Playing Politics: How Computer Games Frame Political Issues

Joost Raessens
Utrecht University

In the context of George Lakoff’s concepts of “metaphor” and “framing”,

Raessens examines the potential of political computer games to
convince players of the veracity of a certain point of view or the
necessity of a behavioral change. His starting point is John Kerry: Tax
Invaders (2004), a computer game that was used by the Republican
Party in their campaign strategies for the United States Presidential
election in 2004. He analyzes in more detail Food Force (2005) and
Darfur is Dying (2005), two “games for change” aimed at teaching
children about hunger and humanitarian aid work, and persuading
players to help stop the crisis in Darfur. The author argues that in
comparison to film, press and broadcasting, computer games do not
only represent political issues. They also simulate playful experiences
that were designed according to ideologically motivated rules. The
player has to interact with these rules and master them in order to win
the game. At the end of the article, the author discusses whether the
players’ participation in these games can be defined as the
“re-de-construction” of frames: the reconstruction and deconstruction of
existing frames and the construction of new ones.

Politics is a fascinating game

Harry S. Truman, thirty-third President of
the United States of America1

Introduction
It may seem strange to study computer games in the context of political
rhetorics, to understand them as ‘a persuasive discourse (…) to
persuade others of the veracity and worthwhileness of their beliefs’.2 But
if we investigate the phenomenon further it is quite logical to consider
them as rhetorical tools in the ongoing “infowar” politics have
increasingly become. Contemporary computer games have become part

1
Hillman, Mr. President, p. 198.
2
Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play, p. 8.

1
of powerful information and communication technologies (ICTs) and are
increasingly used not only to entertain people, but also to ‘educate,
train, and inform’ them.3 Political computer games belong to these so-
called “serious games”: they are computer games which have a political
agenda. As the principal medium of contemporary youth culture,
computer games do not only have to potential to convince players of the
veracity of a certain point of view or the necessity of a behavioral
change. They also help non-profit organizations such as the United
Nations, and commercial enterprises such as Reebok and the music
channel MTV to reinvent activism for the Internet generation.
Since the 1980s, computer games have addressed all kinds of
political problems. Chris Crawford’s Balance of Power (1985) is often
cited as ‘the first political game in which diplomacy outweighed brute
force’.4 In recent years, there has been an exponential growth in the
production of political computer games. The terrorist attacks on the
World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 inspired September 12th
(2003), a pacifist game that criticizes the so-called “war on terror”. The
ongoing conflict in the Middle East is depicted in UnderAsh (2002) and
PeaceMaker (2004). The United Nations, mtvU and Unicef have launched
Food Force (2005), Darfur is Dying (2005), Cool Chain Game (2004) and
What Would You Do? (2006) as educational tools teaching people about
famine, the genocide in Darfur, vaccination and HIV/AIDS. And in 2004,
both the Republican and the Democrat Party used computer games in
their campaign strategies for the United States Presidential election,
such as The Howard Dean for Iowa Game (2003), Kick Bush Out (2004),
Kerry vs. Kerry (2004) and John Kerry: Tax Invaders (2004).
In this chapter I will examine how computer games frame
political issues in ways that are specific to the medium. My analysis is
primarily theoretical: it aims at a conceptual clarification of the
relationship between (playing) computer games and political rhetoric.
The starting point of my investigation is the conceptual framework of
cognitive scientist and linguist George Lakoff who theorizes the cognitive
dimensions of politics. Though he provides a productive framework for

3
Michael and Chen, Serious Games.
4
Bogost, ‘Videogames’, p. 167. For the best overview of the genre of political
computer games, see: www.watercoolergames.org. Water Cooler Games is ‘a forum
for the uses of videogames in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday
activities, outside the sphere of entertainment’. Editors are Ian Bogost and Gonzalo
Frasca.

