From the moment ICED starts up, you know we're in trouble. You see, ICED (which stands for "I Can End Deportation") is a "game for change," in this case one that advocates for reform of immigration policy, its stance being pro-immigrant. During the initial loading screen, voice-over and scrolling text tells us "No one is safe from deportation--the sick and elderly, pregnant women, families..." And so on.
Can you say "heavy handed?" Let us consider this: The developers are facing an up-hill struggle, taking a position that is at present at odds with the loudest voices on the issue of immigration, who seem to believe that it's both possible and desirable to deport 12 million harmless people who have come to this country for the opportunities it offers. In other words, you need to make a case; you can't just preach loudly. This isn't persuasive; some portion of the audience will nod in agreement, and a lot more will say "fuck you" and shut down the game. Maybe a few teens who have never considered the issue will think it's interesting and go on to play -- and maybe that's what the developers think they're after, because, after all, only teenagers play videogames, right? (Very wrong, as trivial research will reveal -- and the portion of teens who are likely to play a didactic 'serious' game, let alone go through a download-and-install process to do so is vanishingly small.)
Once we get into the game, we see that it's a 3D world, rendered in the Torque engine, meaning a fair bit of money and time was spent creating the 3D assets involved. But what do we do in this 3D world? Well, scattered across it, visible in the minimap as green dots, are either flat rotating light-bulbs or flat rotating hands. When you move into a light bulb, you are asked a yes-or-no question that is supposed to "educate" you as to the issues involved in the immigration debate. E.g., "Most illegal immigrants are violent criminals, yes or no?". A correct answer gains you points. The hands instead give you points for being a good citizen (like, "plant a tree, +5"); in addition there are some green dots marked only by an unmoving character or an object, which ask you questions that are all traps. (No, don't take the illegal handgun.) These are also frustrating, because it's not clear exactly where to position your character without a hand or bulb, so you have to jostle around until your green dot exactly matches the green dot on the minimap, likely while Immigracion is running after you. If you get all the green dots on the map, you play what they call a high-speed chase game, but is actually like an unbeatable game of Pac-Man; more and more immigration officers show up and start wandering around the map until, inevitably, they corner and eat, I mean detain you.
When you are caught, you go to detention -- a prison in Louisiana with a bunch more light-bulbs and hands. After getting everything green here, you get to take a test and, if you pass with flying colors (and didn't take the handgun, et al.), you get to become a legal resident. Woohoo.
I suppose the developers feel that this structure is helping to "educate" the players about the "facts" of the case; of course, precisely because they've staked out a heavy-handed position from the very inception of the game, players will perceive the facts here as dubious; you don't generally get terribly, you know, factual facts from people who are strong advocates of a political position. Instead, you get their obvious slant. As you do here, of course.
In other words, what the developers have really done here is to take the equivalent of a political pamphlet, a set of bullet-pointed arguments, and strewn them at random in a 3D world for you to encounter in no coherent order. I beg to suggest that a political pamphlet is a better medium to transmit these ideas; no real point going to the expense of developing a "game," if we can call it that; a better name might be "screedware."
What, we may ask, differentiates the game from all other media? It is simply this: In playing a game, you are complicit in creating the experience, and the experience is personal and immediate, because you help make it happen. Moreover, games are algorithmic systems, and can, by exposing users to their implications, get across far better than any other medium how systems function -- how history evolves, how businesses work, and perhaps something like how our system of immigration control produces inequities by its nature.
Thus, a didactic game on the issue of immigration, to be worthy of its name and medium, must reveal to players, in the course of play, the moral issues faced by real participants in the system, whether as immigrants or as law enforcement officers. Games in other words, are different from prose or documentary film; and to make a game on an issue, without understanding what it is that games can do better and exploiting their advantages, is pointless, just as, say, making a poor documentary, or writing incoherent prose, is not a useful way of advancing your position.
In this context, Against All Odds (which deals with the plight faced by political refugees) is a vastly better game, despite its flaws; it poses you with moral choices, even if only of the multiple-choice variety. And it's better despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it doesn't hide the fact that it's basically a set of multiple-choice quizzes (as ICED is also) by providing an unnecessary 3D environment.
The curious, and indeed almost inexplicable thing is that we already have an example of a game that addresses precisely the question of immigrant imprisonment and deportation, in a smart and effective way, and in the context of a 3D world; it's called Escape from Woomera. Might the developers have better spent their time build on that framework in an American context?
N.B.: It isn't usual for us to run negative reviews; normally we point to games we think you should play. In this case, we're making an exception, both because I think something should be said about this game and because there are few other places that review serious games.
Cards on the Table
I'd like to know...
Is it the position of the game that certain immigration laws are unjust or that ANY such laws are? In other words, does the game proceed from the principle that every human being on the planet (or in, say, Mexico) has the right to live in the USA regardless of what its legal citizens want or what its laws are?
