Have Browser Games Taken Over the Role of Politicial Cartoons?
Have Browser Games Taken Over the Role of Politicial Cartoons?
December 19, 2008
On Sunday, an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at President Bush during a press conference.
Within days, nearly a half-dozen Flash games lampooning the incident appeared on the web (you'll find all of them linked here on GamePolitics).
Given the speed and reach of the web, the Amazon Game Room Blog wonders whether browser games have replaced the role of the political cartoon in modern society:
Web-based flash games continue to take over the satirical role that political cartoons once filled... Our country has a rich and scathing history of political satire in cartoon form in newspapers and magazines and anyone who noticed how fast the [various Bush/shoe games] popped up on the Web after the footwear was flung... should be able to acknowledge the potential for this in flash technology.
The games are certainly is no works of art, but they were not designed to be awe inspiring. They were instead designed to capture the moment, and immortalize it from a particular point of view that people in this particular time can appreciate, or at least recognize. In a hundred years... these snippets of code will offer a window into the past... it is all just part of a media continuum that stretches forward and back further than we know.
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Posted 11/08/09 at 09:02am
DarkSaber: http://tinyurl.com/yez7jyo
DarkSaber: http://tinyurl.com/yez7jyo
Posted 11/08/09 at 09:01am
DarkSaber: Oh for gods sake, the Gearbox pres is gobbing off about Valve again
DarkSaber: Oh for gods sake, the Gearbox pres is gobbing off about Valve again
Posted 11/08/09 at 08:53am
JDKJ: But cheer up, Austin. If the unemployment rate continues to double-digit as predicted for the next few years, your half-dozen stands a better than likely chance of returning to power.
JDKJ: But cheer up, Austin. If the unemployment rate continues to double-digit as predicted for the next few years, your half-dozen stands a better than likely chance of returning to power.
Posted 11/08/09 at 08:46am
JDKJ: @DS: If he had added the line about "or hiring illegals aliens under the table to work as nannies," it would have been a completely perfect descripition. And, yes, it's about the same difference between a six and a half-dozen.
JDKJ: @DS: If he had added the line about "or hiring illegals aliens under the table to work as nannies," it would have been a completely perfect descripition. And, yes, it's about the same difference between a six and a half-dozen.
Posted 11/08/09 at 08:31am
DarkSaber: My god, that description makes them sound almost Republican. Still what did you expect, Obama is only marginally more left than republicans.
DarkSaber: My god, that description makes them sound almost Republican. Still what did you expect, Obama is only marginally more left than republicans.
Posted 11/08/09 at 01:07am
Austin_Lewis: Health insurance, brought to you by the same kind of bureacrats who couldn't, in timely fashion, investigate the comments of any of the men Obama appointed Czars. Or their past. Or their history of not paying taxes.
Austin_Lewis: Health insurance, brought to you by the same kind of bureacrats who couldn't, in timely fashion, investigate the comments of any of the men Obama appointed Czars. Or their past. Or their history of not paying taxes.
Posted 11/08/09 at 01:06am
Austin_Lewis: Yes, and what a piece of crap it was. Arresting and fining people just because they don't make a personal choice to buy healh insurance, creating over a hundred new bureacracies, and worse.
Austin_Lewis: Yes, and what a piece of crap it was. Arresting and fining people just because they don't make a personal choice to buy healh insurance, creating over a hundred new bureacracies, and worse.
Posted 11/08/09 at 12:24am
ZippyDSMlee: JDKJ:the only trouble is a bunch of witless hacks wrote it....its going to be a train wreck....
ZippyDSMlee: JDKJ:the only trouble is a bunch of witless hacks wrote it....its going to be a train wreck....
Posted 11/07/09 at 11:33pm
JDKJ: BREAKING: In a photo-finish at the wire, House passes health care reform bill. Relatedly, in a fit of pique, Austin Lewis kicks innocent dog.
JDKJ: BREAKING: In a photo-finish at the wire, House passes health care reform bill. Relatedly, in a fit of pique, Austin Lewis kicks innocent dog.
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:27pm
ZippyDSMlee: man I got alot of junk and dup files too >< god I need orginization...and no not the knee capping media mafia kind :P
ZippyDSMlee: man I got alot of junk and dup files too >< god I need orginization...and no not the knee capping media mafia kind :P
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:26pm
ZippyDSMlee: replaced :P
ZippyDSMlee: replaced :P
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:23pm
ZippyDSMlee: beemoh:hey its like 60GB porn,400GB anime 100GB games and crap I have took from all my DVDs, I hate waiting on dvds to install stuff..... oh and 40GB of my porn was in the found.000 folder...mostly corrupted.... least I got names of wut needs to be repa
ZippyDSMlee: beemoh:hey its like 60GB porn,400GB anime 100GB games and crap I have took from all my DVDs, I hate waiting on dvds to install stuff..... oh and 40GB of my porn was in the found.000 folder...mostly corrupted.... least I got names of wut needs to be repa
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:18pm
beemoh: @Zip: ...and you'd have to spend all that time re-downloading that porn?
beemoh: @Zip: ...and you'd have to spend all that time re-downloading that porn?
