Budget Hero tries to bring a level of clarity and simplicity to the federal budget. It is bound to be controversial since the game puts numbers against issues like bringing home troops from Iraq soon or gradually or not at all and providing options on taxes, Social Security and Medicare. American Public Media worked closely with the Congressional Budget Office, GAO and others on the data and devoted months of reporter and researcher time to creating the game. (via BoingBoing)

The “serious games” advocates will want to believe that Pres. Obama has decided to solve our budget woes by crowdsourcing them. But simulations are simplifications, so an effective — and broadly approachable — budget-balancing simulation is not going to create real “budget heroes.” So it’s worth wondering: Given that most of the country believes that the Government is now taxing them more heavily than ever — despite the fact that taxes are actually lower this year for most of us — is the Administration hoping to leverage game technology in order to demonstrate policy procedurally?

Just remember, guys, if you’re hoping to reach the nation’s early-adopters: iPads won’t do Flash.

Advanced readers will want to be sure and identify by name each logical fallacy that appears in the op-ed.

Here’s how they describe the Regolith Grinder (aka “The Taurus”):

“Contructed from an advanced smelting process and lunar factory, it is a general-purpose vehicle with a plow option.”

Maybe things are more exciting over near the Moonbase?

“The centre of operations for Moonbase Alpha, this inflatable, reinforced structure is the core. Look at the scale of the extensible walkway system!”

Nothing says “I can’t wait to play this” like “extensible walkway system.”

In short, Calabouço Tétrico demonstrates how narrative can overdetermine the mechanics of gameplay — no matter how familiar those mechanics may be:  As Tetris becomes a dark exercise in body stacking, the pleasure of closure that should come with every completed row quickly dissipates.

Like editorial games should, [Raid Gaza] takes a strong position. But unlike so many, it also offers coherent gameplay that is related to the conflict it critiques.

His insights here are typically acute, and deserve to be read. But I have reservations about the strong position Bogost himself takes with respect to the emptiness of what he calls “tabloid” games.

“Indeed, newsgames produced very rapidly, like the many small ones about the recent George W. Bush shoe throwing incident, risk becoming tabloid games, little meaningless pointers that commemorate an event only to draw attention to it rather than to comment upon it. These games often capitalize rhetorically: the payload of a game about throwing a shoe at President Bush is the very idea of a game about such a thing, rather than any kind of commentary on the event or its meaning.”

On his watercoolergames blog, Bogost points to one such game, Gaza Defender, with disdain.

I’ve just been made aware of another game on this topic, Gaza Defender. The player is asked to “Defend The Gaza Strip from the Zionist Bombs using your AK-47.” It’s less remarkable as a game and no more thoughtful a commentary than the many whack-a-mole clone newsgames we’ve seen in the past.

Implicit in his Bogost’s dismissal of this thought-less genre of games, of course, is his faith in the advent of a procedural literacy: A savoir-lire among the people. Bogost is worried that, disconnected from any representative or simulative engagement with the world they portray, whack-a-mole clones—tabloid games—don’t provide the opportunity for any kind of critical response in the player. As games, he therefore deems them devoid of value.

the advent of a new technology and its attendant rhetorics does not require the ouster of everything that came before.

But the advent of a new technology and its attendant rhetorics does not require the ouster of everything that came before. The advent of the written word did not require us to abandon orality. Instead, the two technics became imbricated in our every signification. Bogost’s critique of Gaza Defender is unnecessarily dismissive, and ignores the fact that the game is still a political text, in spite of the quality of gameplay.

I think it a mistake, for example, to extract the game itself from the context in which it is presented. The game itself is embedded on a page that features maps depicting (one) history of the Palestinian / Israeli conflict; a link to a Donations page at the Red Crescent website; a link to download Adobe Flash; an embedded stream of music from a Palestinian musician, Mawaal Al Quds. The page includes a tool to share or bookmark the page via any number of well-known social networking sites. This is more than a whack-a-mole clone.

Admittedly, a simple shoe-throwing game may not take advantage of the complexities of the simulative, and it may not be a sophisticated form of “procedural rhetoric.” But it is a voice that asks to be heard.

What’s more, I find myself drawn again to what M. Badiou says about theater: We go not to be cultivated, but to be struck. “Theater-ideas” are experiential, not necessarily critical-intellectual. Are we certain that there no value in arming a player with a shoe and saying, “let fly”?

The facility, which opened in August, is the first of its kind. It replaces five smaller recruitment stations in the Philadelphia area, at about the same annual operating cost, not counting the initial expenses, said Maj. Larry Dillard, the program manager. Philadelphia has been a particularly difficult area for recruitment.

Of particular interest is the Army’s recognition (already noted by scholars like Ian Bogost) that the persuasive capacity of video games extends beyond mere recruitment needs. Games are a more subtle political tool:

“We want to put people in the Army, but that’s about our third priority,” Sergeant Jennings said, gesturing to a kiosk with descriptions of 179 jobs in the Army, including details on salaries and benefits. “Most people think joining the Army means being a grunt, and that Iraq equals death. We try to show them that there’s more to the Army than carrying a gun. If people come in here and they learn that but they don’t join, that’s O.K.”

Read the entire article.