Singapore's The Straits Times reports on an in-development game in which players use the "cheery pink power of bubblegum" to fight government oppression.

Gumbeat is a Flash game being developed as part of a cooperative effort between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and digital media students in Singapore. So how does Gumbeat play? From the report:

...the heroine chews on candy and blows them into big pink bubbles beside unhappy citizens in the unnamed country in which the candy is banned. This cheers them up enough to entice them to join the protagonist in a revolution, mustering enough angry citizenry to overthrow the oppressive government.

 

This is the aim of the game, said National University of Singapore undergraduate Sharon Chu, who presented her team's game to reporters earlier on Tuesday... The game was made to show that games with serious-themes like say, 'political oppression', can be fun, said Ms Chu.

Chu left the issue of whether the repressive country in question was Singapore up to the "player's interpretation." GamePolitics readers may recall that Singapore's government banned Mass Effect for a time last year over a brief lesbian love scene.

Later this month, Copenhagen-based Serious Games Interactive will release Global Conflicts: Latin America.

The game, intended for students 13-19 years old, will be published in seven languages and is designed to teach students about political and human rights struggles in Latin America. From an SGI press release:

Many Latin American countries have dark histories of genocide, widespread corruption; and systematic exploitation of the indigenous population. The game lets you explore how these historical realities still cast long shadows on the everyday life of people in the region today.

In the game, students are challenged to assume the role of investigative reporters:

You arrive in Mexico at the US border with a bag full of journalistic ambitions. Latin America is one of the most turbulent, violent and poverty-stricken places on the planet. Yet it is only when Western interests in the region are threatened that we hear anything about the nations that struggle with paramilitary rule, extreme poverty and exploitation of the population.

 

In a region where politicians and police are feared rather than respected, people try desperately to grab a piece of the land and call it their own. All too often, however, it ends badly. Can you make a difference by writing investigative stories?

Global Conflicts: Latin America will be released for PC and Mac.

Earlier this year the BBC reported that the introduction of the highly aggressive American signal crayfish had essentially killed sport fishing in Scotland's Loch Ken.

With the region's traditional fishing tourism in steep decline, the economic health of towns around the Loch is in jeopardy.

By way of publicizing the crisis T-Enterprise has created Britain's Got Crabs, a Flash game which challenges "British Beavers" to shoot waves of the crayfish. It's not much of a game, but it does help to raise awareness of the ecologic crisis in the Loch.

GP: The game is embedded here, so if you'd like to try it just click Play...

Every gamer's favorite academic, MIT Professor Henry Jenkins, will be among the presenters at the 5th Annual Games for Change Festival which takes place June 2-4 in New York.

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor will deliver the festival's closing keynote. Other speakers include Ben Sawyer of the Serious Games Initiative, Dr. James Paul Gee of Arizona State University, Prof. Ian Bogost of Georgia Tech and Heather Chaplin, co-author of Smartbomb.

From the GFC press release:

The only festival... will explore real-world impact, the latest games and funding strategies... Expert practitioners -- academics, activists, non-profits, funders -- will be called in to examine the impact of current games, evaluations planned and the ongoing work to build the field.

 

You will have a chance to see a variety of new games in development first-hand, and at the Games Expo sponsored by Microsoft, festival-goers can play the latest state-of-the-art games.