Posted 11/07/09 at 03:34pm
ZippyDSMlee: ggrrrrr......vista lost one of my hard drives and I had a heart attack thinking I lost 1TB of data....
ZippyDSMlee: ggrrrrr......vista lost one of my hard drives and I had a heart attack thinking I lost 1TB of data....
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:58am
JDKJ: Which could be explained by both (a) and (b).
JDKJ: Which could be explained by both (a) and (b).
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:56am
Austin_Lewis: JDKJ: You forgot C) the fact that, for some reason, every time he did something that would suggest he shouldn't be in the military, let alone an officer, higher ups ignored it or let it slide.
Austin_Lewis: JDKJ: You forgot C) the fact that, for some reason, every time he did something that would suggest he shouldn't be in the military, let alone an officer, higher ups ignored it or let it slide.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:51am
JDKJ: Part of the problem is, I believe, that (a) the Army had a lot of time and money already invested in him and which they were unwilling to simply write-off and (b) an increasing need for the type of skills and services he provided.
JDKJ: Part of the problem is, I believe, that (a) the Army had a lot of time and money already invested in him and which they were unwilling to simply write-off and (b) an increasing need for the type of skills and services he provided.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:48am
JDKJ: And that even if he was begging not to get cut loose, he was apparently a real good candidate for being cut loose, anyway.
JDKJ: And that even if he was begging not to get cut loose, he was apparently a real good candidate for being cut loose, anyway.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:11am
JDKJ: @chada: And while Kennedy once noted that there's usually more than enough blame for everyone to get a slice, the possibility that the Army was unwilling to cut loose someone who was asking to get cut loose could be a factor.
JDKJ: @chada: And while Kennedy once noted that there's usually more than enough blame for everyone to get a slice, the possibility that the Army was unwilling to cut loose someone who was asking to get cut loose could be a factor.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:07am
ZippyDSMlee: *noms on his feet*..nomnomnomnom*droooll* ...wuuutttttt uuu looking at?
ZippyDSMlee: *noms on his feet*..nomnomnomnom*droooll* ...wuuutttttt uuu looking at?
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Comments
Join political cartoons in satire? Maybe. Replace them? God, I hope not. Most flash games are pretty lame and aren't particularlly witty or deep. On the other hand, the genre of political comics has become something artful, and are even sometimes profound. I mean, it'd be one thing if the flash games included satirical dialog of some sort about issues and relevances. As it is, they're just shoes flying across the screen at a dopey looking target.
These flash games may parallel political cartoons in that they capture a moment of public attention in a preservable format, but I'm not seeing any "satire" in the shoe games I've seen thus far. The only message evident is "lol throw a shoe at Bush." Cartoons offer (some of them anyway) a measure of actual commentary on what we're talking about, not just a snapshot of what we were forwarding to our friends.
Do Not Talk About Feitclub http://www.feitclub.com
While the current crop of flash game is not quite ready to replace the role of political cartoon, I think at in a decade or two, they will. For one, news outlets are increasingly moving online where these games have a home. More news outlets will recognize that the rising generation will be more motivated to come to the site by games than a comic. Two, the people designing these games will become more mature and better able to convey the message they want in the game. These games have the possibility to be more expressive than their passive single frame counterpart.
So far in this instance the only one I can think of that actually has a message of sorts is the one where you play a Secret Service agent trying to stop shoes. The message wasn't very good or clear, but it was the only one that had a syblance of a mesage.
E. Zachary Knight
Oklahoma City Chapter of the ECA
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Zachary Knight has it right. Political cartoons are critical, clever, and comment on the situations they depict.
These games instead should be called tabloid games. They simply point to an event to exploit it. It's a valid, if all to common, mode of discourse in today's culture. There is nothing "rich and scathing" about the pointless shoe throwing games we've seen in the past week, nor many other examples I've tracked over the past few years (Zidane head butt, Paris Hilton in jail, etc.)
Incidentally, Gonzalo Frasca and myself have been carrying the torch of games as political cartoons for years now; the challenge of making rapid, meaningful games that get published in a news context is rough going.
Ian Bogost
These flash games have some potential, but we should wait until that potential either falls flat or is fully realized before pitting a flash game against a well-done political cartoon.
Anyway, I think there will always be room for politicial cartoons. Flash games may not be meant to be an intelligent commentary. I think that they fill another need: the need to sometimes laugh at something ridiculous or trivialize something serious. The event falls into the former category. Or just the need to have a distraction from the normally pessimistic and dramatic news, but in a way that everyone can get the message. I think that final point is the appeal of flash games, to be honest.
Political cartoons are dieing as big media weeds them out due to nto wanting to offend anyone..namely thier backers...
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Pirates,Shearers,Lenders and downloaders are not a market that can be taped by the mainstream.
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I is fuzzy brained mew =^^=
http://zippydsmlee.wordpress.com/
I'd say the likelyhood of mini-games overtaking political cartoon as a form of satire are pretty high. Not because the mini-games themselves are better, but because the primary format for the political cartoon - the newspaper - is a dying breed.
The Honest Game - http://www.thehonestgame.org
The front page of a recent Chicago newspaper shows a large cartoon Rod Blagojevich on the podium, getting attacked by a barrage of shoes. I think it shows a good example of two recent political memes colliding.