I really enjoyed these talks by Marshall Rosenberg on his work in spreading nonviolent communication. He founded the Center for Nonviolent Communication.
This first video is a good introduction to his thinking and some of his life.
This video is targeted at educators and how to embody nonviolent communication.
Propaganda is about changing public opinion on something for political or other motives and many games aim to that very thing. In my opinion both advertising games and educational games aim to change the way people think and can therefore be lumped together under propaganda games.
Like many things in the world of games Hollywood have already tackled with putting propaganda in their entertainment properties, the most blatant and perhaps comical example of this comes from Wayne’s World:
Games don’t tend to be that blunt or honest, or get nearly as much money for tossing in such blatant advertising. Still, we can look at what;s out there in the world of games.
Here’s a fairly random selection of games that lean to the educational side but can also be considered propaganda because of the message they carry.
Moonbase Alpha by NASA (article on the game).
Real Lives allows you to simulate what it’s like to live anywhere on the planet.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s games to help kids understand citizenship.
Save the Silly Earthlings from their climate change.
Phylo a trading card game inspired by Pokemon, instead it’s abut real animals.
Sweatshop a game about the horrible working conditions that too many people on the planet suffer through in order for cheap products to exist.
Mayor Munch is a game about the most pathetic mayoral race in Toronto’s history (article in the Toronto Star).
Urgent Evoke an interactive story about saving the world.
World Without Oil is all about getting players to be more conscious of how oil is used in everything.
The Bail Out Game is a chance to relive the welfare the banks got from the USA during the banker caused bank implosions of a few years ago.
The NRA has a pro-gun game for ages 4 and up, which is quite ironic.
For more explicitly educational games please check out the great list at Games for Change.
Somewhat related stuff:
Here’s a previous post on the Canadian military looking into using virtual reality and things like America’s Army.
It’s worth looking at how Angry Birds has been manipulated into propaganda in this post at MetaFilter.
Ryan Henson Creighton from Untold Entertainment gave a TEDx talk inspired by his experience making Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure with his daughter Cassandra.
Their talk is pretty fun!
Rice University is offering a course titled Scandinavian Fantasy Worlds: Old Norse Sagas and Skyrim in which students will explore how real Scandinavian tales and history influenced the game. It looks like a fun course!
My big question is if they’ll address my favourite Icelandic tale about the necropants.
This course has two goals. First, it introduces students to fantasy as both psychological concept and driving force in gamer culture; and second, using these paradigms, it considers how and why medieval Scandinavia serves as a locus of modern Anglo-American fantasy. To these ends, students will read selections from Old Norse and Old Icelandic sagas (in translation) as they play different quests within Skyrim. While the course begins by identifying moments of intersection between the worlds of the sagas and of Skyrim (inclement environments, supernatural figures, mythologies), the course is not in any means meant to map the former onto the latter. The purpose of establishing these connections is to then consider how elements of medieval Scandinavian culture have been taken out of historical milieu and literary context, morphed into unfamiliar shape, and appropriated towards other fantastic pursuits. We’ll consider the political saga of Skyrim, with its emphasis on Empire and rebellion, as pursuits made possible by way of Scandinavia in order to think through what Scandinavian fantasy worlds are really about and why they resonate with contemporary Anglo-American culture.
This blog is run by Adam Clare who teaches game design at George Brown and makes educational games at Wero Creative.
Contact: Adam@WeroCreative.com
