Some people are getting sick of hearing about gamification, but marketers and other groups are finding the idea of making the mundane fun to be a fascinating concept. Politicians and political campaigns are also starting to tap into the concept of gamification as different candidates attempt to break through to constituents of varying age groups. Political strategists think gamification is a powerful tool for identifying and engaging the public.

Irrational Games’ creative director Ken Levine spoke to the Washington Post recently about the political themes behind the game and how the two opposing factions in the game share similarities with real-world movements including Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party.

Newsmax has some rather slanted coverage of the Tea Party Zombies Must Die Flash-game we covered earlier, but what's noteworthy about the report is that it offers some comments from Glen Beck, who took issue with the game on his syndicated radio program this evening. On the show he said the following - according to Newsmax:

During the run up to yesterday’s mid-term election, we profiled a few politicians that used web-based games or videogame-related images in order to either slam their opponent, or drum up interest in their own campaign. In some cases the games were even created by third parties not affiliated with either side in a race. Let’s check-in and see how these candidates did in yesterday’s elections.

New Mexico's gubernatorial candidates (Susana Martinez - R, Diane Denish - D) are duking it out on the air, in the newspapers, and now in a new Flash video game. But unlike the endless series of attack ads, the fist meets the face in this simple boxing game. The game is called New Mexico KnockOut, created by former Albuquerque native Max Barnett - now residing in Washington D.C.

Barnett says that opinions on the game vary; some think the game is funny, while others see it as "ill-willed." Barnett adds that there is no built-in advantage for either candidate.

You can play it here.

According to the Real Clear Politics average of polls, Martinez is ahead by 8 points. A recent Rasmussen Reports poll has Martinez ahead by 9 points.

Missouri Congressman Russ Carnahan (D) has turned to a Pac-Man themed videogame in order to attack his Republican opponent in the race, Ed Martin.

“Hackman” replaces the yellow videogame star with Martin’s head, and is part of an attempt by Carnahan to allude to a time three years ago when Martin was Chief of Staff to then Missouri Governor Matt Blunt and the pair underwent a “Memogate” scandal. Martin later resigned.

The game is introduced with the statement, "Ed Martin is Hackman,” while a sub header states, “He Plays Political Games. Missouri Families Lose.” In the game, Martin (Pac-Man) is chased by gavels, while power ups are represented by various icons relating to deleted emails, “costly lawsuits,” and “shady finances.” Scoring is tabulated as “Tax Dollars Wasted.”

An online game featuring Toronto’s five mayoral candidates was designed to raise awareness of the race while perhaps providing a very informal look into who might win the October 25th election.

Mayor Munch, created by the OneStop Media Group is based on Pac-Man, and has players choose one of the five candidates— Rob Ford, Rocco Rossi, Sarah Thomson, Joe Pantalone, Giorgio Mammoliti or George Smitherman—to play as.

Results show how much each candidate was chosen, figures that might presumably correlate to their outcome in the election. As of today, Rossi was leading, having been selected as the on-screen avatar of choice 29% of the time, a number that directly contrasts figures showing Ford with a huge 24-point lead.

The student arm of Basij, Iran’s paramilitary volunteer militia, has released a pair of new games that center on “crimes” of the “Zionist” Israeli regime.

One such game is called Assault on Freedom Convoy, which concerns the May 31st Israeli commando raid on activists trying to slip though a Gaza naval blockade. That action left nine Turkish activists dead. According to the Times of India, the game was described by Basijis as bringing to light the “crimes of the Zionist regime during the attack on the flotilla.”

The second game is called Devil Den 2, but no description of the game was offered.

Mohammad Reza Jokar, billed as the head of the Basij student organization, explained the use of games as a political tool, saying, “The young generation must find out about the Zionist regime and since video games enjoy large audiences, they were unveiled ahead of Quds Day.”

An online videogame backed by the right wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPO), launched in advance of regional elections to be held on September 26, depicts the province of Styria as overrun with mosques and tasks players with stopping further ones from being built.