2
understanding political rhetoric, he exclusively focuses on non-
computerized and non-playful media. Referring to three different modes
of participation (reconstruction, deconstruction and construction),5 I will
further develop Lakoff’s framework in order to turn it into an analytical
toolkit in the domain of computer game studies.
John Kerry: Tax Invaders (2004) serves as my starting point. It
is a computer game that was used by the Republican Party in their
campaign strategies for the United States Presidential election in 2004. I
use this game in order to introduce Lakoff’s concepts of “metaphor” and
“framing”. In the second paragraph, I will analyze Food Force (2005)
and Darfur is Dying (2005) from “a family-value” perspective in Lakoff’s
sense of the term. These two games are single-player “games for
change” aimed at teaching children about hunger and humanitarian aid
work, and persuading players to help stop the crisis in Darfur. In the
third paragraph, I will focus on the medium specificity of these games in
comparison to media such as film, press and broadcasting. I will argue
that computer games do not only represent political issues but also
simulate playful experiences which have been designed according to
ideologically motivated rules. The player has to interact with these rules
and master them in order to win the game. I will discuss whether the
players’ participation in these games can be defined as the
“re-de-construction” of frames: the reconstruction and deconstruction of
existing frames and the construction of new ones. The last paragraph
contains my conclusions.

1. Presidential election computer games

One of the most striking Presidential election computer games is John
Kerry: Tax Invaders (2004).6 The Republican National Committee
produced this game to illustrate the massive tax increase that Kerry’s
intended spending would supposedly require. To win this game, players
had to defend the country against John Kerry’s plans for a tax increase.
In order to understand the game’s impact, it is important to know that it
is a remake of the classic arcade game Space Invaders (1978). Space
Invaders became a craze, not only in Japan where it was released in
1978, but also in the United States, albeit slightly later. The game’s
success was caused by its narrative structure in which players had to

5
Raessens, ‘Computer Games’, p. 386, note 27.
6
For a thorough analysis of this game, see Bogost, ‘Videogames’, pp. 169-173.

3
stop a swarm of aliens that set out to conquer the earth. Players had
‘the feeling of being the hero in a great adventure’.7 They accomplished
their mission by moving a laser cannon from side to side along the
bottom of the screen, and firing at the descending aliens. Their only
protection are four shields that are slowly demolished by the aliens’
bombs. According to Judith Herz, these kinds of scenarios are very
popular in the United States:

Everything was Good, but then Evil swept in, crawled over the whole
goddamned place like swarming army ants, and you are the Orkin man.
You, and only you are the hero. No teamwork, no delegation, no profit
sharing. Just the Lone Ranger, transplanted to Mars. We in America like
this.8

In John Kerry: Tax Invaders players had to defend America in a

comparable way, but this time against Kerry’s tax plans. Using the head
of George W. Bush as a gun, players had to “shoot down” the
descending tax increases that were represented as white colored
rectangles bearing the numerical value of the proposed tax. The concept
of “framing” will allow me to analyze the game’s political rhetoric. The
emerging body of research on framing has signaled ‘the latest paradigm
shift in political-communication research’.9 The most recent stage of
research into political effects can be situated in the 1980s and early
1990s: ‘The term “framing” refers to modes of presentation that
journalists and other communicators use to present information in a way
that resonates with existing underlying schemas among their
10
audience’. From a framing perspective, the potential attitudinal effects
of John Kerry: Tax Invaders depend upon the preference of players for
the Democrats or the Republicans and their experience with computer
games in general and Space Invaders in particular.
In this chapter I will focus on Lakoff’s concepts of “framing” and
“metaphor”. According to Lakoff, metaphors frame our understanding of
the world: ‘Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both
think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature (…) The essence

7
Malliet and De Meyer, ‘The History’, p. 28.
8
Herz, Joystick Nation, p. 88. Herz is referring here to the first-person shooter Doom
(1993).
9
Scheufele and Tewksbury, ‘Framing’, p. 10.
10
Idem, p. 12.

