The New Political Games Make a Point

Microsoft, a sponsor of this year's Games for Change conference, is scheduled to announce a contest tomorrow. Open to college students around the world, it's meant to develop a game based on global warming.

The top three entries will receive cash prizes, and Microsoft is hoping those games will be slick enough to offer as downloads on its Xbox Live service, the online marketplace for users of the game console.

Jeff Bell, corporate vice president of global brand management at Microsoft, said he doesn't expect activist-created games to start crowding Xbox Live's most-downloaded list, but he's hopeful that the contest will uncover and encourage new types of user-created games and storytelling. "It's a seed corn we're planting here," he said.

Whether or not any of the finalists come up with the game world's equivalent of "An Inconvenient Truth," the idea that games can, like film, be used to influence or provoke has been catching on quickly.

A student-designed game based on the plight of Darfur had more than 1 million players last year. And last month, the New York Times started publishing what a small Atlanta firm calls "news games" on its Web site's op-ed pages.

A founder of those games' design company, Ian Bogost, says his company is trying to develop an updated version of the traditional editorial cartoon by using computer games to make an interactive experience from the news. The underlying gag of the first game, called Food Import Folly, is that Food and Drug Administration equipment and personnel have stayed roughly the same over the past decade, while imported food shipments have increased more than fourfold.

The Redistricting Game takes place in imaginary states named Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton, but its developers are hoping it will draw enough interest and support to warrant making a version that uses real-world maps and census data.

In the last mission of the game, players determine the state of Jefferson's districts without taking political affiliations into account. That level simulates what redistricting would be like if a bill championed by real-world Rep. John Tanner (D-Tenn.) became law.

Aronson and the head of the USC's game-design team visited the District a couple of weeks ago and showed off the game to Tanner and his staff.

The congressman said he's a fan and intends to promote the game as a way of explaining a topic that is sometimes seen as esoteric and is often lost on people outside the Beltway.

Tanner doesn't usually spend time with computer games, he said, "but I will play this one."

The game is scheduled to be available tomorrow athttp://www.redistrictinggame.org.