August 13, 2007 -
Ian Bogost - who seems even smarter now that he's been on The Colbert Report - has a thoughtful piece up on Water Cooler Games about adding political veneers to standard game designs.Bogost looks at Frontlines: Fuel of War, upcoming from Kaos Studios, and finds its political elements to be mere window dressing for a standard FPS:
The problem is, the politics are a sham, a cover for what looks like a fairly ordinary combat game. We might call this technique "skinning politics."
A lot of serious games skin politics. One that I call out in particular in Persuasive Games is Congo Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Bark, from the Rainforest Foundation. This is a 2D platformer that's supposed to be about the World Bank support for logging. The problem is, the game doesn't represent the politics of the issue at all; it just points to the idea that the issue exists...
Frontline does something similar with the issue of peak oil, but in the opposite direction -- as a skin to make a commercial game feel more serious, rather than a serious game more commercial.
Comments
(naturally i blame the company its not my fault i didnt read their site =p)
http://www.bongs-sale.com/kaos/
(i posted the site to prove my point im not spamming =p)