Pictures For Truth: Click-Click-Click-Click-Boom!

Continuing my prodding at the IGF entries, I found this. It's called Pictures For Truth and it's a French/Canadian made Amnesty International game about exposing human rights abuses leading up to the Beijing Olympics. It's a short little thing, but strikes me as a cross between Global Conflicts and Jet Set Radio. It's more of a model for a game than a full game, but some more thoughts beneath the cut...

Well, this sort of thing is an interesting one. While based on real information, it's a game which is based on fictional examples. I'm actually not sure whether it makes it better or worse, and anyone involved in the heated argument last time we linked to something a tad journalisty should probably tell us.

The game's basically got two mechanics. First, you talk to people to get information on a story. Secondly, you take photos to illustrate the story. The effectiveness of the story is based around how good the photos are - every time you take a shot, it works out how good an illustration it is. Dialogue wise it's a lot simpler than Global Conflicts, but the camera stuff has the basics of something that could be quite interesting. You can purchase improvements to your camera, allowing you to get telescoping lenses and secret ones (so you can get juicy inside-prision shots) and so on.

In other words, this doesn't actually make me think about the potentials of serious games that much. It makes me think about the potential of a straight journalist game. Well, relatively straight - it'll be to journalism what GTA is to an average criminal's career, but it's the sort of thing I'd love to see explored.

This isn't it, but it's cute enough. Also, i do like writing the phrase "Global Conflicts meets Jet Set Radio". You can download it from here.