A Reuters story claims that the “Bye Bye Mosque” game has drawn over 60,000 visitors since Monday, in addition to criticisms from the local Islamic community, Social Democrats and the Green Party. A local Islamic leader named Anas Schakfeh called the game “tasteless and incomprehensible,” adding, “This is religious hatred and xenophobia beyond comparison.”

As the game ends, a message reads, “Styria is full of minarets and mosques. So vote for Dr. Gerhard Kurzmann (pictured) and the Freedom Party on September 26 so that this doesn’t happen.”

The European Service Network (ESN), operating under a budget of 275,000 Euros (approximately $349,000 U.S.) from the European Parliament's Directorate-General for Communication, is developing an online role-playing game—and social networking forum—that it hopes will capture “the essence of European Parliament.”

Named Citzalia, the online experience was compared to Second Life and will have users create an avatar before being able to,  “navigate around a virtual recreation of the actual Parliament, to create content, and to involve themselves in virtual law-making.”

An interesting post on Game | Life report (called "BioShock Infinite’s Vision of a Nazified America") takes a closer look at BioShock Infinite in an attempt to ascertain what the political message and creepy undertones Irrational has employed for its latest BioShock game. Interestingly, the topic and the underlying settings of the game seems to be focused on the turn-of-the-century proliferation of beliefs (and subsequent laws) based on "eugenics," which is described by this Wikipedia entry as "the study and practice of selective breeding applied to humans with the aim of improving the species."

The California Labor Federation is obviously not backing California Gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman (R).

An Albuquerque, New Mexico man purchased a laptop for $100 at a garage sale and, after booting it up, was surprised to find an unpublished, underground political game from the 1990s, which took jabs at then Governor Gary Johnson.

The side-scrolling game, which depicts Governor Johnson as a “floating head of death,” was found on a PC purchased by New Mexico resident Alex Ortega. Local ABC affiliate KOAT tracked down the as-of-yet-unnamed creator of the game, who was so angered by government leaders in the 1990s that he created two video games, and even drafted a friend to drop copies of the games in the capitol mailboxes of certain lawmakers.

The laptop seemed to have once belonged to ex-New Mexico State Senator Manny Aragon, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to “three felony counts of conspiracy and mail fraud for his role in a scheme in which he and four others allegedly bilked the state out of $4.2 million during the construction of the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Courthouse,” and is in the midst of serving a 67-month sentence.

An article on The Game Reviews.com notes that while videogames have emerged into a “significant cultural force,” only a handful of games have been made in order to communicate political ideas.

Author Andy Johnson outlines a few games that attempted such incorporation, like America’s Army, Full Spectrum Warrior and religious games like Left Behind: Eternal Forces and The Bible Game, before describing a few games that feature a pure political bent, like the Bushgame and September 12th.

While politicians have been quick to latch on to social media tools to spread their message, Johnson says that it would be difficult for elected officials to latch on to videogames because their interactive nature breeds “unpredictability.” He continued:

Gisha, an Israeli not-for-profit organization with a goal of protecting the freedom Palestinians to move freely around Gaza and the West Bank, has created an online game designed to call attention to the impact restrictions of movement are having on commerce and families in the area.

SafePassage offers three different scenarios to play:  a Gaza businessman looking to sell his wares in the West Bank; a young Gaza woman who wants to study in the West Bank or the married father of a seven-year old who used to live in the West bank, but was moved to Gaza by Israeli authorities and forced to leave his family behind.

In light of the looming UK elections, Theory Spark has introduced its latest election simulator, Prime Minister Forever – UK 2010.

The downloadable PC game allows users to play as one of 16 parties, including Labour, Conservative, Lib-Dem, Green, UKIP, BNP, SNP, Plaid Cymru, UUP, DUP, Sinn Fein, SDLP, Alliance, Respect, Veritas, or Independent, and also includes a Candidate Editor that lets players create their own detailed entrant.

Prime Minister Forever – UK 2010 supports two to sixteen players and promises, “realistic electorate modeling techniques and the ability to plan complex strategies.”

