The 10 political games everyone should play

My Gamesblog column in this week's Technology section deals with the simmering genre of political games. Usually distributed via the internet or virally through emails, these typically short, sharp titles present real-world situations in interactive form, providing users with a unique means of engaging with contemporary issues. Some of them are pretty good fun, too.

As an accompaniment to the piece, I got together with serious games specialists Ian Bogost and Gonzalo Frasca to gather 10 of the most important and/or influential titles for you to check out. There's a real diversity here taking in hawkish shooters, cynical anti-corporate jokes and heart-rending charity sims.

Importantly, two strands seem to be developing: titles that seek to objectively inform players about a specific situation, and titles with a definite agenda. Most play with accepted videogame genres, using elements of stealth, FPS and strategy simulation. The simplest - thrown together in days by lone programmers using Flash or Java - go right back to arcade archetypes like Space Invaders and Whack-a-Mole - not just because these are the simplest to code, but also because they're familiar to a wider base of users. The message is more important than the medium...

Anyway, have a look through and give one or two a go...

Balance of Power
"A game that took geopolitics seriously," says Frasca of Chris Crawford's 1985 strategy sim, originally released for the Apple Mac but later converted to the PC, Amiga and Atari ST. Here, the player had to choose a superpower then guide the country through eight years of cold war conflict, attempting to avoid nuclear apocalypse. This and Theatre Europe were the spiritual predecessors of Introversion's recent Defcon.
Availability: It looks like the game is now considered abandonware and several unofficial sites are offering it for download. It would be legally ambiguous to provide a link here, though...

The McDonald's Game
Created by Italian studio, Molleindustria, this famed satire on the burger business puts you in control of a familiar fast food chain, encouraging you to exhaust the environment, exploit workers and endanger customers in the pursuit of profit. One of the finest examples of an 'anti-advergame', which like an interactive version of Adbusters, uses the conventions of advergames against their corporate creators.
Availability: you can play online here
See also: Persuasive Games' Disaffected!, an amusing anti-advergame, based around the American copy store chain, Kinkos.

Vigilance 1.0
Developed by graphic designer and artist Martin Le Chevallier, Vigilance 1.0 is a CCTV operator sim in which the player views a bank of video feeds attempting to spot crimes in progress around an urban area. Apart from testing your reflexes it questions the effectiveness of our surveillance culture and also the complicity of CCTV viewers.
Availability: PC and Mac versions of the game can be downloaded here.

Food Force
This slickly produced game, made up of six disparate mini-challenges, was commissioned by the United Nation's World Food Programme to increase awareness of global hunger. Accompanied by an excellent educational website, it's one of the most-high profile attempts by a charitable organisation to reach a wider audience through videogames.
Availability:PC and Mac versions can be downloaded here.
See also: Christian Aid has a range of games on its Global Gang site. Also, Darfur is Dying is not strictly a charity game but was the winner in an MTVu competition to raise awareness about the Darfur crisis.

Antiwargame
A stylised attempt to analyse the policies of post-9/11 America, from programmer Josh On and design agency Futurefarmers. Given control of the country after a terrorist attack players must decide on how to spend the budget, spreading it between military/business, social spending and foreign aid. More an interactive pie chart than a game, but makes its point nonetheless.
Availability: Play online here.

Super Columbine Massacre RPG
Hugely controversial exploration of the Columbine massacre in the form of an RPG. Creator Danny Ledonne set-out to create 'something that mattered' - a game that studied and even sought to explain the motives of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. It certainly succeeded in polarising opinion - while rightwing commentators were sickened, Columbine survivor Richard Castaldo spoke out in favour of the game.
Availability: The PC-only title is no longer available from the official site, but you can follow a link to a P2P download site.
See also: Waco Resurrection, a third-person shooter in which the player controls a resurrected David Koresh. "Re-examines the clash of worldviews inherent in the 1993 conflict," says developer, C-Level.

America's Army
Originally developed by the MOVES Institute, this notorious tactical FPS was commissioned by the US army as a recruitment tool. It has been available as a free PC download for several years, and has since been converted to the PS2 and Xbox consoles. "What Triumph of the Will did in terms of propaganda for the Third Reich, America's Army has done it from the US," says Frasca. "An ideological masterpiece, probably the most successful propaganda game ever."
Availability: The PC version can be downloaded from the official site. The Xbox and PS2 conversions, entitled America's Army: Rise of a Soldier, are available from the usual game retailers.

Tatha al-Hisar (Under Siege)
"The fact that the press usually mistakes this Palestinian Intifada game for a different game made by Hezbollah shows how little we know or care about Middle East politics," argues Frasca. Developed by Syrian studio Afkar Media, a specialist in political games, this first-person shooter follows a Palestinian family through the second Intifada of 1999-2002, aiming to show the conflict from an Arab perspective. A vital cultural, political and military counterbalance to the likes of America's Army, Full Spectrum Warrior, et al.
Availability: Under Siege is not currently available in its full retail form in the West. However, a demo of the game can be downloaded here
See also: PeaceMaker, a turn-based strategy simulation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was originally developed by students at Carnegie Mellon University who have now set up a company, ImpactGames, to distribute the title. It's due for release early next year. Also, Global Conflicts: Palestine by Serious Games Interactive puts the player in control of a young journalist covering the conflict from key hotspots. It's out in March 2007.

JFK Reloaded
Interesting but perhaps insensitively handled attempt to examine the Kennedy assassination. Players took on the role of Lee Harvey Oswald and were tasked with re-enacting his attempt on the president's life. The aim, according to developer Traffic Management Limited, was to validate the lone gunman theory put forward by the Warren Commission. "A flawed business model destroyed a very interesting approach to documentary games," comments Frasca. "Still, it was worth trying".
Availability: Difficult to get hold of now as the official website is no longer selling the game (a fact which has attracted its own conspiracy theories - especially after it was criticised by Edward Kennedy). However, feed 'JFK Reloaded download' into google and you'll find sites offering both the demo and full version of the game.
See also: Kuma\War, a series of downloadable FPS missions based around key current conflicts - from an American perspective.

Oil God
This is the latest project from leading political game specialist Persuasive Games, and forms part of the company's Arcade Wire series of news games. Your role is to take control of an oil-producing regime and then double the consumer prices of your product by engineering wars and natural disasters. It's an attempt to examine the links between oil prices and geopolitics and couldn't really come at a better time.
Availability: Can be played online here.
See also: Persuasive Games' Airport Security satire. Also, a recently released Iranian Counter Strike mod allows players to sink a tanker and block the Strait of Hormuz, thereby severing one of the world's key oil routes (more info here).