Skip to Content
Uncategorized

Newsgaming Represents New Form of Political Expression

Newsgaming.com is one of several new organizations which are producing games designed to offer critical commentary on contemporary political developments. Their first release, “September 12,” as its title suggests, uses a game-like interface to make a political statement about the…
October 8, 2003

Newsgaming.com is one of several new organizations which are producing games designed to offer critical commentary on contemporary political developments. Their first release, “September 12,” as its title suggests, uses a game-like interface to make a political statement about the futility of our current war on terrorism. It is not very sophisticated or elaborate; you can play it in under a minute and get its underlying point. There have been many of these simple games taking every imaginable position on the Gulf War. Hopefully, such works will lay to rest once and for all the argument that games do not constitute a meaningful form of expression.

Gonzalo Frasca, the lead designer and producer for “September 12,” has himself written an important essay, “Is It Barbaric to Design Games after Auschwitz?” which asks whether there is such a thing as a “serious game” and whether games can respond adequately to the complexity of real world events. It would seem that “September 12” is Frasca trying to disprove his own theories – an interesting experiment in political speech.

I am planning to write my November column about the various ways that the current Gulf War has impacted the games industry – looking at the use of war-themed games by the military, industry, and activist communities. I thought I’d give folks a quick preview here.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

The inside story of how ChatGPT was built from the people who made it

Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon.

How Rust went from a side project to the world’s most-loved programming language

For decades, coders wrote critical systems in C and C++. Now they turn to Rust.

Design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong?

An approach that promised to democratize design may have done the opposite.

Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death

Can anti-aging breakthroughs add 10 healthy years to the human life span? The CEO of OpenAI is paying to find out.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.