Priced at £14.95 ($19.95), the game is also available at a discount for those who already own Prime Minister Forever - UK 2005.

A recently released iPhone/iPod Touch game pins the U.S. recession on the collapse of a bank that was infiltrated by giant maggots from outer space.

The Bank, from Primus Productions, drops players into the game after the collapse of the one bank that started the whole economic downturn (Sun Valley Bank in Bells, Montana) and allows them to mow down said maggots while piloting a flying car named “Sally” that is outfitted with a variety of weapons.

A self-described $18.00 marketing budget resulted in the embedded video at left and a second that can be viewed at YouTube.

A video featuring game play footage can be seen here.

The Bank is available for $2.99 from the iTunes Store and is rated 12+.

Tired of UK politicians? Think you could do a better job? An online game from the UK government allows players to take on the role of a backbench MP for a week.

The game, which is very well produced, begins by allowing players to choose a level of play, a party affiliation, an area of the UK to represent and a focus (local issues, world issues or money & finance). No focus on the games industry though sorry.

The game is aimed at 11-14 year olds and features eight types of activities—votes, questions, debates, speech editing, press conferences, messages and meetings. Players are charged with surviving the week without party or voter support dropping too low.

The game drew the support of the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA). ELSPA Director General Mike Rawlinson said about the game, “We are pleased to see Parliament embracing videogames in this way and finally appreciating the relevance of videogames in many areas of work and play.“

New from Addicting Games is the tongue-in-cheek puzzler Where's the Naughty Governor?

The super-easy Where's Waldo? clone challenges player to find visual clues related to the cases of philandering guvs and ex-guvs like South Carolina's Mark Sanford, New York's Eliot Spitzer and New Jersey's Jim McGreevey. Philandering would-be president John Edwards is tossed in for good measure. Sarah Palin  made the cut too, but for quitting her post rather than for extra-curricular marital activities.

As an added bonus (and this lackluster game needs all the help it can get), the Los Angeles Times has an interesting article on the creative process behind Where's the Naughty Governor?:

The quintet [of game designers] quickly work their way through 15 politicians with slippery zippers before settling on five. Sen. Ensign of Nevada is labeled "kinda boring" and tossed out because he promptly admitted his infidelity; mayors Villaraigosa [of Los Angeles] and Newsom [of San Francisco] don't have big enough national profiles; former Sen. Larry E. Craig of Idaho is set aside because his arrest for allegedly soliciting sex in an airport bathroom by tapping his foot could... deserve its own game.

Those making the cut: Sanford, Spitzer, McGreevey and Edwards [Palin was apparently added later]. Dave Williams, senior VP of Nickelodeon's games group, even reaches into the past for one more addition.

"Could we end on Bill Clinton? He's the big boss!" [a designer] says with a laugh, using the video-game term for a final and most difficult opponent.

Tyler Hudgins plays politically-themed games like The Political Machine 2008 and Oval Office on his PC and dreams of a career in real - not simulated - politics.

Oh, and the Arizona teen just graduated from high school.

The East Valley Tribune reports that Tyler (left) is, for now, dedicated to local politics but has aspirations that extend beyond his home town:

Hudgins spends more time in the council chambers than just about anyone who isn't on the council or the town payroll. He hopes to be a councilman himself someday, a first step to what he says will be a long and illustrious political career...

 

But, for now, he's reading "How to Get Elected to Local Office" during breaks from his job at Liberty Market. He said it's a long road to the White House, and that's how it should be.

"I'm stopping to study the issues that will come into play in the future," he said. "I feel like I'm going about this the right way, by starting at the grass roots."

Having finished Team of Rivals, a study of Abraham Lincoln's politicial genius, blogger Nate Janewit of Tech Industry Guerilla notes with despair that a Spielberg/Peter Jackson film adaptation may be in the works.

Expecting that the movie won't do justice to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Janewit, a program manager in Microsoft's Bing team, goes on to speculate about what a subsequent video game version of Team of Rivals might be like:

[CUE DEEP-VOICED ANNOUNCER AND IMAGES OF EXPLOSIONS]

ANNOUNCER: From the studios that brought you The Sims and Madden 2009 comes…LINCOLN!

