Playing Politics Workshop Response
The games I chose to review were
September 12 and New York Defender.

Q. 1.
September 12 and NY Defender are both ideal examples of the success/effectiveness
of political simulation games to not only communicate with people but also to
register political satire on the internet.
In the words of September 12 creator Gonzalo Frasca, NewsGaming.com lead designer: -
"Through this piece we want to encourage players to think critically about the efficacy
of the United States’ current strategy against terrorism. Terrorism is a terrible problem
and we think it should be fought in a more intelligent way.
We see the concept of newsgaming as a 21st century equivalent to traditional printed
political cartoons: short, controversial satirical pieces that convey biased ideological messages".


Q. 2.
The point of both these games is immediately obvious and yet totally confronting
in terms of the absence of the possibility of winning. These both encapsulate the
dreadfully paranoic, impotent and limited path that the USA and her allies have
chosen in response to "the terrorist threat".
By subverting the win/lose dichotomy by illustrating that the only possibility is
the lose/lose dynamic, the creators have potently and poignantly demonstrated
the pointless stupidity of exercising such reactive responses.

Q. 3.
(a) I think I would like to create a game which illustrated the point that the more
diligently we try to police against "the terrorist threat" the more blinded we seem
to be to the prison walls and surveillance structures we are erecting around ourselves
and to show that the resultant outcome is and will be more and greater incursions
into the already seriously depleted civil liberties that we are so dearly and democratically defending.

(b) Ummm. Hmmm. Yeh. Well. That's a good question!
Obviously it would have to have a very simple structure which involved a self defeating
loop of behaviour. Such as is the case in September 12. The harder one tries to win
the more one loses. I can only think of the metaphor of trying to dig at the seashore
close to the water's edge. The faster you remove the seepage the faster more floods in,
and the wetter you become trying to stay dry. Not a good one, but it certainly illustrates
the pointlessness of the operation. Perhaps it would have to involve perimeter walls, guards,
and imprisoned populations whose only crime is in exercising freedom of movement.
According to the current political paradigm. Freedom from terrorists is only attained
through increased control of the general populace.