"Serious Games": Not meant to be fun
 

I'm sure I've talked about this before, but today is home to two news items:

• The opening of the Social Impact Games site, cataloguing a list of games that were created for a purpose alterior to fun. An example is SimHealth, which attempted to simulate the affects of enacting different healthcare systems/policies.
• The opening of Gonzalo Frasca's Newsgaming project ("political cartoons" of games), and its first game, September 12th.

microsoft flight simulator - not meant to be fun!

September 12th was brilliant. Had me laughing from the shock of it. Those people are GENIOUSES! (Even if they simplify things quite a bit)

My thoughts exactly.

I'm not a big fan of arguing over semantics. Have you played the September 12th "game" I linked to?

I'm not sure if I'd call September 12th "genius." I don't think I'd go further than "sort of interesting for a minute or so." I understand it's not supposed to have an end and that it's not supposed to be fun (in fact, it describes itself as being "not a game", not a serious game), but I'm not sure it really even provided any significant insight or perspective.

Well... I didn't quite understand what the point of the "game" was, really. You launch a missile, it destroys houses and kills people, which in turn cause other people to express their grief and turn into terrorists. The houses are also rebuilt over a period of time. But... what's the point, really? Don't we all know the reasons behind terrorism and it's effects?

Not really, but this simulation doesn't teach us anything new.

I think it's just a typical "war is bad" thing. I wouldn't call it genius, myself, but I'm pretty sure since it's hosted on newsgaming.com, it at least bears some resemblance to games... :P Wow. Usually the "but" clause has something to with the clause it conjuncted, but there it bore no relation. See, I got it right that time.

It sort of bears a resemblance to games, but the program itself says it isn't one.