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Gone Gitmo – A virtual Guantanamo Bay Prison built in Second Life

A virtual but accessible version of the prison, in contrast to the real but inaccessible prison.  See more at the Gone Gitmo Blog.
Visit Gone Gitmo via this SLURL

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Baha Mousa

When we put participants into the virtual body of a detainee in a stress position, we could only recreate the scene based on the text of real interrogations.  Shortly after we finished, a video was released in the trial over the death of Baha Mousa, an Iraqi civilian who died in British custody. The video underscores the accuracy of our virtual reality piece.  WARNING: This video is very difficult to watch.

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Darfur is Dying

In the activist game, Darfur is Dying made by Susana Ruiz in 2006, the player is a refugee from a Darfuri family and must evade the Janjaweed militia patrols on trips for water and firewood. The game is meant to increase empathy for victims of genocide by positioning the player within a game environment where the hazards refer to actual tragedy.

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Cap & Trade – An Immersive Journalism Experience

Built in collaboration with the Center for Investigative Reporting and based on Mark Schapiro’s “Carbon Watch for Frontline World”, his article, “GM’s Money Trees” in Mother Jones
and his Harpers Magazine article “Conning the climate:
Inside the carbon-trading shell game,” , this piece calls attention to some of the human consequences and lack of regulation in the carbon offset trade market.

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Walljumpers

Transmedia trailer

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  • April 27, 2010
  • Posted by: admin
  • One Comment
  • News Games

Kuma Wars recreates John Kerry’s Swiftboat battles

The KUMA WAR episodic series of online games are an example of the expository genre of news games. While the game play is adapted from an existing military third-person shooter game engine, the scenes and missions are re-enactments of battles from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan based on news accounts, interviews and DOD reports. KUMA Reality Games positions itself as journalistic and their web banner proclaims: ‘REAL WAR NEWS, REAL WAR GAMES’. They evoke both the power of the medium as well as the story to impart empathy to the player:

During the 2004 election, John Kerry’s military medal as a Swiftboat captain came under fire. KUMA WAR’s game “John Kerry’s Silver Star” lets you be John Kerry and see if you can recreate his feats.  This piece is an interesting example of using interactive game play to portray the controversy that dominated the election.

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  • April 27, 2010
  • Posted by: admin
  • No Comments
  • News Games

JFK Reloaded

JFK Reloaded details coming