Gonzalo Frasca?s Newsgaming outfit has posted the September 12th game.
It is quite interesting but I think it has the problem that I wrote about earlier, that its ideology has a cartoonish clearness (the war on terror is evil, end of story). I like to see doubt in things like this. As has been discussed on Game Girl Advance, the “terrorists” in the game are really, really nice.
Couldn’t one make a game that mirrors the weird ambiguities of the real world: being critical of the war on terror while recognizing that fundamentalist political Islam is fascism by another name?
[Note added later: I begin to wonder whether some people would consider the last statement to be controversial? Is it?]
Exactly… it uses interactivity to make a single point, albeit in a way that *does* take some advantage of the discoursive nature of games. The next step would be to offer a range of choices (real choices, rather than the current non-choices you’re offered should you take an adversarial stance to the authors’ position), allow questions to be asked by the player and answered by the simulation. It’s good that there is no explicit goal or win condition, but of course given the central metaphor people are going to consider more terrorists to be bad so there is still a very clear *implicit* goal.
What if, in addition to dropping bombs, you could air-drop anti-terrorism propaganda pamphlets on the town, or open McDonald’s stands and slowly convert the population on an ideological or cultural level?
Of course, introducing these new vocabulary elements adds considerable complexity (to mechanics / interface, as well as metaphor) and my game designer instincts are already reigning me in :)
It’s a cute and well-done game with a poignant message, though, and I hope it gets a lot of attention.
Needs a machinegun.
You know.. I found a glitch in the game.. if you fire only at the buildings and hit no “civilians” then no new terrorists are born. Thus, you can completley destroy the populous’s buildings, but they’ll only hate you if you kill. Hrrmm…
The Only Winning Move Is Not To Play. (TM)
Ultimately, it’s a question of the limits of simulation. I would venture that the vast, vast majority of simulations with any geopolitical content to them are perspectivist, and in fact it is essential to the simulation choice (what to model, what not to model) that a perspective be chosen: in this way it can be argued that simulation is less free than contemporary narrative.
Your wish for a simulation that “says” that Islamic fundementalism is “bad” is ultimately another reach for a fantasy of disinterested simulation to model good guys and bad guys. Gonzalo has modelled an experience: that of those who live, on a day to day basis, in those territories. It’s an element which is strategically left out of any other terror-sim.
So, the bit that I’ll describe as controversial is the implicit claim that other simulations are – or can be – disinterested in a way that this one is not. You posit 2 perspectives: objectivity, and the experiential perspective on the day-to-day from the US (and Europe.) The idea that a completely fair simulation is possible is problematic; the objection to one that is unfair simply because it comes from the least-represented zone of representation is moreso.
Yeah, all simulations are subjective. Especially this one.
I think that the issue of objectivity is a side issue here since the game was clearly made with the intent of expressing an opinion. The issue is rather what September 12th says and what ideology it expresses.
Greg Costikyan finds it offensive because it neglects to mention that something actually happened on September 11th. The game could be interpreted as expressing a romantic Western idea of a noble savage who is innocent at heart, but will react violently if his authentic way of life is threatened. Isn’t there more to it?
Note, by the way, that my objection was to splitting the world into a “good” and a “bad” side.
Couldn’t the September 12th game be accused of doing this?
I don’t know. Soon enough after starting to play I’ve begun enjoying killing the crying civilians before they turn into terrorists. The game COULD be interpreted that way, as well, by a sufficiently sociopathic reader/gamer.
Now try to imagine this game as a 1st person shooter. It could sell quite well, and no-one would care what the designers meant to put in there.
The whole idea of newsgames seems… disturbing to me. Not that it’s new. I recall from the mid-80s an Israeli computer game called Intifada. The player was an Israeli soldier facing a stone- and molotov cocktail-throwing mob. The type of ammo given the soldier (tear gas, rubber bullets, live ammo) was limited by the prime minister in office. A “successful” round would make the PM more right-wing, giving you access to “better” ammo. But you could just try to survive a round without killing anyone and then the PM would be more left-wing. You COULD read the game that way.
And you could note that no matter WHAT you did, the Intifada continued. You could read it THAT way as well.
So are newsgames biased? The designers think they are, but the players definitely don’t have to play by the rules. They don’t have to enjoy the same bits. You can play GTA without killing a single innocent bystander. You can spend a few precious minutes in MoH emptying clip after clip into the face of that smug British officer you’re sent to rescue. Games, far more than movies or literature, are what the player makes them. The game could send you a message, but the fun-facture enables you to completely ignore that message and concentrate on what does it for YOU.
As a follow up, I don’t think I’d describe simulations as “subjective” per se, since that’s a term that applies so roundly to any human discursive element as to be unhelpful as a term of analysis. I say rather that simulations are meaningfully selective in terms of what gets modelled and what doesn’t, of which objects have which properties. Going back to the language of object-oriented programming, is “terrorist” an object class, a method, a property, a message? When is the last game you saw a motion of becoming-terrorist?
The September 12 game is really a simulation of a process that, as noted elsewhere, really does have a real-world basis, and even a simulation-veracity test: do assaults lead to the creation of terrorists? The fact that a recent Palestinian suicide-bomber was a woman whose cousins were killed in an Israel air raid suggests that, to some extent, the game is “objective” – it models a real-world situation. It’s also ideologically motivated and not disinterested. The point is that so is Counter-Strike, to all extents and purposes (and it is also “objective” in its way, although the object of the simulation is about technologies and tactics, not about politics and culture – and that choice of object is also ideological). Only Counter-Strike doesn’t bill itself as such.
Here’s a question. If the message given in September 12th (and the other game Dubi mentioned) is freely interpretable in a number of possible ways, and if other media (non interactive) can have exactly the same effect of subjective interpretation, then how does the ability to send a message through conventional artforms differ from how it is used in videogames?
(Answering my own question, just as a point of view:) Games seem to allow us to posit our own ideas and strategies in the model of the message, and not quite allow the designer full narrative control. While we’re able to interperate a static message however we like, games also afford us to place our own message – thus the message in the game becomes something of a co-operative force between player and designer. Each instance of the game played out could give a different message. Perhaps a non-subjective simulation could be one where a question is asked by the designer, and the player gives a solution, but there is no intended correct solution (or atleast, the possibility to express yourself as a player in many different ways, without it being called a failure scenario).
And Bezzy’s point is exactly why I disagree with attempts to use games as a persuasive argumentative medium. They would be much better suited to encourage self-reflection when faced with moral dilemmas or philosophical questions. You know, stuff for which there is no definite answer but what one decides for oneself. I’m rambling here, but I’m too tired attempt to make sense. :(
If these people are already spending all this time with the games already, why not have these messages? They might be ignored, but even if they only effect one person, they served a purpose…