4
of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in
terms of another’.11 Applying this idea to politics, Lakoff argues that
politicians use political discourses to frame the facts of the world.
According to Lakoff:

Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world. As a
result, they shape the goals we seek, the plans we make, the way we
act, and what counts as a good or bad outcome of our actions. In politics
our frames shape our social policies and the institutions we form to carry
out policies. To change our frames is to change all of this. Reframing is
social change.12

Lakoff’s research is based upon the idea that language is a powerful

political tool. Through the repetitive use of terms such as “war on terror”
and “climate change” by Republicans, or “war in Iraq” and “global
warming” by Democrats, voters’ attitudes towards important political
issues could actually be strengthened or perhaps even shifted. The
Republicans were for example successful in framing tax as an affliction,
with the result that ‘the person who takes it away is a hero, and anyone
who tries to stop him is a bad guy’.13 This example shows that political
success within a media culture not only depends on drawing on reality
as such but also, or maybe more, on mediated forms of representation.
If Lakoff’s argument is relevant, the success of the Republicans in the
2004 Presidential Elections was caused by the appeal of their
conservative frames, such as “taxation is an affliction”, “war on terror”
and “climate change” for example. The frames of the Democrats -
“taxation is an investment”, “war in Iraq” and “global warming” – were
less successful.
In line with Lakoff’s thesis that conservatives frame taxation as
an affliction, John Kerry: Tax Invaders not only verbalizes and visualizes
this metaphor, but also turns it into an embodied activity: ‘No matter
the player’s political perspective, to play the game at all he or she must
step inside the skin of the taxation opponent, viewing taxes as a foreign
enemy’.14 And even if a Democrat is still opposing “tax relief” after

11
Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors, p. 3 and p. 5.
12
Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant!, p. xv.
13
Idem, p. 4.
14
Bogost, ‘Videogames’, pp. 170.

5
having played the game, s/he remains trapped in a conservative world
view: ‘If you keep their language and their framing and just argue
against it, you lose because you are reinforcing their frame’.15 If
democrats are convinced that taxation has a high moral value because it
contributes to the social common good, they should frame tax in a new
way, as ‘investment in the future’ or ‘paying your dues’,16 for example
by developing their own computer games on taxation.
This does not mean however, that the effects of John Kerry: Tax
Invaders were unambiguous or one-way traffic. From a framing
perspective, this game – like all media texts – is polysemic and,
therefore, open to multiple readings.17 If we take into account Sherry
Turkle’s account of the three possible reactions towards ‘the seduction of
simulation’18 – that is simulation resignation, simulation denial and
simulation understanding – we are able to understand that players do
not automatically accept the game’s conservative frame on taxation. On
The Water Cooler Games forum, these three types of reactions can be
discerned.19 Players who state that ’if John Kerry’s convictions on tax
relief are half as firm as his convictions on other important issues, we
can assume tax day will be a very bad day for middle class Americans
under a Kerry administration’ surrender to the simulation by taking it at
interface value (simulation resignation). On the other hand, those
players who state that ‘this strikes me as perhaps the creation, not of a
strategic campaign decision, but the voluntary contribution of a college
age supporter who wants a career in the field. Probably no one in the
party has looked seriously at this’, are denying the game’s importance
(simulation denial). Players who argue that ‘the game simplifies a
complex situation’ are discussing the game’s built-in assumptions
(simulation understanding).

2. Games for Change

15
Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant!, p. 33.
16
Idem, p. 25.
17
The way in which the framing model within communication studies disengaged
itself from the early hypodermic needle and magic-bullet models of the 1920s and
1930s’ (Scheufele and Tewksbury, ‘Framing’, p. 10) is similar to the way in which
cultural studies broke with the work of the Frankfurt School within the humanities,
see Raessens, ‘Computer Games’, p. 375.
18
Turkle, Life on the Screen, p. 71.
19
See: www.watercoolergames.org/archives/000119.shtml.

6
The establishment of Games for Change (G4C) took place in 2004. It
was a sub-group of the Serious Games Initiative.20 Two games that
perfectly fit the framework of the G4C-initiative are Darfur is Dying
(2005) and Food Force (2005). Food Force is an educational, non-violent
computer game that was released by the United Nations World Food
Programme (WFP). Its target group were children aged eight to thirteen.
WFP released the game in April 2005 claiming in 2006 that:

The adventure [launching the game] turned out well: international

media immediately picked up the story and by June one million people
were playing the game. Now, 12 months on, Food Force has been
downloaded nearly 4 million times, and the www.food-force.com website
averages over 18,000 unique visitors per week.21

The game which takes approximately thirty minutes to play, tells the
story of a food crisis on the fictitious island of Sheylan. On the Food
Force-website, the player can play the game after downloading it for
free. The website also provides him/her with information about the
reality behind the game: ‘In the world today hundreds of millions of
people suffer from chronic hunger and malnutrition’. Furthermore, the
player can learn about WPF’s mission to fight hunger worldwide and
learn how s/he can actively support the WFP-activities.
Darfur is Dying was the winner of the Darfur Digital Activist
Contest launched by mtvU in partnership with the Reebok Human Rights
Foundation and the International Crisis Group during the G4C-
22
conference in October 2005. The goal of the student contest was the
design of a computer game that raises awareness about the
humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan where civilians run the
risk of being killed or raped by militias backed by the Sudanese
government. By playing the game the player becomes involved in this
world. The game was released in March 2006 at the Darfur is Dying-
website where it can be played for free. In September 2006 Director
Susana Ruiz stated in an interview:

20
See: www.gamesforchange.org and www.seriousgames.org.
21
World Food Programme, Annual Report 2005, p. 43.
22
See: www.mtvu.com. The winning student team received $ 50.000 to develop the
game.

7
According to mtvU's traffic numbers, more than 800,000 people have
played the game over 1.7 million times since its launch on April 30th. Of
those, tens of thousands have participated in the activist tools woven
into the gameplay – such as sending emails to friends in their social
networks inviting them to play the game and become informed about
Darfur, as well as writing letters to President Bush and petitioning their
Representatives in Congress to support legislation that aids the people
of Darfur.23

Food Force served as a model for this game that again takes no more
than thirty minutes to play. The website describes the game as ‘a
narrative based simulation where the user, from the perspective of a
displaced Darfurian, negotiates forces that threaten the survival of his or
her refugee camp’. On the game’s website the player can play the game
(‘Help stop the crisis in Darfur: Start your experience’), and receive
background information about the crisis in Darfur (‘In the Darfur region
of western Sudan, a genocide is occurring’) and the different ways in
which s/he can try to stop the crisis (‘Do something now to stop the
crisis in Darfur’). Players can educate themselves on the crisis in Darfur,
send a message to President Bush, ask their representative to support
funding for African Union peacekeepers, and start a divestment
movement on their campus.
In order to increase our understanding of how both these games
frame political issues, it is productive to approach them from a “family
values” perspective. According to Lakoff, ‘we all have a metaphor for the
nation as a family (…) because we usually understand large social
groups, like nations, in terms of small ones, like families or
communities’.24 Contemporary American political discourse is divided
into ‘two different models of the family: a [Republican, conservative]
strict father family and a [Democratic, progressive] nurturant parent
family model’.25 According to the metaphor of the nurturant parent, ‘in
foreign policy the role of the nation should be to promote cooperation

23
Parkin, ‘Interview’. According to Wikipedia, “As of April 2007, the game has
been played more than 2.4 million times by over 1.2 million people worldwide.” See:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_is_dying.
24
Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant!, p. 5.
25
Idem, p. 6. Framing taxation as unfair and immoral, as in John Kerry: Tax
Invaders, is also an expression of the strict father model, see: Lakoff, Moral Politics,
pp. 189-190.

8
and extend these values to the world’26 and to focus on ‘international
institutions and strong defensive and peacekeeping forces’.27 This
metaphor goes against the metaphor of the strict father that, in foreign
affairs, leads to the following: ‘The government should maintain its
sovereignty and impose its moral authority everywhere it can, while
seeking its self-interest (the economic self-interest of corporations and
military strength)’.28
An example of a political discussion that collides these two
models is the attitude of the United States towards the United Nations.
According to Lakoff, ‘most of the United Nations consist of developing
and underdeveloped countries. That means they are metaphorically
children’.29 Having displayed its aversion to the United Nations time and
again, the Bush’ administration opted for the strict father worldview.
Because in Darfur is Dying and Food Force the United Nations Peace
Operations and the United Nations World Food Programme are
represented as organizations able to – literally – ‘nurture’ their family
members, both games express the values of the nurturant parent family
model.
The democrat Lakoff favors a foreign policy based upon nurturant
parent-values, such as protection from harm, community building,
caring and responsibility. His descriptions of these values echo the goals
of both games: protection from harm equals ‘an effective military for
defense and peacekeeping’30. Building and maintaining a strong
community equals ‘building and maintaining strong alliances and
engaging in effective diplomacy’31. Caring and responsibility equals
‘caring about and acting responsibility for the world’s people; world
health, hunger, poverty (…) rights for women, children (…) refugees,
and ethnic minorities’32.
Before I analyze in more detail how both Food Force and Darfur
is Dying involve players in these nurturant parent values in a medium-
specific way, it is important to show that the United Nations strongly
adhere to these values. James T. Morris, Executive Director World Food
Programme, refers to ‘the United Nations family’ and ‘the whole UN

