Playing Politics Workshop Response- Jess's Response

Q1) As Joe Boughton-Dent comments “There are difficulties…in monitoring what individual players take away from the game”. I am sure that there may be players who just play September 12th or Donkey John with out really considering the political messages they portray. However, these games are very stylistically simplistic as opposed to ordinary games on the market. You can tell that the game itself is not really the focus; it just facilitates the user’s exposure to and consideration of the message. I think in the majority of cases these games are effective in communicating the morals they contain to audiences via the internet. There may be a few people who fail to connect the game with the message, although I think this would be the minority, especially if they discover the game from a site such as newsgaming.com, if they read some of the background information and are well informed about current affairs.

Q2) I will consider each game individually because I think there are some differences in the manner in which the message is presented in each game:
>September 12th: the game’s title immediately situates the game, ‘September 11’ or ‘9/11’ are terms which are recognised almost universally, it also hints at criticism of the brazen nature of the War on Terror, that action was taken so drastically and so quickly after the New York attacks. I initially thought the game was about just civilian casualties, I did not immediately notice the mourning civilians morphing into terrorists. I think you understand the message on a certain level while you are playing the game, as with any game you search for the goal of the game (what you have to succeed at to usually win or progress in the game) and by understanding the unachievable goal and never ending pattern of the game, the message it carries becomes increasingly lucid to the user. However, I think reading the game’s press release gives the user a greater depth of understanding about the game’s moral. In this case the ‘violence only breeds violence’ idea, which although I understood this whilst playing the game, I only really considered upon reflection.

>Donkey John: I think that the message of this game was more complex and perhaps more politically weighted as it deals with a very specific political event (September 12th does also but it’s a world-wide issue which is far more publicised). Somehow because this game has an achievable goal I seemed to focus more on that rather than the political message whilst I was playing. In comparison to September 12th where you questioned the futility of the game which then led you directly to or at least prompted you to consider the message. I think that is why Donkey John provides background and politically loaded instructions, because for some players the meaning may not be immediately obvious, the message itself is not as embedded in the game.

Q3) (a) About how scary nuclear capabilities are, are we taking things too far when we are threatening each other with weapons that have the potential to destroy the planet we inhabit. We are too frivolous about something which should not be taken lightly.
(b) You play as America and have ten people and two minutes to assemble the pieces of a nuclear bomb and then use it to blow up North Korea before they bomb you up. If you loose, all your people die from the blast. Even if you win, two of your people die from each bomb you explode, so each level gets harder with less people to assemble the bomb in the time limit.