They died by the hundreds.

In June, 1942, SS death squads took bloody reprisals against the Czech village of Lidice for the murder of a Nazi leader by local partisans. Every adult male in the village was killed. Women were shipped to concentration camps. Aryan-looking children were sent to foster homes in Germany; the remainder, to concentration camps. The village itself was flattened.

64 years later, a memorial website employs a wargame-like interface to educate viewers about the atrocity. When players arrive at Total Burn-out a banner describes the site as "The hottest new wargame."
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If you think the Harvest Moon series could benefit from a bit more death, misery, and an all-encompassing sense of hopelessness, then this 2005 student project from the IT University of Copenhagen is right up your alley.

3rd World Farmer challenges players to keep themselves and their families alive while managing a farm in poverty and conflict-stricken Africa. Make every dollar count as you plant your crops for the year and hope for a good harvest. If fortune smiles upon you, maybe you'll have earned enough money to buy a shovel but don't get too cocky, since the word "stability" isn't even in the dictionary where you live. Droughts can destroy your crops, disease can kill your livestock, civil wars can expose your farm to plundering from both sides, and falling market prices can render your goods worthless.
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It helps teens and young adults who are afflicted with cancer.

It has been shown to improve the quality of life for young cancer patients and to increase their understanding of the disease.

It also enhances their ability to talk about their cancer, manage its side effects, and stick with therapy regimens.

Could "it" be a miracle drug? Some revolutionary new medical procedure? White magic?

Nah. It's a video game. (Hey, this is GamePolitics after all!)

Created by Hope Lab in collaboration with several game developers, biologists, and young cancer patients, the somewhat whimsically titled Re-Mission is one of those serious games we love to write about because they show the positive potential of video game tech. Re-Mission is a third-person shooter starring a microscopic nanobot named Roxxi whose mission is to enter the bodies of patients and fight cancer and bacteria on the cellular level.
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Video games rarely capture the attention of the mainstream press. When they do, it's usually a sensationalized story about violence or sex or some other hot-button issue.

So it is with Super Columbine Massacre RPG, a non-commercial game available only as a free download via the Internet. Thanks primarily to a story in the Rocky Mountain News, the mainstream press is all over this one. In addition to the coverage in the Rocky, the Associated Press has written about Super Columbine Massacre and the game has been linked on The Drudge Report.

The story has gotten such wide play in the last couple of days that there's really no point in regurgitating the facts here on GamePolitics. At this point, the public reaction to the game seems to be the defining part of the story.

Like many GP readers who track developments in the video game space, I became aware of Columbine Super Massacre about two weeks ago when word of the game began to make the rounds of video game blogs. I chose not to address it at that point. Perhaps I should have, but for me, Columbine remains an open wound - not in the sense that I knew anyone there, but along with September 11th, the trauma and tragedy of the Columbine shootings was seared into my brain by live television coverage. Both are generation-defining events. For me, the Littleton community seems very much like my community and Columbine High School much like the schools my kids attend.

It probably comes as no surprise that initial reactions to the game are negative. Families of Columbine victims, of course, were sought out by the media for comment. Necessary, I suppose, but somehow distasteful. What are the families to say? What would you expect them to say? If even a jaded gamer like GP is uneasy with the Columbine Super Massacre, it has to be an incredibly raw nerve for the Columbine families. And it is. The Rocky Mountain News piece quotes several surviving relatives:

"It's wrong," said Joe Kechter. His son, Matt, was gunned down in the school library.

"We live in a culture of death, so it doesn't surprise me that this stuff has become so commonplace. It disgusts me," said Brian Rohrbough. His son, Dan, was killed outside the school building. "You trivialize the actions of two murderers and the lives of the innocent."
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What could be more controversial than a computer game based on abortion?

Not much...

At last week's Game Developers Conference (GDC), Ian Bogost (left), founder of Persuasive Games and a professor at Georgia Tech, unveiled work on a game which examines both sides of the abortion issue, challenges biases, and educates players about opposing views. Bogost explained the reasoning behind the game to Stephen Totilo of MTV News.

"Let's take on the most complicated, difficult problem that we could possible take on in contemporary American political discourse. We'll make an abortion game," he said.

While the underlying philosophical right-to-life question is not addressed within the parameters of the game, other aspects of the abortion debate are. The current build features mini-games in which the player guides a teen mother through pregnancy, explores a city in which all forms of birth control are outlawed, and rummages through the house in search of a condom.

Future plans could allow the game to tweak its presentation based on the responses of the player. For example, if the player was pro-choice, the teen pregnancy mini-game would emphasize discussion of personal responsibility and suggest alternatives such as adoption in order to help the player understand the other side's perspective.

Bogost doesn't expect a working prototype until the fall. He explained to MTV that the purpose of the game isn't to push a particular agenda.

"This isn't a game that changes your opinion, but tells you why people have the opinion they do."

LifeSite, an anti-abortion website run by the Campaign Life Coalition, wasted no time in criticizing Bogost's early prototype sketches, claiming they displayed an "incomplete understanding of arguments for protecting the unborn." The site also protested that arguments against abortion are "rarely, if ever understood by the casual observer of the abortion battle."

CM: The abortion debate has been marred by misinformation and rhetoric from both sides. Rather than criticize a game in the early stages of development, perhaps abortion opponents such as the Campaign Life Coalition could offer their talking points to Ian Bogost and Persuasive Games for possible inclusion in the final product.

-reporting from Saskatchewan, North American GP correspondent Colin McInnes (aka Jabrwock)

Check out Wired News' coverage of A Force More Powerful. The political simulation has been created by U.S. developer Breakaway Games on behalf of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

The strategy game sims Ghandi and the independence movement in post-World War II India, the American civil rights movement of the 1960's, and the struggle against former Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. A scenario editor allows players to create hypothetical - or even real world - situations and explore nonviolent political solutions.

GP is well-acquainted with Maryland-based Breakaway Games, which is led by veteran game designer Doug Whatley. Before getting into the Serious Games movement, Breakaway created GP favorites ABC Monday Night Football and Waterloo: Napoleon's Last Battle.

If A Force More Powerful sounds interesting, you can download a video trailer at the Breakaway web site.