Aliens in the Desert

Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time - New York Times

This is a really good article. It discusses a breadth of games and developers of serious political games. It also has some really good quotes by some of the people involved in this phenomenon.

The term “serious games” always makes me cringe for some reason. But usually because I imagine the conferences on serious games with guest speakers like people who are getting huge gobs of money thrown their way to make games for the military. Or I think of floods of politically charged but overall crappy games; the issues might be there but no one will play them for more than five minutes because basically they suck as games. I was glad to see this quote in the article:

Ben Sawyer, co-founder of the Serious Games Initiative — a group devoted to promoting the creation of persuasive games — worries that with so many nonprofit organizations rushing to get in on the action, some of the results are simply “bad games ones that are just boring,” he said. “There are a ton of them in this space.” Designing a fun game is hard enough; making it fun and politically nuanced is really tough.

However, the games outlined in the article really are extremely interesting. Annoying that they don’t link to them.

So I guess that’s up to me:

Peacemaker

Food Force

A Force More Powerful

Ian Bogost’s Persuasive Games

September 12th (also the only one of these I have played so far)

Super Columbine Massacre RPG! (If he didn’t want hate mail, maybe he should’ve picked a better title…)

And just to leave this on a contemplative note, consider this statement: “No no no, games don’t influence violent behavior. But they CAN influence voting behavior!”

hmm….