Can video games be a force for change?

Good intentions, bad games
But here’s the thing … I can’t use the word “fun” to describe many of these games not because the topics they address are too dire for such frivolous descriptions, but because, frankly, a lot of these games are downright tedious to play.

Take “Real Lives” for example. Though the game strives to help players better understand what existence is like for the many different people living on this planet, when it dropped me into the life of a young boy growing up Syria and began pummeling me with tedious boxes of text, the experience quickly became about as compelling as reading an encyclopedia.

And while “ICED” is a surprisingly polished 3-D game in some ways, it’s also strangely devoid of things for your youthful character to do. I mean, you can only run around a mostly empty city answering immigration-related trivia questions for so long before skeleton killing starts to look super appealing.

“The complaints are valid,” says Ian Bogost. “A lot of these games are really bad.”

Bogost knows a thing or two about serious games. As the co-founder of Persuasive Games he’s helped develop the likes of “Fat World,” a game that takes a look at the multifaceted problem of American obesity, and “Airport Security,” a game that takes a satirical poke at airport security practices in a post 9/11 world.

He admits that his company has had its share of hits and misses. In a rather cutting article, Slate writer Justin Peters took Bogost’s company to task for creating games that “play like ‘Sims’ expansion packs that were too boring to be released.’”

But Bogost thinks that Peters and others have missed the point, that “serious games” aren’t necessarily trying to create the same experience mainstream commercial games create or speak to the same crowd.

“I'm less and less interested in satisfying the perverse demands of gamers and much more interested in talking to ordinary people through games,” Bogost responded to Peters. “The idea of making games more alluring to people who don't love games is actually something of a noble goal, in my mind.”

Meanwhile, he points out that serious games — many of which are funded by non-profits or created at the behest of organizations with little game-making experience — are usually produced with very limited time, money and game-development expertise. And if video games are a young medium, then serious games are still in diapers.

“The more games that we start to see that are doing things other than purely entertaining, the more rapidly the sector will grow in size and dollars and in sophistication,” Bogost says.

Play these games
But for all the naysaying, there really are some very good games that have something meaningful to say. Take “Hush” for example. In this little rhythm game created by a team of students from the University of Southern California, you play a Tutsi mother from Rwanda trying to keep her baby quiet while Hutu death squads hunt for you nearby. The gameplay is simple – you must type the letters of a lullabye at the right time to soothe the baby. If you don’t hit the right letters at the right time, the baby will start to cry and draw the attention of men sure to kill you both.

“Hush” is elegant and short (you can finish it in five minutes) and it actually gave me the chills as I listened to the sounds of a crying baby juxtaposed against a background of gunfire and human suffering. Unless you have a heart made of rocks you can’t walk away from this game without feeling something more for the plight of the many real-life Tutsi mothers who must have found themselves singing these songs.

Meanwhile, though I’m not usually inclined to tell people to stop reading something I’ve written, I’ll make an exception here. Do this: Stop reading this article and go here to play a little game called “Execution.” It won’t take you long, I promise.

Now that you’ve been given a spoiler warning: Here’s a little experimental game that manages in its own small way to impart a message … and one that’s particularly relevant to the gaming crowd. In “Execution,” players are shown an unarmed prisoner tied to a post. You have a gun and it’s clear that you’re supposed to shoot this defenseless man. What do you do?

If you’re like me, you eventually end up gunning him down … only to discover that the game abruptly ends and every time you restart it you find the prisoner still there, riddled with bloody bullet holes, dead because of your choice and dead for good. (There is a different choice you could have made, but I’ll leave it to you to figure out.)

“I didn't set out to make a statement actually, but I did intend for you, as the player, to think about your actions,” says Jesse Venbrux, the 21-year-old game design student from the Netherlands who created “Execution.” “The experience I wanted to create was for the player to shoot the guy, restart the game, and be surprised, frustrated, and maybe feeling a little guilty, realizing you can't turn back to the previous state.”

A serious hit
While no game for change has yet to become a hit like, say, “Grand Theft Auto,” Seggerman predicts that a serious game will rise through the ranks to become a genuine blockbuster within the next five years.

“We’ve seen a lot more interest from the games industry,” Seggerman says, explaining that she was recently contacted by a number of fairly high-level Electronic Arts employees planning to leave EA and form a company dedicated to making environmental games.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has teamed up with Games for Change to create a competition that challenges student developers to create games based on the theme of a sustainable environment. And at last week’s Games for Change festival, attendees got a sneak peak at the finalist — among them a a “SimCity”-meets-“Tetris” game called “City Rain” in which buildings drop from the sky and must be strategically placed on a grid so the community can grow in an ecologically mindful manner.

“I think people are ready for new games,” Seggerman says. “These games aren’t perfect, but there are moments in them that are sublime.”

Winda Benedetti is a Seattle-based writer who feels guilty even when she kills digital people.  Tune in weekly to her Citizen Gamer column for a look at independent and casual games, as well as games that are flying under the radar but shouldn’t be.

MORE FROM CITIZEN GAMER

Citizen Gamer Section Front

Video games are cheaper than couples therapy Wake up to video game sleeper hits Gaming our way to musical genius Will gamers go for Sony's PSPgo? Which game machine is right for you? In dark gaming times, Nintendo DS shines Is the president a video game hater? Console wars: Microsoft drops Xbox 360 price Sony introduces slimmer PS3 and big price cut With video games, it’s feast or famine Citizen Gamer Section Front   Add Citizen Gamer headlines to your news reader: