisco can be foggy and cold after all), I'll try to spice things a bit since we all know that it is impossible to blog and conference at the same time (even though Ian has proved me wrong in the past). So, I just wanted to let you guys and gals know that the Australian Center for the Moving Image (ACMI) will be hosting an exhibit on political videogames in Melbourne starting on March 22nd. As part of the exhibit, I'll be giving a talk on the 23rd. Many games will be ...

MoveOn Social Security Contest
March 3, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

The PAC arm of the popular leftist grassroots group MoveOn.org is sponsoring Bush In 30 Years, a contest to create a Flash-based commentary on Social Security reform. The contest does not specifically ask for a game, but the rules clearly specify that a game are eligible for entry, so long as they are created in Flash -- the PAC sees Flash as a widely available platform for distribution. Winners will receive exposure and an Apple Powerbook G4. It certainly is nice to see a contest that embraces political games. But this particular challenge -- and perhaps MoveOn.org in general -- ...

Gaming for Peace (sort of)
February 23, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

I have a feeling that we've covered this before, but maybe I'm just starting to see all the military games bleed into one. To be fair, this is a bit different than the average military game. Virtual Environment Cultural Training for Operation Readiness (VECTOR) is a game that provides cultural training for military forces. Of course, the website does suggest that the purpose of such training is "survival and mission success," which isn't a terribly empathetic goal, but I guess that shouldn't be surprising anymore. More interestingly, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict has created a game called A Force ...

Political toys
February 16, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

If you are a reader of this blog, you know our love for political games and particularly political videogames. But what about political toys? Certainly, these are not new, since there is a long tradition of making dolls of political figures (see, for example, the excellent spoof ad for Jesus Christ, the action figure). And, of course, political uses of doll, such as Gay Barbie and such. I wonder if there are other, non-doll, political toys. I do remember a friend who had a small towel with the image of a particular soccer team flag that he used to wipe ...

Fire away: CBS News lauds military games
February 9, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Today the CBS Evening News ran a story, "Uncle Sam Wants Video Gamers" (transcript, video), inspired by the recent military-industrial complex-rich G.A.M.E.S. Synergy Summit conference in Orlando. Breakaway Games' Doug Whatley scores the best quote in the article: "You can create your own world, you can lay down units anywhere you want, set any type of scenario," says Whatley. Except, of course, the scenario in which government funding doesn't support the continued expansion of the military. I guess I should really break down and create a "Military Games" category here on WCG, but I just don't have the heart to ...

Maoist game reviews
February 7, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

For those of you bemoaning the lack of red reviews available, you can now read Maoist Game Reviews. Most interestingly, as Clockwork Grue points out over on Game Girl Advance, the maoist reviews focus almost entirely on content and story, while most western reviews focus almost entirely on technical aspects (Maoists on Fallout vs. Gamespot on Fallout). Clockwork Grue segues into a discussion on games journalism, but I'm more interested in what this sort of example suggests about a topic of ongoing research for me: game criticism. It's not surprising that a communist perspective on any videogame would attempt to ...

Democracy, the Game
January 27, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Enter Democracy, the Game. According to developer Positech Games, Democracy is "a highly complex turn based game which puts you in the position of president (or prime minister) of one of 8 different countries. The object of the game is to keep the various different groups in your population happy so that every 4 years you get re-elected." Regular WCG readers will know that I'm a bit leery of calling "political" games that just simulate the political process, rather than making a statement about the political landscape. That said, Democracy promises the inclusion of policy. The player influences the voters ...

Play the Chechen jihad
January 19, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Moscow News reports on Vladimir Matveyev, a Russian Muslim who created a game about the separatist rebellion in Chechnya. Ichkeria, Operation Flash-Point features 11 Russian bases and a concentration camp. (via Kotaku) Content notwithstanding, it's interesting that the article bills the developer as an "unemployed Russian" rather than a "game developer" or an "activist" or an "extremist" or even a "terrorist." Matveyev explains that he has no plans to market his game, "saying it is not for profit" and its purpose consists in "destroying aggressive Russian enemies." So clearly he has political motivations. Even more weirdly, the article is framed ...

Danish Political Game
January 14, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Denmark is a mystery. However, even if you have no idea of Danish politics, you should check out this political game. The graphics are terrific and I love the idea that your adversaries make you waste time by huging you. You need to gather support of other political parties (those little houses in the corner) before escaping from the maze. One minor caveat: the control is really really really bad (really a shame, because the game looks fantastic. I know the drill, working on a deadline, I totally sympathize with the authors. Still, the control is really really really bad). ...

Persuasive Games at Slamdance
January 5, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

The finalists for The Big C Bawls Independent Game Competition, the first independent games festival at the 2005 Slamdance Film Festival have been announced, and I'm happy to report that one of my games, Take Back Illinois, is among the 10 finalists! Slamdance runs concurrently with the Sundance Film Festival in the same location, Park City Utah. The games exhibit will run throughout the festival, 21 - 28 January, with an award ceremony on the 24th. I'm truly surprised and thrilled that our game was selected as a finalist, especially given the competition. Diligent readers will notice that The Behemoth's ...

Political Games in 2004
December 31, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

2004 has certainly been a groundbreaking year for games in politics. Here are two recent articles that highlight some of my and Gonzalo's contributions, both individual and collaborative. Online games play with politics (BBC online) 12 days of video gaming: A look back at some of the memorable moments of 2004 (MSNBC) I'm looking forward to 2005 and realizing some of the hopes we have for pushing the medium further. ...

