News.com has posted an interesting little piece entitled 'Games that stick it to The Man', which studies the burgeoning world of satirical and anti-corporate videogames. A couple of interesting examples are namechecked including Disaffected, which gives players the chance to find out what life is like as a disgruntled FedEx Kinkos employee. Then there's The McDonald's Videogame from Italian developer Molleindustria, a Tycoon-style title which promises to reveal all the dirty secrets behind the burger business.
The article casually mentions the movie Supersize Me, but doesn't go on to point out a key differentation between Morgan Spurlock's documentary and these interesting little games: distribution.
While Supersize Me made it into the same distribution channels as any mainstream movie (including sinister McDonalds propaganda flick, Mac and Me), you won't find Disaffected sitting on the shop shelves next to the latest Need For Speed title. Generally, these 'anti-advergames' (they're going to have to come up with a better term than that) are made available via web download to only a relative handful of smart surfers.
As covered before on this blog (I was going to provide a link, but I can't find the stories in question. Come on, it's Monday morning), satire, and political comment in general, are not strongpoints of the videogame business. While the movie industry is capable of opening a route for the odd indie polemic to hit the mainstream, videogame publishers are not interested. In the film business there are still people high up in the food chain who can kid themselves into thinking they're in this for the art. But the culture of videogames is very different. There is no expectation, and therefore no compulsion, to say anything through games.
These indie titles are fun and thought-provoking, but satire is only ever effective when it bounds into the mainstream. Clearly, someone from the movie industry will have to take the lead. Love him or loathe him, if Michael Moore puts the game rights to his next big docu-movie up for grabs surely there will be takers. Videogame publishers don't like satire, but they're quite fond of money...
