By Tim Stone on August 30th, 2009 at 10:34 am.
Talk about implausible. The villain of Serious Games Interactive’s latest interview-em-up is a rebel leader who, according to the game’s absurd back-story, has spent the last twenty years mutilating, murdering, abducting and raping thousands of his own countrymen with the help of an army of brainwashed children. Pffft. As if the International Community would let a thing like that happen.
In many ways Global Conflicts: Child Soldiers is typical SGI fare. Unflinching, disturbing, primarily educational… it’s a rather frail game with a fascinating real-life conundrum at its core. Joseph Kony, one of the most despicable men on the planet, will only attend peace-talks if the International Criminal Court and the Ugandan government drop all charges against him. Should we agree to his demands in the hope of ending one of the most brutal insurgencies imaginable?
Having played through twice, I’m still undecided. By putting you in the shoes of an International Criminal Court employee sent to Uganda to talk to Kony, the Danish devs seem to counsel against pragmatism and military solutions from the start. Then again they do let you meet and talk to persuasive NPCs like Monica Atto, an IDP (Internally Displaced Person) prepared to forego personal justice in the interests of the peace process, and Dalson Oyo, a man who argues that Kony should be hunted down and slain like a rabid dog. Dalson has good reason to loathe the Lord’s Resistance Army. They are the reason he no longer has hands, ears, lips, or a nose.
In pure game terms Global Conflicts: Child Soldiers has various failings. As an educational device however, it’s pretty extraordinary. Of the hundreds of NPCs I will doubtless meet over the next twelve months, I can’t imagine any will fix my attention, or burn themselves into my memory more effectively than Monica or Dalson.
30/08/2009 at 10:51 Ryx says:
I’m confused.
30/08/2009 at 10:58 Testicular Torsion says:
Shades of Hidden Agenda. Christ Almighty, did I ever love that game.
30/08/2009 at 11:02 Sartoris says:
Oooh, Hidden Agenda. Replayed that game a million times <3
30/08/2009 at 11:05 bill says:
Why confused?
—
Using games as educational tools seems like such a missed opportunity, i’m glad at least some people are doing it.
Frankly, I don’t think the “game” part of an educational game like this is important, it’s the interactive part and the way it can put you in interesting situations and give you interesting choices and experiences.
30/08/2009 at 12:34 Helm says:
This seems very interesting. Will give it a go.
30/08/2009 at 13:21 Bhazor says:
Boo! Game made me think and do a sad.
Also of course you should drop charges against one guy to stop a massive campaign of christian terror.
Hundreds of lives > one guy getting a spanking.
Theres always Al Caponing the bast and throwing him in jail for ages for swearing at a policeman or the like.
30/08/2009 at 13:51 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
I applied for a trial (they might accept me as a teacher in training ^^)…will see
30/08/2009 at 13:56 Robin says:
A game where you took the role of a guerilla group leader would be interesting.
30/08/2009 at 14:49 Demon Beaver says:
Agree to his demands, invite him over, have Jason Bourne take care of him
30/08/2009 at 14:56 roBurky says:
Hmm. Email for the trial download seems to be taking a long time.
30/08/2009 at 16:11 Heliocentric says:
Seriously, get him to the peace talks, televise them then lynch him the moment the cameras go off.
30/08/2009 at 16:15 Heliocentric says:
Or, smack him with a laser guided bomb. Thats good too.
Wait, that makes me as bad as him? No i would have to laser guided bomb thousands of people. Also, laser guided rape and disfigurement missiles.
30/08/2009 at 16:46 Jetsetlemming says:
Laser guided rape and disfigurement missiles sounds like just the right kind of extreme for Gears of War 3.
30/08/2009 at 17:08 Heliocentric says:
But what would the finishing move be?
30/08/2009 at 17:29 KnightOfCydonia says:
Laser guided rape missiles…. don’t most people just call that sperm?
30/08/2009 at 18:23 rivalin says:
massive campaign of christian terror.
Lol uninformed statements are fun, I really hope that was just an ironic joke The LRA are not Christians, they’ve just adopted a few Christian symbols draped over their fairly vicious voodoo beliefs, but never miss a chance to bash the jesus freaks over a little thing like of accuracy eh?
Anyway, looks interesting, but seriously, being made by Danes it’s going to be fairly hippy pacifist leaning. It would probably be a bit more compelling if they didn’t lay the agenda on quite so thick and really let the player decide without any obvious moral shoves from the developer.
30/08/2009 at 18:27 Vinraith says:
No True Scotsman arguments are fun, too.
