Basically, the game goes like this:  You're the U.S. military.  The terrorists are in the village.  You shoot the terrorists and inevitably kill innocent bystanders.  Other people in the village see this and then become terrorists, too.  The point of the September 12th game is, as near as I can fathom, that you kill Osama and a thousand more take his place.

Empathy is one thing.  Teaching your kids that the U.S. military is in a no-win situation while someone's relatives are actually fighting in (Fallujah) Iraq, right now, is up to you.  Newsgaming.com also recently released a Madrid game.  Its goal is to "homage the victims of the Madrid terror attacks, as well as all the other cities that have  experienced these hideous crimes."

While Wardrip-Fruin may be a Brown scholar and believes that the popularity of online gaming may be a way to communicate ideas since the straight-text e-book has flopped commercially for the most part,  I partially disagree.  Blogs, which are predominately text, have become huge.  In addition, while I could perhaps imagine myself having a little empathy for someone's situation, if say, I was reading their Trapped in Fallajuh blog, I think it's in poor taste to turn the War on Terror or the Madrid Bombing into a videogame to begin with.  But maybe that's just me.

And finally, I thought games were just supposed to be fun, right?

[> permalink <]