26
Idem, p. 40.
27
Idem, p. 63.
28
Idem, p. 41.
29
Idem, p. 11.
30
Idem, p. 92.
31
Ibidem.
32
Ibidem.

9
family’.33 In The WFP Mission Statement and in their Annual Report
2005, the World Food Programme refers to the responsibility the
international community has for primary health care, access to clean
water, proper hygiene; to the fact that food aid is essential for social
and humanitarian protection; to the importance of helping people
survive and rebuild their lives. In their Mission Statement and their New
Challenges, New horizons. Year in review 2006, the United Nations
Peace Operations also refer to ‘the United Nations family’;34 to the
international community’s “duty of care”; to its responsibility to support
health care missions; to the protection of community and minority
rights; and to the protection of human rights.

3. The medium specificity of computer games

In comparison with media such as film, press and broadcasting,
computer games rely on rule-based interactions as their core mode of
signification:

A game is a rule-based formal system with a variable and quantifiable

outcome, where different outcomes are assigned different values, the
player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels
attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the activity are
optional and negotiable.35

In order to answer the question how both games frame political issues,
we have to focus on the six different game features distinguished by
Juul: 1. What are the rules of these games? 2. What are their possible
outcomes (related to the goal of the game)? 3. Are their outcomes
positive or negative? 4. Does the player influence their outcomes by
reconstructing the preprogrammed possibilities of these games while
playing according to the rules (reconstruction), by discovering how the
software is put together while demystifying the rules (deconstruction),
or by modifying these games while playing with the rules themselves
(construction)? 5. Is the player happy with a positive outcome (winning
the game) and unhappy with a negative outcome (losing the game)? 6.
Are there any real-life consequences? Because of the important role of

33
World Food Programme, Annual Report 2005, pp. 5-6.
34
United Nations Peace Operations, New Challenges, p. 24.
35
Juul, ‘The game’, p. 35.

10
interactivity, or participation as I prefer to call it, as a factor which
distinguishes computer games from most other media forms, I will
organize my answers around three modes of participation:
reconstruction, deconstruction and construction.36

3.1 Reconstruction
Reconstruction is the dominant mode of participation in Darfur is Dying
and Food Force. Reconstruction consists of ‘the exploration of the
unknown, in the computer game represented worlds’ and the selection
of ‘objects and actions from a fixed set of system-internal possibilities’.37
At the beginning of Darfur is Dying the player selects one out of eight
Darfurian avatars to represent the refugee camp. The game has a
simple two-level structure. On the first level, the player has to explore
the area outside the refugee camp, foraging for water. The avatar has to
provide water for the community, but because the well is five kilometers
from the refugee camp, s/he runs the risk of being captured and
possibly get killed by the militias. The player can move his or her avatar
by using the arrow keys of the keyboard and the spacebar to hide for
the militias. After having reached the well and returned to the camp, the
player may decide to go foraging again (as long as there are avatars left
to do so) or to enter the second level inside the refugee camp. Here the
player has a Sim City style top-down view of the camp. The player has
to explore the camp and select urgent tasks, such as obtaining food,
building shelters, and staying healthy.
The basic rule of the game is clearly an ideologically motivated
one: players can win the game by supporting Darfuri civilians. The goal
of the game is to safeguard the refugee camp, keep it up and running
for seven days, and protect as many adults and children from being
killed by the Janjaweed militia. At the end of the game players can put
their name on a high score list on the game’s website. When the avatar
successfully brings water to his/her family and community, a screen with
‘Goal Accomplished’ pops up. The message of the game is
communicated most clearly in its rhetoric of failure. If captured by the
militia, the avatar faces real-life consequences: ‘You will likely become
one of the hundreds of thousands of people already lost to this

36
See: Raessens, ‘Computer Games’, pp. 373-388. In this chapter I use the concept
“reconstruction” instead “reconfiguration”.
37
Raessens, ‘Computer Games’, p. 380.

11
humanitarian crisis’. When a girl avatar is captured the consequences
are heartbreaking: she faces ‘abuse, rape and kidnapping by the
Janjaweed’. The game is programmed in such a way that a player is not
only unhappy with a negative outcome, but also with a positive one.
When a player succeeds in accomplishing the goal of the game, s/he is
informed that this will not end the real conflict: ‘The men, women, and
children of Darfur have been living under harrowing conditions since
2003’. Though the game does not have real-life consequences for the
player, it does have consequences for the Darfurian avatars of the
player. Because the player identifies with the onscreen avatar, s/he
becomes engaged in the problematics of the game.
In the virtual world of Food Force, the player’s engagement does
not come from an identification with an onscreen avatar, but from the
personal experience of playing the game. For the player of the game is
its protagonist, a young rookie who is briefed on a humanitarian crisis
on the fictitious island Sheylan in the Indian Ocean. It is the player’s
mission to deliver food as quickly as possible to the Sheylan’s residents.
Guided by a team of experts, in a race against the clock, the player has
to accomplish six missions or mini-games in a linear order, delivering
food to an area in crisis. In the Air Surveillance mission, for example,
the player has to explore the crisis area by helicopter and count the
number of people who need help by selecting one of the pre-
programmed actions: fly to the right, left, up or down.
The basic rule of Food Force is also an ideologically motivated
one: players win the game by completing the six missions and in doing
so, help to fight hunger. The goal of the game is directly conveyed to
the player: ‘You can learn to fight hunger (…) Millions of people are now
depending on you for help. This is more than just a game. Good luck!’
Players receive positive feedback on their performance from team
members if their missions are successful. If the mission’s outcome is
less positive, the player is encouraged to try again. After playing the
game, a player can summit his or her final score to a world-wide high
score list on the game’s website. Though the game does not have real-
life consequences for the player, s/he is constantly reminded of the fact
that in real life the WFP-missions have huge consequences for these
hungry people. Before and after each mission, the player can watch
animated video clips providing valuable background information about
the importance of the WFP’s work.

12
3.2 Deconstruction
According to the Dutch Cultural Council, looking through and exposing
the hidden, naturalized, ideologically presupposed rules of a medium is
an important aspect of ‘media wisdom’.38 Ted Friedman calls this process
“demystification”, I prefer to call it “deconstruction”:39

Learning and winning (…) or “reaching one’s goals at” a computer game
is a process of demystification [deconstruction]: One succeeds by
discovering how the software is put together. The player molds his or
her strategy through trial-and-error experimentation to see “what
works” – which actions are rewarded and which are punished.40

According to Friedman, ‘computer games reveal their own

41
constructedness to a much greater extent than more traditional texts’.
Darfur is Dying rests on the premise that the United Nations Security
Council has the right and the duty to authorise military intervention to
stop serious abuses of human rights in regions all over the world. Food
Force rests on the premise that fighting hunger is a responsibility of the
international community. The ‘baseline ideological assumptions that
determine which strategies will win and which will lose’,42 become
apparent through actually playing the game. That is why Friedman
claims that ‘to win (…) you have to figure out what will work within the
rules of the game’.43 This is because a computer game, as opposed to,
for example, a film, is played over and over again until all of the game’s
secrets have been discovered.
Friedman’s claim is problematic because he overlooks the three
interpretative strategies that may be activated in the player as a
reaction to what Turkle calls the seduction of simulation: players can
either surrender to the seduction of Food Force and Darfur is Dying by
interpreting the game more or less according to the encoded UN-
ideological frames (simulation resignation). As Friedman claims they
may understand these frames by demystifying or deconstructing the

38
Dutch Cultural Council, Media wisdom.
39
Raessens, ‘Computer Games’, pp. 376-378.
40
Friedman, ‘Making Sense of Software’, p. 82.
41
Ibidem.
42
Friedman, ‘Civilization’, p. 144.
43
Idem, p. 136.

13
assumptions or frames that are built into the simulation (simulation
understanding). Or they can completely disavow the social and political
importance of these kinds of games (simulation denial).
These three strategies do, indeed, determine the reactions of
players and critics of both games. On the Water Cooler Games forum,
for example, game critic and forum editor Gonzalo Frasca writes about
Food Force: ‘Finally! An educational game that rocks! Informative, well
produced and very enjoyable to play with. Go United Nations! (…)
Overall, I am extremely happy for this game, it is an excellent example
of the way edutainment should be.’44 Most of the comments on this
forum reflect this view: ’This was a wonderful game (…) successful at
teaching the player about a few things, such as what foods are
important, where investment is more valuable, etc. Great stuff!’ and
‘Very nice game indeed’. This “simulation resignation” is also the
dominant reaction towards Darfur is Dying: ‘Fortunately, this game is
refreshingly smart about its subject and effective in its delivery’.45 The
game ‘is perhaps the first true survival-horror game in which players
experience life as a Sudanese living in Darfur in 2006, fighting to stay
alive not from the threat of Space Invader aliens but from real world
bullets and sun-cracked soil’.46 ‘Having a game about Darfur reaches out
to lots of young people out there who are clueless about what’s going
on’.47
Simulation understanding and denial are clearly in the minority.
On the Water Cooler Games forum, some players deny Food Force’s
importance by criticizing the U.N. for spending money on computer
game development while thousands starve.48 And the BBC-news cites
Ian Bogost: ‘Bogost worries that MTV’s involvement makes the game
seem more like a marketing tool’.49 Others criticize the built-in
assumptions of Food Force: ‘How much like the real U.N is it? Do players
get extra points for accepting bribes and raping the locals?’50 and raise
the question whether the difficult work for the WFP lends itself well to

44
See: www.watercoolergames.org/archives/000381.shtml.
45
See: www.gameology.org/node/1013.
46
Parkin, ‘Interview’.
47
Vargas, ‘In Darfur is Dying’.
48
See note 44.
49
Boyd, ‘Darfur activism’.
50
See note 48. In 2005, the U.N. established an Ethics Office with the objective to
‘ensure that all staff members observe and perform their functions consistent with the
highest standards of integrity’, see: www.un.org/reform/ethics. There is no reference
to forms of misconduct by UN personnel in both games.

14
minigames: ‘It seems more like a MMO (ex. Everquest). Or a Sim where
you control the WFP’.51 Dafur is Dying is criticised for the same reason:
‘It seems to trivialize the problem’52 and ‘He [Bogost] also wonders
whether Darfur is Dying oversimplifies an incredibly complex conflict’.53

3.3 Construction
The concept of “construction” may be understood as the modification of
an existing game. A game modification is ‘an add-on to an existing game
engine that alters the original code or state of a computer game’.
Examples are the ‘customization of graphics, sound, game play,
architecture or other attributes of the original computer game’.54 In this
sense both Food Force and Darfur is Dying lack a constructive mode.
The gamers’ activities are better described as modes of reconstruction.
However, there are two other definitions of construction. The first
one refers to the making of new games as such. What is at stake here is
the question who can participate in our culture. Whether we face a top-
down culture in which a small number of computer game developers and
publishers run the show all by themselves, or whether we face a
multitude of bottom-up cultures in which computer gamers can
(continue to) participate. We see these bottom-up cultures appear when
independent games are developed and distributed. Both Darfur is Dying
and Food Force fit into a new genre of critical games:

A new genre of critical games, in which play and reality are significantly
linked together, is emerging. People can be informed about economic
exploitation or political migration via games (…) Why remain a passive
consumer when there is just as much fun to be had in adopting games
to our own sets of rules (…) One thing all these games (…) have in
common is the notion of empowerment, speaking out, looking critically,
taking the initiative ourselves.55

Darfur is Dying and Food Force have a clear political agenda, namely the
dissemination of the United Nations nurturant parent frame through

51
Ibidem. MMO or MMORPG stand for Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing
Game. A Sim is a Simulation game, like SimCity.
52
See note 47.
53
Boyd, ‘Darfur activism’.
54
Schleiner, ‘Parasitic Interventions’.
55
Carels, ‘The State of Play’, p. 337.