Army unveils war arcade
December 21, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

In yet another example of the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT)'s effort to elide "creative" and "war", that organization has made public the "Urban Terrain Module," a simulation environment that combines a Hollywood-style sound stage and set with large displays rendering computer-generated cities. It's the Army's idea of an arcade: a physical space with collaborative, computer-based simulation. Check it out: [Simulation operators] can track soldiers' movements (their helmets have built-in motion sensing cameras) and invoke more malevolent commands, too. Anyone who keeps their head in the window for too long can expect to hear the whiz-pop of a sniper's incoming ...

Politics as unusual
December 13, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Last week, China banned the seemingly prosaic game Soccer Manager 2005 because it depicted Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Tibet as countries, and thus "harmed China's sovereignty and territorial integrity," according to a Chinese news service. This week, South Korea's media rating board announced that it will not approve Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2. The game apparently features commando missions in a war-torn 2007 North Korea, implying a very near-term military conflict in the region (thanks to Nate for the tip). What's interesting about these examples is that they undeniably affirm the fact that games function politically, even games (e.g. ...

Clinton on the SNS
November 20, 2004 - by Gonzalo Frasca

(via AvantGaming) Well, the game never made it to the shelves, but it would have been cool to play with Clinton's cat. Apparently, the game was not approved because of Nintendo's anti-political policies, which is quite a shame. I hope they changed their minds because I have this fantastic idea for a game about Dick Cheney's pet. The pet in question goes on a rampage bombing Falluja, while children die and lose their limbs. Still not sure if I would launch it on the Gamecube or the DS. It would be a hell of a game! And over 50% of ...

Videogames for the Motherland
November 20, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

As part of a new national patriotism plan wonderfully titled Ready for Work and Defense of the Motherland, Russia plans to create "patriotic video games in hopes to replace the popular DOOM." The best part of the article linked above is the title: Russia to Instill Youth With Patriotism Through War, Video Games. Wow. (via Kotaku) ...

Play thy enemy
November 16, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

WCG friend Clive Thompson writes at Slate on Halo 2 as a statement about military politics. ... the ideological payload here comes merely from the act of flipping sides in medias res. In jumping across the foxhole, you're forced to acknowledge that your enemy has its own subjective, if flawed, reasons for fighting, that maybe they're something more than a cardboard cutout you use for target practice. I find these observations quite smart. Could it be that the "fictional" games are more political than the "reality games"? ...

GTA: Diebold City
November 2, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

I voted. Georgia is what those electoral college tracking apps call a "Strong Bush State," so who knows what effect I'm having, but nevertheless I did my part. Given that all previous elections I can immediately recall used the chad-producing punch-cards, and considering all the controversy about the newly minted Diebold electronic voting machines, I was curious to try one out. My verdict? A curious experience that I tried to run through the game design filter. Here's how it went: (Update: Boing Boing reports on a "Dumbold" voting machine download for The Sims, and There sports its own voter registration ...

Chronicle of Higher Ed on Me and Political Games
November 1, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

The Chronicle of Higher Education has published a story about me and my work. The article has also been Slashdotted. Unfortunately you need to be a paid subscriber to read the article, but a clever Slashdotter found a workaround and posted the article. If you are a researcher or student in the States, you should be able to track the paper version down in your department office, which also features a nice photo of me in the Georgia Tech Experimental Game Lab. The article also covers Gonzalo's work and quotes Janet Murray and Henry Lowood. The Slashdot mention makes the ...

Last-minute Weird and Vaguely Political Games
October 30, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

There seem to be a throng of last-minute games with vaguely political content. One is Bush Panic. It's an arcadish game with a sort of odd theme, "With the Heinz family fortune at his disposal, Kerry must fight back wave after wave of descending Bushites by throwing money (and occasionally other stuff) at them to make them go away." I can't tell you much more because the Mac disc image I downloaded was faulty. In any case, it seems peripherally political at best. (thanks to Jack) Another is an almost amusing parody (?) of Alexandra Kerry's DNC story about Kerry ...

Spring Break Fallujah
October 28, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

A morbid little game/cartoon, Spring Break Fallujah comments on the rumors of another US military draft. I've played about a dozen times now, and from what I can tell this is another example of the "rhetoric of failure" type of "game." (thanks to Bridget) ...

Bush doesn't want foreigners to play
October 27, 2004 - by Gonzalo Frasca

It seems that George W Bush's policies on foreigners is not just getting fingerprinted or sent to Guantanamo, but also we can't even read his own web-site! Maybe he has something to hide? Sure, I do respect his belief on the fact that foreigners do not have any right to mess with American politics (and I totally agree. We'll stop doing it the second the US stops messing with the rest of the world's politics. You have our word on this, Mr President). Anyway, the fact is that you cannot visit www.georgewbush.com if you are located outside the US (even ...

Playing the President
October 25, 2004 - by Gonzalo Frasca

The BBC, on partisan and non-partisan US campaign videogames. Featuring your caring hosts, señor Frasca and mister Bogost, a.k.a. "Gringo Loco" ...

Cambiemos at the BBC, part II
October 23, 2004 - by Gonzalo Frasca

The BBC runs today a story on Cambiemos and the Uruguayan elections. I am specially proud, since it not often that Uruguay makes it to the frontpage of a major news site (and top story of the tech section). We are all blushing, happy as pie, and really looking forward at seeing the Frente Amplio winning the election on October 31st. ...

Articles galore!
October 21, 2004 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Collisiondetection's Clive Thompson writes this month at Slate about election videogames (4 games reviewed). In addition to this, the NYTimes (free reg. req) today runs a story on web cartoons, those bastard childs of videogames and animation. ...

Debate-o-rama