[IMAGE OF LINCOLN SITTING IN A CHAIR THINKING]

ANNOUNCER: Balance the conservative and radical elements of your party…

[IMAGE OF LINCOLN WITH HAND IN THE AIR SURROUNDED BY CROWDS]

ANNOUNCER: Placate the masses with your oratorical skill…

[IMAGE OF SALMON CHASE, PLOTTING AGAINST YOU AS SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY]

ANNOUNCER: Navigate the dangerous waters of political intrigue within your own Cabinet!

I can already picture the crowds of enthusiastic gamers lining up or preordering weeks in advance. For some reason, real history just isn’t as interesting as video games.

Here at GamePolitics we lay no claim to understanding the complexities of Lebanese politics.

But we do note that Lebanon-based WixelStudios has launched what it says is the first use of games for a political campaign in the troubled nation. From the company's website:

For the first time in Lebanon, games are used as an election propaganda! ...

Wixel Studios produced an interactive animated documentary for the Liberty Front... in addition to the documentaries you will find four games accompanying to the stories.

The four browser-based mini-games, which are nicely varied in presentation, involve themes in which the player does battle with Syrian forces. Based on its Wikipedia entry, Lebanon's dealings with Syria is a prime concern of the Liberty Front.

Check out the games here.

A recently-released Xbox Live Community Game (MS recently announced that these will soon be called Indie Games) features President Obama as a side-scrolling, 2-D brawler.

Angry Barry is available for 400 points on Xbox Live. We didn't spring for the game although we did check out the free demo.

Hillary Clinton makes an appearance in the game and the screen shot at left appears to feature Sarah Palin. From the game's XBL page:

Angry Barry is a sidescrolling, political parody, 1-2 player 2D beat 'em up in the tradition of many classic arcade games. Take control of Barry as he tries to take over the Presidency of the United States!

A British Muslim who spent three years in the controversial Guantanamo Bay detention facility is serving as a consultant on the upcoming Xbox 360 and PC game Rendition: Guantanamo, according to Deadline Scotland.

As GamePolitics reported in March, Rendition: Guantanamo centers around a near-future version of the controversial prison in which mercenaries are in control and scientists conduct experiments on detainees.

Moazzam Begg (left), who was picked up as a suspected Al Qaeda member by Coalition forces in Pakistan, is assisting Glasgow-based game developer T-Enterprise. Begg claims to have been tortured during his stay at Guantanamo. T-Enterprise exec Zarrar Chishti commented on Begg's participation in the project:

We approached Moazzam because it’s very hard for us to know how to design the layout of the prison and he helped. He came up two weeks ago to give his input on what we were working on...

Due to the controversial subject matter, T-Enterprise appears eager not to step on any official toes. Deadline Scotlan reports that the developer had sought advice and permissions from law enforcement and political officials. Chisti explained:

There are certain rules we can’t break after meeting politicians so we are not making the game too extreme. We have had a lot of hate mail about this, mainly from America...

 

But no US or British soldiers get killed in [the game]. The only ones being killed are mercenaries. We have set it in January 2010 because that’s when we think the camp will be closed. We are making a statement. We did not want Guantanamo to be forgotten.

Begg, who wrote a book about his time at Guantanamo, has a financial stake in the project. He spoke of his time detention:

I was put in solitary confinement with no access to the outside world and no explanation as to why I was being detained. My wife gave birth to my son six months after I was arrested and I saw him for the first time when he was three years old. It would be wrong to say I’m not angry but I’m willing to forgive 1000 times over...

The only thing I am concerned about it making sure the game does not misrepresent the prisoners. This will not demean the reality of Guantanamo but it could bring those issues to people who would not usually think about it.

As GamePolitics mentioned earlier this week, the politically-tinged indy game Clover was released as an XBL Community title.

