Politics of Playing - Workshop Response

The games I played were “September 12” and “Donkey John”.

I feel that the games would be able to reach a wide audience via the Internet. ‘September 12’ has a good interface with commendable graphics. ‘Donkey John’ is a parody of the popular Nintendo game “Donkey Kong”, and that aspect could attract people familiar with the original game. The gameplay is simple and the interface done up well enough to get people to give it a try. I think the use of games manages to reach groups that may not find reports or news articles interesting enough to spend five minutes on, but might spend a couple of minutes on an online game. However, the clarity of the message might not be as easy to grasp straight into the game.

For ‘September 12’, I entered the game firing away. I was not expecting a missile to be launched (was expecting some sort of sniper fire), and the sight of a dead terrorist surrounded by innocent victims drove the point home. I did not observe the civilian-terrorist transition during the game, so the entire message did not hit me till I read the press release. However, the instructions provided together with my game experience got me thinking and even without the workshop, I would have attempted to find out more about the “story” behind the game.

For ‘Donkey John’, not much is told at the start, except for basic instructions. I did not realise the full message except that there was oil involved. The little Australia outline should have tipped me off, but I was too busy dodging oil barrels). The message was not immediately obvious to me, but the more attentive might figure out who Donkey John is modelled after. I was quite curious to find out more about the background to the game and why my guy had to dodge barrels thrown by a mutated figure. The designer quite cleverly added the link in the edited button on the Game & Watch picture/interface.

My idea for a game would be to highlight the issue of Bush’s search for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq. I would design a game where your character would storm locations with troops in search of WMD. At each location you must break through a barrier where Iraqi soldiers are stationed, thus both Iraqi and US soldiers and innocent civilians suffer casualties. At each location, no WMD are found and you go home to find oil prices are so high you cannot afford to use your car. The final page shows a tabulation of WMD found (zero) and human casualties.