New political games

Games are great storytelling techniques. Persuasive Games has released two new political games worth checking out. Why aren't more news sites creating features like these?

Take Back Illinois: Commissioned by the Illinois House Republicans, Take Back Illinois is an integrated four-part strategy game that challenges players to play through key issues facing Illinois voters in this year's state legislative election. Each game deals with a different issue, and a new one will launch every week for four weeks. The issues are Medical Malpractice Reform, Education, Participation, and Economic Reform. The games are interrelated, meaning your play in one affects your play in the others. As of today, we have released the first two sub-games. The others will follow on October 6 and 13, respectively.

Activism, the Public Policy Game: Sponsored by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Activism asks you to create a virtual activism plan, promoting the DCCC's goal of getting 10,000 activists on the ground before the election. You can muster your activists to six different public policy topics. The game also experiments with a new way to do public policy polling, allowing players to share their activism plans by providing demographic information, and to load other peoples' activism plans and play their ideology.

October 6, 2004 | BY JONATHAN DUBE