Politically Motivated Games

Yesterday, at GDC's award ceremonies, a recorded message from a White House spokesperson was played, outlining a plan for game developers to compete for prize money by making games about nutrition and fitness education, to fight obesity.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, video games have previously been used by the U.S. government in the context of specific simulations for internal training/education needs; they have not been used as part of a national propoganda effort before. As innocuous as this particular competition may seem, it points towards a future where game designers are employing their talents to massively sway public opinion. It's not just Jesse Schell's future of universial points systems, but something perhaps more insidious and worrisome - a form of mass-media manipulation that distorts factual behavior in favor of gameplay biased towards the administration's viewpoints. Imagine the government forcing developers to avoid "anti-American" gameplay.

I do not have a strong opinion one way or the other about whether this is a future we want; I think that the medium can be employed equally well in both rebellious and nationalistic contexts. I am compelled by self-interest, however, to enjoy the limelight, as it is one further indication of the rising stock of game makers these days. I might even participate in this competition, if I can think of a good sixteen-week game to make for it. I do support the goal of healthy lifestyle habits, after all.

Liberation - haXe/Flash asset framework

This project was intended to make iteration over assets in Flash content fast and simple. It was successful but has been superseded by my new engine project, Fireball. The wiki page has some documentation.

http://bitbucket.org/triplefox/liberation/