Political Computer Games

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Geek temperatures be rising, if the steady stream of provocatively coded games be any indication. Portal yourself into political games thru www.selectparks.net & http://radioqualia.va.com.au/replay, or wear out your arrow keys on some of these:

War Games
Aside from the name of an excellent educational movie about the dangers of nuclear war, there’s a long list of war-related releases vying for attention. Once you’ve gagged at the Official US Army game homepage, try September 12. Over 100,000 players have now wandered here, and got the clever and simple messages embedded which you can only learn by playing. An effective use of gameplay to demonstrate some ideas. “This is not a game – you can’t win and you can’t lose. This is a simulation. It has no ending. it has already begun. The rules are deadly simple. You can shoot. Or not. This is a simple model you can use to explore some aspects of the war on terror.” And file under ‘Rumoured Political Games’? Sez Google: ‘Capcom is in talks with Michael Moore and his production company for a Fahrenheit 9/11 game based on the movie. It is expected it will be released for PC, Playstation 2, and XBox’.

www.donkeyjohn.com
Klever + kute recreation of the donkey kong console in flash, drawing attention to the quite horrible way the Australian Government is negotiating the oil between East Timor & Australia. Kodework by Kaho from Elefant-Traks ( geek-girls – apparently he’s a splendid breakdancer too ). “The evil Donkey John is laying claim to East Timor’s oil resources. Guide brave Xanana Gusmario up the oil rig using the arrow keys and jumping the barrels of stolen oil. Flick the switch to start the International Crane of Justice and use it to bring Donkey John down.”

Pixel Farmers
Graphic designer Josh On from Future Farmers has brought the world a few nifty flash games: www.theyrule.net – which maps out the incredibly interlocking directories of the top companies in the US ( recently updated to 2004), and now www.antiwargame.org – where the aim is strategise as the US President, secure offshore oil-wells and maintain popularity. Sez decoder, Josh On:
“The war in Afghanistan and the war to effect regime change in Iraq, have little to do with battling terror and everything to do with securing the interests of the US ruling class in the world. This includes controlling the world’s oil resources (the planned pipeline across Afghanistan, the abundant high quality oil in Iraq)”.

He also pointed to this great site ( http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator ) which is a game involving computers if you consider the way it might be able to help you create large scale posters on a computer for interesting public placement?
“You can upload an image using this flash app, which then allows you to decide how many pices of paper you want it printed on. It turns your images into the black and white dotted images that you see in newspapers so that it scales well. You recieve the resulting image in a pdf file. Brilliant.”

Pixelated Farmers

boldgames.com/johndeere.html
In the light of a recent BBC article pointing out that the world does not have enough water to maintain a BEEF based diet ( Animals need much more water than grain to produce the same amount of food, and ending malnutrition and feeding even more mouths will take still more water.), the fresh new ‘John Deere American Farmer’ simulation can be seen in a kinda politically motivated light. But perhaps creating and managing your own successful farm with ‘John Deere American Farmer’ could be played creatively. At any rate there’s no doubt a lot of fun to be had “Purchasing and controlling authentic John Deere branded equipment — tractors, combines, planters, cultivators” amongst other exciting farm activities.

Invader Games
Have seen plenty of variations of this classic arcade game – with George Bush, flashing 8-bit nuns, and assorted symbols / animals / fetishes, but this one is kinda cool – Space Invaders Act 1732 which lets you shoot at American corporate logos with words from a legislation Act.

Who’d have thought it’d be gamers that’d be blunting the war on terrorism? More next week..

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