30/08/2009 at 18:57 Blast Hardcheese says:
I like how rather than talking about the game, some religious guy got upset that someone said something about religion so rather than distancing himself and his religion from absolutely disgusting evil people, they use their words to say that’s not them because they’re not religious enough rather than that’s not us, because we’re not awful horrible people.
30/08/2009 at 19:11 Tim Stone says:
@rivalin. I can only think of one ‘obvious moral shove’ in an SGI game. Usually the issues are handled with remarkable delicacy/maturity. That’s the beauty. They’re games made by people that understand there are no easy answers.
30/08/2009 at 19:36 T. Slothrop says:
@Heliocentric.
Not to offend, but if you believe disintegrating one man will halt an paramilitary outfit, you desperately need to counsel a history book. As a fact the Lord’s Resistance Army’s leadership has been dwindling, yet massacres continue. If one holds that Kony is however integral or if one could somehow evaporate the entire leadership out of existence, one is left with a disorganised mass of highly-trained butchers, rapists and thieves with no cohesive structure with which to negotiate or potentially settle with. I should not have to explicitly state the irony.
Kony’s own rhetoric and messianic complex merely adds colour to what is essentially amounts to extravagantly merciless plunder with evidently enough success to justify continuance.
Espousing such a view, of course does not make you his equal however it does place you pre-Enlightment Era.
This game reminds me of an excellent Half-Life Mod about Australia’s refugee detention centres and the appalling violations of human rights and international law therein. I would love to see more games with sophisticated social commentary in addition to refined gameplay. Deus Ex still has some near peerless (in games) moments of great insight, subtle at times and overt in others.
30/08/2009 at 19:47 jalf says:
@T. Slothrop: hang on, which history book describes the consequences of disintegrating a man?
Why didn’t we read that in history classes back in high school? :D
I lol’d… :p
30/08/2009 at 19:48 jalf says:
er, had intended for a *snip* or something separating the two parts of that quote about… Ah well, just imagine it’s there after “fun”.
30/08/2009 at 19:54 Pantsman says:
I don’t know about your sperm, but mine aren’t 200mm in diameter.
30/08/2009 at 21:28 cowthief skank says:
Mine are.
30/08/2009 at 21:34 T. Slothrop says:
@jalf
Though you may be half-jesting, I was referring to the historical record generally but if you desire specific examples one doesn’t even have to look far for cases where one man’s extra-judicial killing or prosecution is justified due to their perceived importance or the perceived necessity. So say very recently, Jordanian Iraqi insurgent Musab Al-Zarqawi’s death did nothing to change the modality of horror in Iraq, it was in 2006 I believe and was preceded by a massive propaganda campaign against him both in Iraq and the United States.
Herschel Grynszpan was seen as a member of a conspiratorial ‘international Jewry’. His arrest and the resulting Kristallnacht inflamed resistance against Nazism further. Diem’s police state in South Vietnam assassinated scores of people opposed to the US-backed dictatorship, one knows how successful that preventative measure was.
One can read case after case on the use of assassination in Suharto’s Indonesia, Gaza and the West Bank or the murder of Jesuit intellectuals in El Salvador and quickly comes to the conclusion that it is virtually always used an instrument of terror and repression, its efficacy is irrelevant.
There are overtly famous exceptions such as say John F. Kennedy or John Lennon, but even in the former case let us imagine that Harvey Lee Oswald wanted and end to U.S. aggression in Indochina; It would be ridiculous to suggest the assassination of the former would have ameliorated, let alone stopped the war. Just as John Lennon’s assassination did not stop Beatles reunions, Kony’s assassination would not be the end of the Lord’s Resistance Army.
30/08/2009 at 21:49 jalf says:
@T. Slothrop: Yeah, I was joking… It was the “disintegration” thing I found amusing, since, to the best of my knowledge, very few historical people have been disintegrated… :p
I agree with your point in general. :)
30/08/2009 at 22:15 Heliocentric says:
So we need nukes then? Worked with Japan. Amirite?
30/08/2009 at 22:24 Foca Mais says:
It´s an interesting match of the real power of a leader against the power of his followers.
Is history mostly led by leaders and thinkers or by social forces? I think most of them just happen to understand the inner desire of a social mass and take a role to represent and materialise their needs. Very few are gifted to create an original idea, even if society wasn´t ready or aware of it. Gifted people like Socrates, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Darwin and a lot of other philosophers/thinkers.
30/08/2009 at 22:57 Stromko says:
I believe that moving in with an international force that’s strong enough to provide stability to the people of the host nation and allow them to pursue their own prosperity (which rather demands not, say, taking over all their natural resources via multinational corporations that don’t employ locals), while rooting out and forcing the violent aggressors to submit to whatever form of justice their victims’ and victims’ families, and their own families need to feel satisfied, would be the only way to really solve issues like this.
