First idea…

From a first person point of view, your goal is to get to get to the polls to vote. However, along the way you are posed with civics literacy questions. Depending on the avatar you have (this could be chosen, or randomly assigned), these questions will vary or may not even be posed at all. They might be harder or easier depending on your demographic. For example, if you have a character that has dark skin, you may find that you have harder questions, and as you progress (that is if you’re able to), they become more difficult. Conversely, you may find that the questions are very easy, or not asked at all. You find that you are trying to be kept from voting at all, and it’s very hard to win when you’re in this progression.

Ok, my first reaction to my idea is that it seems a little obvious. How do I make this more interesting? Have I thought about the issue completely? How do I tie this into a grassroots movement?

In spite of how interesting or not my initial idea is, there are two things I see happening in this type of game play situation. One, racism is brought to the foreground. Tom Tancredo’s speech in Nashville, and the cheering on of his idea to bring back literacy tests, is just one big example of how strong racism still is in this country. So as far as user experience goals, the player should realize that this is still a huge problem. Obama’s coming into power has just made the pot boil over. Secondly, while this isn’t a primary goal of the game, there is some secondary learning going on with the testing of civics knowledge. In theory, high school students should have an easier time answering the questions that will be posed since they are studying the material according to the cirriculum standards. In addtion to getting a refresher of some of this information, as players progress through the game, they will realize how hard some of these questions they’re being asked are, and why “literacy tests” were such a bad idea to determine whether or not a person should be able to vote. Hopefully they will see how this could be skewed…

Second idea…

From a third person perspective, it’s your job to administer literacy tests to a group of “voters” that you can see from a top level view. Certain “types” of voters gain you points as they make their way to polls, while others subtract from your points. You need to be able to identify who you want to keep out and who you want in. Not sure about the specifics of all this but this idea actually excites me more than the other…

Although the obvious thing to do would to base this soley on skin color, but I’m think that there are some other things that could be embedded into that game, such as voters that look like college students, or those that have a certain dress that makes them look “intellectual”. These, in all actuality, are types of voters that would also potentially need to be supresssed.

The win condition will be dependent on your keeping out the “types” of voters that promote a socialist agenda (as Tancredo put it). So basically you’re playing the bad guy. The goal would be to get the player to recognize the systamtic opression of certain groups of people, and the empowerement of others. By putting the power in the players hands to make these decisions, it’s like giving them direct control of a polarizing situation.

Although I won’t know this until I start working with prototypes of these games, my gut instinct that that the third person point of view might give me more to work with and could potentially be more powerful… but then again, that’s an early judgment based on some weird vision in my head. To be continued…