15
popular culture. In itself this can be considered an emancipating and
liberating aspect of the construction of frames. When gamers become
game programmers and thus move from game to meta-game, players
realize that our reality is “open source”: they have ‘the ability to rethink
and redesign our world using entirely new rule sets’.56 Although
commercial enterprises such as MTV and Reebok initiated the design of
Darfur is Dying, profit or the provision of mere entertainment is not its
main motive. As with Food Force, the goal of the game is to provide an
engaging experience, to communicate a political message, and,
ultimately, the realization of a certain change of behaviour on the part of
the player.
This change of behaviour leads to a third definition of the concept
of construction. The Food Force-website asks players to become active
outside the game world. Players can help by giving money to the WFP,
by teaching others about famine, and by organizing fundraising activities
at school or at home. “Joe’s blog” on the Food Force website links the
game world with the outside reality in interesting ways. Joe Zake, the
Sheylanese nutritionist character of the game, asks website visitors: ‘to
spread the word about hunger using this blog: read, comment and link’.
As I described earlier in this chapter, the Darfur is Dying-website is
organized in a similar way: it offers the player different kinds of
possibilities to become active in the reality outside the game.

Conclusion
In understanding how the design of Darfur is Dying and Food Force
helps to convince players of the veracity of the games’ point of view and
the necessity of a behavioral change, we have to realize that a mere
presentation of factual information about the situation in Darfur and
global hunger is simply not good enough: ‘To be accepted, the truth
must fit people’s frames. If the facts do not fit a frame, the frame stays
and the facts bounce off’.57 It seems effective to frame these facts in
multiple ways: within the context of two successful games; within the
context of two accompanying websites; as part of the framework of the
United Nations; in the context of the nurturant parent model. According
to Lakoff, ‘we all have both models [nurturant parent and strict father] –

56
Rushkoff, ‘Renaissance Now!’, p. 421.
57
Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant!’, p. 17.

16
either actively or passively’.58 The goal of both games is to activate the
nurturant parent values I described earlier in the minds of young players
of computer games, and to frame the issues of hunger and Darfur from
their perspective.
Darfur is Dying and Food Force frame Darfur and global hunger in
ways that are specific to the medium. The players of both games mainly
reconstruct the preprogrammed possibilities of these games according to
their unambiguously motivated ideological rules. It seems that most of
the critics and players surrender to the games’ baseline ideological
assumptions that become obvious while they demystify or deconstruct
the rules of the game. It is not easy to determine whether the
oversimplification of the Darfur conflict turns the game into an United
Nations propaganda vehicle. Or whether ‘it is an entryway into the
crisis’59 – in the words of game designer Susana Ruiz – which deals with
the basic questions young people have. I tend to agree with Scheufele
and Tewsbury’s definition of framing as ‘a necessary tool to reduce the
complexity of an issue’,60 given the constraints of the media in question.
‘Frames, in other words, become invaluable tools for presenting
relatively complex issues (…) efficiently and in a way that makes them
accessible to lay audiences because they play to existing cognitive
schemas’.61 One of the main constraints of serious games is that the
development and distribution of computer games is severely dominated
by a few commercial companies who focus on entertainment games. The
gaming industry lacks funding and business models for projects such as
Darfur is Dying and Food Force. It is a small miracle that both games
exist, given that they do not aim for or make high profits while still
requiring substantial production budgets.

Acknowledgments
Some of my descriptions of Food Force and Darfur is Dying are based on
the games’ websites. I wrote this chapter in the context of the Utrecht
Media Research program (see: www.let.uu.nl/umr). I would like to thank
Jeffrey Goldstein for his helpful comments and Christien Franken for
editing this chapter.

58
Idem, p. 41.
59
Boyd, ‘Darfur activism’.
60
Scheufele and Tewksbury, ‘Framing’, p. 12.
61
Ibidem.

17
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19
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20