But, such operations are very fragile and require that the nations involved have stomach for blood being spilled in humanitarian operations. I think the reason the U.S. backed out of Somalia wasn’t so much that dozen or so killed American soldiers and the bad PR of seeing their bodies paraded down the streets, it was the estimated 1,000 – 10,000 Somalis killed in the two days of fighting.
It seems to me that success in ending atrocities across the globe requires a sensitivity to the particulars of the situations, a strong will on the part of the benefactors, and largely pure ambitions on the part of those same benefactors and their constituents / lobbyists. Both of these things are, sadly, a rare occurrence in the murky region of international politics.
I think the issue with Africa in general is that they’re still suffering from hardcore colonialism. It’s still being done by international corporations, as it always was, but now they’re being given more of a blind eye from their host nations instead of tacit support like the olden days.
The first world is also benefitting, generally, from this arrangement. There might come a time when the majority of first-worlders begin to demand locally made products, mostly to protect their own jobs, and this might have a side-effect of cutting down on colonialism and allowing local opportunities for enrichment in troubled parts of the African continent.
I’m really just an amateur about these sorts of things, so I shouldn’t pretend to have all the answers. :P
30/08/2009 at 23:19 Wooly says:
We should send Jack Bauer to torture and assassinate him!
31/08/2009 at 00:16 Heliocentric says:
Lets not take any chances, kill him first, then torture.
31/08/2009 at 03:50 Stromko says:
Make an army of bulletproof child therapy bots to deprogram his child soldiers. Then throw that bastard in a fetid prison for the rest of his miserable life.
Well it’s about as far-fetched as expecting the global community to do anything about the situation, or for a happy ending to appear anytime this decade or the next.
31/08/2009 at 04:54 Scandalon says:
Vinraith – Don’t worry about rivalin, he’s obviously not a True Christian as a True Christian wouldn’t write like that… ;)
Okay, rivalin doesn’t make his case well (and neither does Bhezor – but that may have just been poorly written), but “True Scotsman” arguments aside, there *does* have to be a delineation mark somewhere between what a small group claims to be vs. what that group label is generally accepted as defined as.
What if I, as someone who holds a fishing license, and has even been known to fish (both spinning-rod and fly-fishing) from time to time, started “The Fishmen of the World” group. Soon you started hearing about this group doing…things. Pretty much anywhere on the scale from spraypainting slogans on walls to wholesale rape/tourture/murder, doesn’t matter. If you were someone who enjoyed the recreation of fishing (or did it commercially) and someone mentioned (or wrote or whatever) about a “massive campaign of fisherman terror”, you might be a bit testy being lumped in with the same crowd too.
31/08/2009 at 05:33 Vinraith says:
@Scandalon
Actually I tend to agree that “Christian” is superfluous here. While it’s certainly possible to conduct horrible acts in the name of any religion (and there have certainly been cases where Christianity has motivated atrocities), in this case I don’t think religion is the motivating factor. It’s pretty clear that this is a case of adopting a religious title as a cover for doing what a group has a vested interest in doing anyway.
And I’d have left rivalin’s logically flawed argument alone, consequently, except that he tried to blame it on a DIFFERENT religion rather than arguing that religion wasn’t a motivating factor in this case.
31/08/2009 at 05:56 Breaker Morant's ghost says:
When I read Serious Games, I thought this was going to be about a new Serious Sam game set in Africa. Rad!
Instead it’s some rubbish where you play a lackey working for the creepy communists in the ICC.
31/08/2009 at 09:32 Heliocentric says:
@scandalon isn’t that what happened to bikers?
31/08/2009 at 10:34 Kommissar Nicko says:
Fishermen of the World, eh…
I’d like to subscribe to your newsletter.
02/09/2009 at 07:44 Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen says:
There is a trailer to go with the game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6YC6gFSgfE
04/09/2009 at 09:04 yolo says:
“By putting you in the shoes of an International Criminal Court employee sent to Uganda to talk to Kony, the Danish devs seem to counsel against pragmatism and military solutions from the start. ”
This is a rather odd claim. The game is merely focused on the character in question (an ICC employee); in becoming that character one naturally has limited options (just like real life), but the framework of the game doesn’t preclude the option of military intervention. What does the author of the review expect to happen between the LRA and its opponents if a peace deal is not reached? Just because the character will not directly engage in a ‘military solution’ doesn’t mean that the decisions made in the game don’t enable that solution.
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The game is merely focused on the character in question (an ICC employee , logo design
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