While the game is essentially an allegory about the twisted path that led the United States to invade Iraq in 2003, Fidgit's Tom Chick finds Clover wanting in the fun department:

Entertainment has a long and storied history of commenting on politics. Unfortunately, Clover seems to lost sight of the entertainment part of the equation. Or maybe I'm to blame for not having the patience to play through a crudely drawn and even more crudely built adventure game based on inventory management.

I can eventually get past the look of the game, which might be described as South Park run through a Braid Photoshop filter...  The problem with "message" games is that unless the message is delivered with some sort of nuance or power... the gameplay is going to have to take up the slack...

Clover, an Xbox Live Community Game being developed by Binary Tweed has now launched. As GamePolitics reported recently, the story which unfolds in Clover was heavily influenced by the run-up to the Iraq War.

In fact, Binary Tweed calls the game a "watercolour political platform puzzler," and those are four words you don't hear strung together very often.

From the Clover press release:

Already in the hands of some early-bird gamers, the true nature of Clover's political plot is becoming clear. “It's been great to read emails from gamers who have picked up on the historical and political references - if Clover has one objective, it's to make people think.” commented Binary Tweed's Deejay. Heavily inspired by the events preceding the 2003 Iraq war, the game invites players to draw their own conclusions from unfurling events.

Over at Water Cooler Games, Georgia Tech prof and noted game designer Ian Bogost offers some thoughts on Bailout Bonanza, an iPhone game released in late March.

Bailout Bonanza is essentially a clone of the classic Activision game Kaboom! -- the player moves or tilts the iPhone to maneuver a bucket at the bottom of the screen, which catches money bags dropped by a Wall Street banker out of a neoclassical financial building...

 

The problem is, this game doesn't really satirize or comment upon the bailout. If anything, the Kaboom! gameplay feels backwards... The game also points to the issue of timeliness in editorial games. Creating an iPhone game like this one is relatively easy, but it still takes more time than making the equivalent Flash game... the bailout of the financial sector is, in a way, old news.

Bogost notes that Bailout Bonanza is just one of several bailout-themed games available on the AppStore.

Game designer Michel Ancel has revealed the geo-political influences behind his well-regarded action-adventure Beyond Good & Evil as well as the in-development sequel.

As reported by Eurogamer, Ancel said:

 It was a mix of a lot of experiences.It was a phantasm to create an adventure game, a universe too. It was the game I wanted to create for a long time.

There were a lot of inspirations: the Miyazaki universe, my own inspirations, politics and the media; the theme of September 11 - the CNN show with army messages and the fear climate. And it was a mix from other universes.

It's different from Zelda and other titles like that; very good games but they are out of time. [BG&E] was issued of the actuality.

Ancel offered no news as to a release date or system availability for the sequel.

Sure, those AIG bonuses were maddening, but punching out execs isn't the solution that most rational people have in mind.

Still, Kewlbox has posted Bailout Bonus Beatdown, an online game in which players have 15 seconds to throw punches (read: click their mouse) at a greedy yet defenseless exec from the "P.I.G. Insurance Company."

GP: We'd like to think that the state of games as political commentary has advanced beyond the tired whack-a-mole, punchout and first-person shooter genres. But, apparently not...

Like chief executives in other big cities, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter has been forced to make some tough financial choices of late.

Perhaps His Honor should spend some time playing Philadelphia Budget Challenge, a new online game offered by the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia.

Alan Tu of Philly's public radio station WHYY has a review of the game:

This budget game asks 15 questions, giving you a choice to raise taxes or cut services in each case. My secret for solving the city’s budget crisis over the lunch hour is as follows.

The first thing to do is raise everybody’s taxes. That makes the game more fun. Who wants to be the mayor remembered for closing libraries?... The rest was a breeze. I ordered a 10 percent across-the-board cut to to all departments that were considered “administrative,” sold off 400 city cars, and then refinanced a loan the city has for paying into the pension fund...

It’s kind of fun, because it’s feels a little like playing Sim City. No big budgets to read. Never have to hear the citizens complain (although in the game they move away), and if you don’t like the results, you can play it over... the game is simplistic, but it is a wonderful way to generate debate in your office...