Planned Parenthood Hates Babies: The Game

Interesting article today over at PC Gamer.  It seems that a collaboration between Digital Media at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Expressive Intelligence Studio at UC Santa Cruz, along with a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, has produced the "Game-O-Matic".  What is it, you ask?  Well, according to its official description, it is:

   

...a tool for creating short, simple games.

Instead of designing how characters and objects behave and then spending hours coding it, Game-O-Matic lets you think about what you want a game to be about. All you have to do is create a diagram of relationships and choose which of the games it makes for you that you like best!

As a practical matter, the program operates by taking user submitted nouns and verbs, and applying them to a selection of premade gameplay templates to create a simple game.  The result?  Crap.


Okay, that might be a bit harsh, but you didn't really expect to be churning out highly entertaining "games" via a free app that doesn't require any coding know-how, did you? Of course not.

The really scary thing - I mean besides the fact the some suckers actually provided a grant so that two institutions of supposedly higher learning could make this program - is that this wasn't just created as some sort of halfhearted experimental foray into programming for the masses, but was designed to be:

"...a tool for generating journalistic games (or newsgames) through a simple “concept mapping” of relevant actors and their relationships. For the past two years, we have been exploring a key problem facing the adoption of newsgames by traditional media sources: the expense, time, and expertise required to craft regular videogame content. Game-O-Matic relieves the burden of programming and design while encouraging journalists to think of news events as systems rather than as stories."

That should put a shudder up the spine of every American.

Are journalists so lazy these days that they actually need the assistance of "newsgames" to get their cognitive functions working?  Well...yes they are.  We know that already.  So maybe that isn't "scary" as much as "sad".  But what should be seen as very scary is the idea that Game-O-Matic produced rubbish is apparently considered to be operating at a cognitive level suitable for most professional journalists!  Now I finally understand why most journalistic analysis operates at such a sophomoric level....

No wonder why the Lame Street Media is so horrified by modern gaming.  It probably blows their very simplistic minds.  They fear what they can't comprehend, and hate what they fear....

Be that as it may, there is another interesting story here, one that ties into my continuing effort to document creeping leftist thought into mainstream video games.  As I have tried to show over the past few months, certain game publishers, as well as gaming news sites, have been drifting further and further into a Statist mindset.  For example, Kotaku has been been dabbling in it quite a bit the last few months and, most recently, Rock, Paper, Shotgun has begun to guzzle the militant feminist Kool-Aid, even to the point of issuing a rant and then locking out comments because, you know, they are all about serious discussions.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun's new logo

To be fair, PC Gamer has not been as unhinged, politically speaking, as their compatriots, nonetheless even they couldn't resist applying a Barrack Hussein Obama versus Sarah Palin theme to their Game-O-Matic prototype.  Is it 2008?  How jejune.

Nonetheless, it was largely harmless.  And their summation was a good one:

"The aim of the project are interesting. Interactive news formats could sidestep the inevitable bias issues that crop up in traditional news stories. A written report might seek to discard extraneous information, inflate points of perceived importance and relegate others to lower paragraphs present a readable but skewed slice of information pie. The Game-o-matic approach takes the bare bones of a story and splays it out like a dissected animal. It’s clinical, but too simplistic to be useful, and the randomised rulesets distort the core diagram into something too chaotic to make a sensible point."

Regardless, I just know it is only a matter of time before RPS et alia gets on this bandwagon and starts churning out the sort of dreadful leftist propaganda games that Rock Paper Shotgun has so idolized in the past.  Even the Game-O-Matic's explanatory video flashes an interesting logic string that reads: GOP-has-Tea Party-attacks-Gay Rights / Democrats-needs-Independents-wants-Gay Rights.   Remember what I told you about finding hidden political bias in gaming (see: Ubisoft Hates Pro-Lifers)?  You just have to look closely because it is popping up in gaming more and more all the time.  Then again, I suppose I should be more surprised that an app funded by a foundation that includes the publisher of the Statist New Republic on its board of trustees wasn't more openly biased....

With that in mind, I decided that a good offense would be the best defense.  Hence, I quickly decided to make my own "newsgame" for journalists.

But what about?  Let's see...what would be more relevant than PC Gamer's Palin vs Obama theme?  Hmm....

Well, there was this little, largely ignored story about abortionist Kermit Gosnell - America's Dr. Mengele -  who joked about killing children, and ultimately was charged with murdering one woman and eight babies at his clinic (that we know of...).  This horror show was later followed up by another when Planned Parenthood lobbyist Alisa LaPolt Snow (former reporter for the Associated Press and Gannett News Service...just sayin') refused to disavow infanticide when a baby survived a botched abortion:

It took Planned Parenthood over a week to disavow her statement

I immediately realized that this could be one of those "teachable moments" that President Obama is so fond of.  Yeah!  Maybe I could use the Game-O-Matic to encourage journalists, particularly those at the AP and the Gannett News Service, "to think of news events as systems rather than as stories."

After a quick 15 minutes, I came up with my magnum opus: the pithily titled Planned Parenthood Hates Babies.  You can play it here (but please don't, because it is really awful):  

 

Link 

Now, since most of my readers are smart folk, I am sure nobody clicked on the link.  So, here are some thrilling screenshots.  The start screen:

I like how I used the shrill, Hillary Clinton-esque "female politician" graphic for Planned Parenthood.  Seems very appropriate.  I also like the Game-O-Matic's accurate description of a "win" for Planned Parenthood:  "Remove all babies from the screen".  If I could, I would change the "lose" category from running out of lives to running out of government funding. Makes more sense.

The actual game screen:

It sort of operates like Space Invaders in that the Planned Parenthood feminists shoot the randomly moving babies from below, and need to avoid contact with the infants at all costs (again, a pretty darn accurate depiction of the feminist mindset).  The Pro-Lifer, represented by a priest graphic, pretty much just randomly runs around (I couldn't get the logic to work properly, and I wasn't inclined to waste much more time on this game).  I like to think the priest represents the clergy that, with the exception of prayer, is largely powerless to do more than distract the abortion industry. 

I know, it seems more interesting than it actually is.  Well, if you want to see what a typical day for a woman like Alisa LaPolt Snow is like, go ahead and give it a try!  You might soon find yourself wearing a pant suit, too!  And reading Rock, Paper, Shotgun on a regular basis!

I just hope I could help some journalists out there to...what was it again?  Oh yeah:  "think of news events as systems rather than as stories."  Did this help, Dan Rather?  At a minimum, I think my "game" shows the propaganda potential for this "newsgame", which, of course, is its true, if unstated, purpose....


What other conservative POV games can we make with the Game-O-Matic?  And, more importantly, how long before the powers that be get wind of us perverting it for "thought crimes" and pull the plug?  One thing is for sure: as Rock, Paper, Shotgun has shown, the tolerant left is not very tolerant of dissent: 

So get your liberty-loving games up there before it is too late!