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What Makes An Election Game Good?
Posted by Hsing Wei on 10-30-08Obama ads are being embedding into major video game titles such as Electronic Art’s “Madden 09” and “Burnout: Paradise.” JohnMcCain.com has Pork Invaders, a custom made Space-Invaders style game. Are either campaigns really taking advantage of the medium?
Campaigners, like a growing number of marketers, are recognizing that games are a big market, a.k.a a big captive audience, a.k.a attractive advertising space. The Obama campaign’s investment in embedded game ads, like buying prime TV or radio spots, is probably a good branding decision to reinforce the candidate among a target audience. However beyond reaching eyeballs, is the campaign leveraging (does it need to leverage) the unique properties of games as an interactive medium?
A Gamasutra piece levels a critique on Pork Invaders, “Games like this upset me, because they both reflect and perpetuate a lack of understanding of the capabilities that games have to convey experiences, teach players, and change minds.” In Pork Invaders, players shoot pigs (spending bills) with vetos. Information about the differences between Obama and McCain on reeling in spending are flashed between levels. The game reinforces the now familiar slogan—John McCain fights porkbarreling. Rather than plugging in symbols to game mechanics that are unrelated, its argued that game play should have been designed to resemble the experience of pork barrel politics. Using analogies to more familiar media (the newest Batman film) and comparisons with other games (Redistricting), the piece poses a worthwhile challenge, lets design election games that are (way) beyond text.