Games For Justice

I had this thought a number of days ago and had to jot down the loose ends of it in my notebook. Accepting that video games can be used to simulate or create art (and we'll talk about that ad nauseum), why can't we use this same medium for political activism or social justice? There must be a way to create a game, let's call it The Ghetto, that simulates every hard decision a child faces growing up and surviving in deprived high rises on the south side of Chicago, or wherever they may be struggling. To get it right - I mean, to truly nail a project like that - could be such a fascinating effort in meshing playability with the brutality and borderline impossible challenges that are derived from those living conditions. Gangs, drugs, lack of education, deadbeat parents and crack addict friends... can you imagine crafting game mechanics around overcoming these obstacles?

But the point would be to immerse you in the character's perspective, removing you from your comfortable suburban living room and start making you think like a twelve-year-old who wants to live to see thirteen. Growing up with our media as it is today, even a child of ten would piece together than slinging drugs on the street will probably get you shot. This further complicates the aspiration for true simulation, because short of random drive-by shootings that prematurely end your game without reason, the point is to create a cause-and-effect linkage between your actions and negative outcomes. Making a digital environment that encourages you to make money through dealing drugs while retaining your own moral repercussions might be an insurmountable challenge.

I feel like the thought has some merit. If we can program 'games' like Kodu that are interested only in teaching kids to program, why can't we write a game that forces a suburban child to think like one who never takes a day for granted? It's certainly a compounding thought on the notion that games only rot a child's mind (yeah, my ass), so why not make them socially and morally productive instead of the prostitute and minigun free-for-all that is GTA?

Where do you weigh in on this?

Peter