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Speaking of the scapegoat de jour...
When games aren’t turning our children into a bunch of gun-wielding psychopaths, it seems they’re turning them into a bunch of Fatty McFattersons. Or so Steve Easterbrook, CEO of McDonalds UK, suggested to The Times of London.
“Kids are sat home playing computer games on the TV when in the past they’d have been burning off energy outside,” he opined during an interview about the role the golden arches have played in rising obesity rates.
To his credit, Easterbrook admits that obesity is a “complex” problem. At least on that point the developers over at Persuasive Games agree. They say that obesity is, indeed, a complex problem with no simple solutions. They also suggest that, among other things, it just might be fast food that makes you fat.
I know, I know! What a bunch of loons with loony ideas about how the world works. One of those loony ideas: They made a video game about the labyrinthine and systemic problem behind America’s ever-expanding waistline. Aptly enough, this little simulation game is called “Fatworld” and it’s free to download at www.fatworld.org.
I took a few moments to speak with Ian Bogost, the brain behind “Fatworld” (and the author of the book “Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames”). While games frequently get a bad rap for being violent diversions forged in very mouth of hell itself, Bogost believes that video games are, in fact, a medium uniquely suited to presenting complicated and thought-provoking issues to the public at large.
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Persuasive Games The game 'Fatworld' begins by having players select their character's body shape, age, socio-economic class, and predispositions to things like heart disease and diabetes. |
“Unlike television or even novels, instead of telling stories, video games represent systems and complicated interactions between multiple dynamics,” Bogost says. “They're a model of the world rather than an individual story within it.”
And so you start “Fatworld” by creating a character — selecting body shape, age, socio-economic class, and predispositions to things like heart disease and diabetes. In “Sims”-esque style, you lead your character through daily life, choosing what foods to eat and buy, whether to exercise (or not). You can acquire and run restaurants and the types of food you put on the menu will affect the health of the people in your town.
Meanwhile, you can stroll on over to the Govern-O-Mat to change government food subsidies or bribe a politician, and you can visit the Health-O-Mat to check on how your character is faring. (Using vending machines to affect government and health care policy is a bit of divine commentary, I think).
Throughout it all, the choices you make affect your character's health — you’ll watch yourself get fatter or thinner, live a long life or die. Yes, the game plays a little clunky here and there (the exercising mingames especially), but if "Fatworld" stumbles at times in the gameplay department, it more than makes up for it in the thought-provoking department.
“If anything, what I hope to do with the game is to show that any simple answer is wrong,” Bogost says.
Stick that in yer McNugget hole and eat it
For those looking for a game that feels plenty comfortable pointing the finger of blame at fast food, check out the free “McDonald’s Video Game” at www.mcvideogame.com, which gives players a satiric peek at the ugliness that goes into the making of a Big Mac.
Welcome to McDonald’s. Would you like a side of rainforest deforestation with your double-hormone beef patty? Mmmm, mmm good!
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