There are serious social and economic costs to uncontrolled immigration involving so many people, from a neighboring (and much poorer) land and in such a short time. This is not to say that a Berlin Wall-type solution is called for, but to wave the problem off as "12 million harmless people" won't do either.
Still, this was a good and strong piece, Greg. Thanks for writing it. It's a good example of the difference between games CRITICISM and REVIEWING that you have written about.
The position of the game...
Is that in our effort to control illegal immigration, we often catch people up in a net that is clearly unjust, and that the system used to determine whether or not people should be deported is inherently prone to injustice. In particular, these people, not being citizens, don't have the same protections we normally accord to anyone otherwise entangled in the justice system. People spend years in detention, without recourse to trial, for instance.
The whole bit about "12 million harmless people" is more a reflection of my beliefs on this issue than the game's -- and there is no doubt that my beliefs are far, far, out of the mainstream. So, you know, don't tar the game with adherence to ideas that I adhere to, but it doesn't. (Just for the record, I'm what in the 19th century would have been called a "liberal", and I believe that the right of free movement of peoples is quite as much a fundamental human right as the right to free speech, or to compete freely in the market. That is, no state, mine or otherwise, has the right to tell me, or anyone else, where I, or they, may or may not live; I have no problem with "illegal" immigration, since restrictions on immigration are, in my view, violations of individual liberty, and there is no obligation to abide by unjust laws. Just as it is a violation of my liberty to make me stand in a line of three hundred people so my passport may be desultorily stamped by some bureaucratic functionary before re-entering the country; I can't imagine a free citizenry would put up with this for a moment. But then, as I've said before, it would be nice indeed to live in a free country, and I regret that I apparently do not.)
Or to put it another way: I'm very much in sympathy with the political agenda of ICED. I just don't think it works worth a damn. Alas.
O RLY?
"That is, no state, mine or otherwise, has the right to tell me, or anyone else, where I, or they, may or may not live; I have no problem with "illegal" immigration, since restrictions on immigration are, in my view, violations of individual liberty, and there is no obligation to abide by unjust laws."
You sure that 19th Century "classical" liberalism included the belief that people, acting through their laws and governments, have no right to maintain the borders of or define membership in their national communities?
Put another way... I presume you would agree that I, as a US citizen, have the right to insist that people not trespass on my property. And to call the cops on them if they do.
Yet you seem to be saying that the collective citizenry of the US has no right to insist that people respect our laws and not trespass into the country?
That aside, thanks for the response.
Free is Free
Well, I did say I was far out of the mainstream on this issue, right?
You have a perfect right, on your own property, to impose rules that would be considered "violations of the right to free speech" if imposed by governments. If you want to throw someone out of your house because they support McCain, or Obama, or because they espouse any kind of belief you find objectionable, or simply because you don't like the way they pronounce "tomato," well, it's your property. Needless to say, governments don't have the right to forbid speech in the same way as a homeowner.
Sure, you have the right to prevent people from trespassing on your property. But I don't think Finland (to draw a country at random) has the right to say I can't live or work there. Why should they? So long as I remain peaceful and an otherwise good citizen, of course.
What is a "nation?" Is a nation the same as a state? Is a state somehow privileged to coerce others in a way that other institutions aren't? When it comes down to it, what trumps -- "collective action" through an institution such as government, or individual liberty?
You don't have to agree with me on this one -- almost nobody does -- but yes. O rly. I has freedom.
Free to Be... You and Me
Needless to say, governments don't have the right to forbid speech in the same way as a homeowner.
Because governments have a scope and degree of power far exceeding that of a homeowner.
A government, by necessity, operates a monopoly of force and authority. You can leave my house if you don't like my rules. But the government's "rules" are The Law and there are no alternatives.
Is a state somehow privileged to coerce others in a way that other institutions aren't?
Yes. Which is why, for example, sworn law-enforcement officers have powers above and beyond that of private detectives, security personnel and hired bodyguards.
We as citizens define the scope of governmental authority and that remit clearly, unmistakably includes the maintenance of borders and the institutions of citizenship, visas and what have you. This was true with 19th century "classical" liberalism and it's true now.
I can't imagine a free citizenry would put up with this for a moment.
This is wholly compatible with being a "free" people in a "free" country. Indeed, the converse would be downright bizarre: A "free" people who cannot control their own borders are not very "free."
PS - I think we met once. Waterloo Hobbies. Stony Brook, NY. Scott Bizar's shop. 1982-83 or so.
From the desk of the ICED developers
Hi,
Thanks for playing our game. We appreciate your critique- but hope (as your title says,) that you won't deport the developer and learned from the game that immigration laws:
Deny a fair day in court and deport people without a hearing
Tie judges’ hands and prevent them from considering the circumstances of each individual case
Impose unjust punishment
Hold immigrants in detention indefinitely
Thanks and keep on playing,
-Breakthrough
(aka) ICED Developer