Video games for the politically minded

[CptStern]

Games that stick it to 'The Man'

"For several years, hard-core game players have complained that big consumer brands are increasingly being featured in their virtual game worlds. Even worse, they say, are "advergames," video games developed by companies to promote products.

Now a new genre of games is flipping that promotion on its head. Known as "anti-advergames," the new titles satirize big companies and question corporate polices ranging from how cattle are raised to low pay for workers.
Anti-advergames

"Advertisers, governments and organizations mount huge campaigns to show us what they want us to see, and we want to expose what they're hiding," said Ian Bogost, a partner at Persuasive Games, a pioneer of the new genre. "There's lots of precedent for this sort of speech in print, in film (and) on the Web, but we think videogames are particularly good at exposing the underlying logics of these organizations--how they work and what's wrong with it."

interesting read, here are some of the games listed in the article, you can play them online


here's a kinkos game

it's a Mcdonalds RTS that slams fast food culture (posted on friday)

a collatoral damage war sim

 

[dream431ca]

Well..videogames are more convinent than movies to showcase a new product...look at Gran Turismo..the whole game is a marketing tool.

 

[Laivasse]

I always considered HL2 to be a pretty good anti-establishment/anti-authoritarianism game. Don't like whoever's in power? Pick up a crowbar and crack some skulls. Great stuff.

But these little games that pop up solely to hammer away at a specific point are on a hiding to nothing. People play games to kick back and have fun, not be political. If you somehow find some resonance with your beliefs in an already great game then that's a nice bonus, but I don't think it's a good idea for games to be defined by the politics therein. For a start, the only people who are going to find and play obscure games that attack MacDinalds or whatever are people who aren't very fond of MacD's in the first place. They're not changing any minds, probably not making very good games. Meh.

 

[RakuraiTenjin]

I like advertising in games (unless you mean.. logo screens that sit there and such)

But if say, um, Pepsi or Coke payed a game developer to have some of the Soda Machines in the game be the real looking pepsi ones and whatnot, hell yeah. As long as it's realistic is what I am all for, it only makes it better and helps funding.

Edit: Ah I see what was meant moreso now. Still applies though. I like games with political undertones/stories, IE: Half Life 2, Freedom Fighters, but BIG TIME- Freespace 2.

I'd have to Say Freespace 2 takes the cake government/politics wise. There is so much in that universe that you can research not just in the game missions but tech room, etc and find out about. Stuff like the GTVA Security Council, merging of the PVN and GTA, how companies like Triton Dynamics and Subach Inness affected the war. I like games that put a lot of backstory government/politics wise into it.

 

[Raeven0]

Oh, good, at least I'm not the only one frustrated.

 

[Angry Lawyer]

Even though the point the collateral damage sim is making is pretty deep, they shouldn't have made firing missiles at tiny people so much fun.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[TheAmazingRando]

The collateral damage game needs nukes...and bio/chemical weapons.