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Political Games: Bordergames - Decompressing Lavapies
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While in Madrid I'm catching up with this interesting bunch to talk over a project of theirs currently in development.
Both game and workshop toolkit, 'Bordergames' is an attempt to provide a forum for young immigrants in the area to review and nurture their socio-political environment using a virtual reconstruction of Lavapies, their local square.
In this way the Bordergames crew are making both a site and player-specific game; transforming Lavapies into an in-game 'stage' for exploring scenarios and sharing information that strengthens the sense of community in their local environment.
FYI The engine they chose is the open-source and portable Crystal Space with all modelling done in the powerful Blender.
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Posted by julian on Friday, March 04 @ 17:30:39 CET
(Read More... | 1696 bytes more | Score: 0)
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Political Games: New Submission - StreamWars
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camper writes "
Online/Network Multiplayer 3D videogame in wich each player is invited to choose a character and navigate in a hijacked-videogame environment , in sampled, vectorized and digitalized architectures, crossed and disrupted by streams of chaotic data.
http://www.streamlab.info/streamwars/
"
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Political Games: Mindbending Software Inc.
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camper writes "
www.mindbending.us
When it’s in the game, it’s in the brain!
Mindbending Software Inc. is a company specialised on psychological conditioning software packages for children.
With the newest technologies our products infiltrate the computer games of your kids and mingle various subconscious or concious conditiong messages and images in the game contents.
"
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Political Games: Persuasive Games
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http://www.persuasivegames.com/
Design, build, and distribute electronic games for persuasion, instruction, and activism.
Their games influence players to take action through gameplay. Games communicate differently than other media; they not only deliver messages, but also simulate experiences. While often thought to be just a leisure activity, games can also become rhetorical tools.
Think games are just for fun? Think again.
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Political Games: New entry - Eastwood Group's 'Civilization IV'
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The Eastwood Group have created a unique project in the RTS format, one that takes an ironic turn on the geographical preoccupations of the genre's founder, Civilization.
Instead of building power stations and routing traffic, Civilization IV configures the player as an agent within the networked flows of corporate power.
At the outset, the player chooses not alignment, but employment with mega corps like IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Intel etc, and operates at an executive level within the seedy arenas of corporate interest. The game itself is a full featured real time strategy game for Wintel (which is a little hypocritical given the message), but is free for download at 241Mb.
Deleuze would've toasted to it I'm sure.
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Political Games: “Rethinking Wargames”: A Chance to Remaster Conflict
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Interview with Ruth Catlow by Molly Hankwitz
“Rethinking Wargames” is an online 3-Player Chess Game which
questions the politics of conflict-oriented traditional
chess. Players can change the rules and develop their own,
non-black and white images of the board itself, adding them
to the site.
To play see: http://www.low-fi.org.uk/rethinkingwargames/
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Political Games: New Submission - 3D game 'STOP BUSH'
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camper writes "
STOP BUSH is 90 seconds of cathartic firing accusations at an army of Bushes and Cheney attack dogs, all to the rocking beat of Rage Against the Machine.
Hypocrisy! Ignorance! Brutality!
STOP BUSH's searing satire probably won't change the world, but it could make you feel better.
STOP BUSH is only 5MB, and installs automatically. Download the setup file (Windows only) at:
http://twcdc.com/STOP_BUSH_3D_COMPUTER_GAME/"
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Political Games: Playing up: an interview with Molleindustria.
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Italian collective La Molleindustria (www.molleindustria.it) make politically engaged games, which are different to now-familiar Australian examples like Escape from Woomera, and have different targets. Their games run in Macromedia Flash, by now a long-established family of software applications for producing and replaying web animations, games and pop-ups. Molleindustria make games that, in their visuals, basic gameplay discipline (mouse-pointer) and in their emergence in discrete browser windows, resemble the flash and shockwave games that crowd the servers of shockwave.com or are used to advertise commodities, from energy drinks to political candidates like Howard Dean. The difference is that these are games that, for example, seek to make trenchant criticisms of ever-more flexible labour markets and to visualise and make playable the claims of queer theory about the mutability of sexual identity, pleasure and desire.
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Political Games: Escape From Woomera
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http://escapefromwoomera.org/
Escape From Woomera is a subversive game which responded to the history of "life within this most secretive and controversial place on the Australian political and geographic landscape". Escape From Woomera recreates the now-closed Woomera Detention Centre wihch was, at its peak, 'home' to 1400 illegal immigrants who awaited processing for periods of up to two years, in conditions which were so poor as to receive condemnation from the United Nations. A Federal Government media lockdown on Woomera, and its placement in the remote, South Australian outback ensured that Australians remained oblivious to the inhumane conditions. In 2002, reports of abuse and a hunger strike by 150 of the asylum seekers provoked a mass protest outside the centre - during which 50 detainees escaped.
The player must attempt to escape using actual techniques employed by detainees. Clues and tools in the game provide opportunities for players to dig tunnels, scale fences, or utilize the efforts of action groups and sympathetic lawyers. If clues are over looked, or if efforts come to a futile end, the player's hope-score degenerates until they eventually die of despair.
Escape From Woomera has received criticism from refugee advocates, who fear the context of a computer game trivialises the plight of refugees whilst depicting them as criminals, and has also been criticized by patriotic Australians who believe the game encourages unlawful behaviour. However, the Escape From Woomera development team are confident of the game's role as a mechanism for mobilising widespread information through an interactive, immersive experience. Although virtual, and although a game - the non-fiction, documentary purpose of Escape From Woomera provides a more truthful proximity to the actual plight of asylum seekers in Australia than any other media information source.
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Ungravity's
'Oversaturation'
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