“Using surface effects to appeal to a particular lifestyle is a common advertising technique known as associative advertising,” (Bogost.)
I found this quote from Bogost very intriguing. He goes on to discuss political campaign games, games like Sept. 12, etc. and how they are designed (whether intentionally or not) to change our (the audience’s/player’s) outlook/opinion. While this idea was bumbling around in my head, my friend Max introduced me to the game ‘Liberal Crime Squad’, brought to you by Bay 12 Games. Bay 12 brought us the underground famous game ‘Dwarf Fortress’ which, while lacking somewhat entirely in graphics, makes up in addicting, intriguing, and extensive gameplay.
In Liberal Crime Squad, you are set in a random city in America with a Conservative government running the country. Your mission: To spread Liberalism through any means necessary, which includes but is not limited to, taking company CEO’s hostage, depriving them of water, giving them drugs, and beating them with dildos in an attempt to convert them to your Liberal way of thinking. The game is incredibly addictive and obviously the game is meant as a joke (it’s quite hilarious. Max tells me that his character ‘Homo Sextus’ has sixteen sex slaves working for the Liberal cause. He has also recently freed nine Vietnamese sweatshop workers who now make fake police uniforms for his squads.) It parodies some of the more extreme claims that Conservatives say will happen if “the liberals win.” The question is, does this game attempt to shape our outlook on politics? Does it try to engage it’s audience and change their minds to see the world in a different light?
Now, when the game is making fun of one perspective (Extreme Conservative ideas of Liberals) and taking it out of proportion, it is parodying that perspective, thus encouraging us to take a contrary stance. While it has no subliminal messages (that I’m aware of anyways. I dunno, I might be as brainwashed as the Conservative High School Drop Out my character ‘The Doctor’ has locked up in his basement at the Homeless Shelter) it still is making fun of one perspective which (whether conscious or not) is an attempt to ‘convert’.
However, I don’t believe the makers of Liberal Crime Squad are necessarily pro liberal. It seems to me that they are asking the player/audience to laugh along with them at the entire political system/spectrum. Your characters and actions are as made fun of as the conservatives in the game (many times your main character, in an attempt to get others to join your cause, will simply say “The Flag is stupid.) The only thing encouraged by the game is to step back and laugh at everyone who is taking these things seriously.
April 28, 2010 at 5:18 pm
They never do their homework . . . that would be too difficult.