Finally, a Mostly Okay Bailout Game

Since I've been talking so much about how absurdly awful the online bailout-themed webgame scene has been, I guess I'll provide a slightly less rant-y post here for Budget Hero's updated, sort of bailout-themed game.

Budget Hero's update includes one new "badge" to the game, allowing you to set one of your three requisite goals to be "economic stimulus". In the game, you are allowed to add to and cut from any part of the budget that the game provides for, a fairly sizable choice range. On just dealing with the Bush tax cuts alone, you have about ten different choices, ranging from keeping them to reversing them to reversing them and taxing the rich a little extra. Your goal is to achieve the best possible combination of a balanced budget (one that will collapse later than 2030 or so) and your three chosen goals (like "green", "social safety net", and "national security"). Every budget change you make that helps one of your goals contributes a sizeable amount to coloring in the badge, a fully colored one indicating that you were successful.

This is at least a thoughtful game. You are given many, many choices on what to do with the budget, and you can read a lengthy piece of text for each choice, indicating the situation, pros, and cons to implementing that change. There's a lot of information here, and you really feel the pressure dynamic between cutting your spending to keep the debt manageable and implementing the programs we need, especially with the stimulus.

I have a few problems, though. Your three chosen goals allow you to basically ignore everything else. I chose "economic stimulus", "green revolution", and "energy independence". That means that the game doesn't really penalize me at all if I, say, cut defense spending by 10% (which the majority of players have done, likely out of necessity to come near a balanced budget) or even something uncharacteristic for a liberal like eliminating Medicare, Foreign Aid, etc. Your three goals should matter the most, but the others should still matter. The party wouldn't support a move to privatize defense or something radical like that, even if it's not part of your specific platform to keep national security a priority. But, changing the game so that every possible goal matters would make things even more tense and realistic, and it is just a game.

The game also allows us to assume that we stay in absolute power for about twenty years to actually see all of our economic programs take effect. It takes a while, sometimes. Well, I've written enough already. Play it, it's somewhat educational and at least partially successful at representing the tension inherent in the job.

Trillion Dollar Bailout: Another Awful Game

If you weren't already sickened enough by the freaking terrible Bailout Game, enjoy yet another inane bailout-based webgame with Trillion Dollar Bailout! This one makes all the same mistakes The Bailout Game made, but with less humor and an even worse presentation. As in the other one, there is no limit on the amount of money you can use, and the bailout money is always good. Okay, then why is there any debate? Just spend all the money in the world, forever, and the economy will be perfect! Yay!

I did several playthroughs (the "play again" button at the end doesn't work, though) and here were the results:

1. I gave bailout money to two homeowners then had to leave the computer to do something else. I came back a minute later to find I had won the game. Unbelievable. It's obviously a weak game if you have to do basically nothing to save the economy. God.

2. I then made a semi-serious playthrough in which I bailed out every homeowner who wasn't labeled "Happy Homeowner," but rather "Homeowner - Foreclosure" or something like that. I won, perfect score.

3. Then I went back through and bailed out every business guy at the top of the screen, instead. I saved the economy. There was apparently no difference, though it seemed like the recovery was a bit slower when I gave it to them. Still, just give out the money, and you win.

4. Now, and this is the good part, I just let the computer sit. I never gave any money to anyone, nor did I slap anyone, which rejects them. I came back thirty seconds later, and I had won. Oh my God, this is stupid.

5. Now I slapped everybody. That made the economy go down. What's the difference between slapping them and not giving them any money? It's the same thing! This appears to be the only way to lose the game.

So, in summation, there is no point to doing anything. You win if you stay totally idle. You can give money, (as much as you want with no repercussions), and you'll win. It's only if you slap people, which doesn't mean anything besides "I'm deciding not to give them money," that you can lose. There shouldn't be any difference between slapping and just missing someone. This fails as a game and as rhetoric, because it isn't fun or challenging in any way, and it fails to reflect anything about bailouts. Don't dare click over to the game, it just helps someone who doesn't deserve the attention for the extremely minimal effort they put into this game.

Hush: Rwandan Genocide Is a Rythm Game (Actually Very Tasteful)

In Ian Bogost's new column at Gamasutra, he talks about a new-ish game (describing it as a video game vignette) about the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Hush comes from USC, (where you got the funky flOw) and it's basically a five minute long "rhythm" game. Letters appear on the screen that you are to press on the keyboard when the letters reach their brightest. This represents you, a mother, singing to your baby to soothe him, while Hutu soldiers are committing a massacre around you. You constantly hear sounds of the massacre, knowing that allowing your baby to get too riled up will expose your location, killing you. It's not exactly Rock Band, no... Even the gameplay isn't, due to the patience necessary in waiting for the letters to actually get bright enough. Well, it's recommendable, and provides a short but intense emotional experience for those willing to be given a short but intense emotional experience from a game about singing to a baby. So any Call of Duty freaks can probably just move along.