Published:
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
E3, the biggest gaming trade show of the year, wrapped last week in L.A., and the gaming press is on fire with the latest news from console makers and game designers. I, for one, can’t wait to get my hands on Rock Band 3. Late last month, however, my favorite new casual game designer, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, unveiled her latest release. Wait, what? No, really.
iCivics is a web-based education project designed to teach students civics and inspire them to be active participants in our democracy. iCivics springs from the concern of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor that students are not getting the information and tools they need for civic participation, and that civics teachers need better materials and support.
I've read a number of articles praising Justice O'Connor and iCivics in their mission and innovative use of video games as education tools. I have no argument there, but I've yet to see any coverage that actually looks at whether the games are "fun and effective," as Justice O'Connor promises. As both a civil rights advocate and an avid gamer, I'm here to help. And, I'm happy to report that, apart from a few scoring issues and limited replayability, the iCivics games are great.
iCivics currently offers five new free flash games designed to teach the player about the three branches of government. Each game is accompanied with detailed lesson plans to allow teachers to work the games into their curriculum, and the materials are excellent. The games also have a friendly art design and simple point-and-click game play that will be familiar to anyone who has mindlessly toiled away the day on a virtual farm.
Unlike Farmville, however, iCivics has real substance. Over the course of the five games, the player is directly involved in helping the Supreme Court decide a First Amendment case, arguing landmark civil rights cases, crafting legislation, managing a civil rights law firm, and running the country, both as President and by taking control of all three branches simultaneously. These are all very difficult and complex issues, but the iCivics games do a remarkable job of making the concepts manageable and easy to understand.
In Supreme Decision, you've just been hired as a Supreme Court law clerk. Pretty clutch gig, but get over it, because before you even reach your office, your fictional Justice grabs you on her way to oral argument in a case involving a student's right to wear a banned band t-shirt. After hearing from the lawyers, I was terrified my Justice was going to make me tell her the answer right there. Thankfully, she told me the Court is split 4-4 and she is undecided. My task was to go listen to the the other Justices duke it out over the issues of the case, so off I went to barge in on their private conversations. The game cleverly splits up the First Amendment case here into four manageable issues that are explained through the Justices' conversations. Along the way, the player learns to put together the legal analysis needed to decide the case. I particularly enjoyed the Sixties radical Justice who punctuates each of his arguments with an insistent, "man!"
Although game play is a little slow, so is life as a law clerk. Supreme Decision is interesting to play through regardless, and the game does a great job of teaching the player how the Court works. My only real complaint is that the game only includes the one case, which severely limits replay, but iCivics indicates more content is coming.
puts the player in the shoes of the newly elected President. Ever thought being the President was a leisurely job with nothing but lazy days mountain biking and chain-sawing brush at your ranch? Executive Command would like to have a word with you, because after setting your agenda in your first State of the Union address, it’s on.
Life as President is very hectic, or, as a gamer friend of mine put it, “being President is stressing me out.” But, it is also loads of fun. Congress has legislation you need to sign or veto. Agencies need your guidance to implement new laws, and then there are all those Nobel Prize ceremonies and diplomatic trips to Belgium vying for your attention. At the end of your first year, just as you’re starting to get the hang of things, war breaks out and the enemy’s forces are attacking the US coastline. Before you know it though, your first term is up. Can you win the war, pass your agenda, sign landmark legislation, and keep the voters happy enough to win a second term? Alas, no, you cannot, not at all, and that is the problem.
Throughout the games, iCivics attempts the difficult and unenviable task of removing politics from otherwise supremely political processes, and it doesn’t always work. In Executive Command, your actions as President appear to have no bearing on the outside world. There are no polls, no approval ratings, and no electoral math. Passing an energy bill has the same effect regardless of whether you fund renewable energy research or bet the farm on the paradoxical promise of clean coal. Quite simply, there are no voters or reelection to worry you. Instead, your fictional president plays for nothing more than a meaningless high score over one term.
Upon finishing Executive Command the first time, the player has a sense of bewildered accomplishment at having even made it through the process, but with nothing to show for your effort other than the game taunting you to do better the next time. Unfortunately, there is no next time (point for realism, I suppose). Because of the limited content, every replay is all but identical—same new laws, same war, same trip to Belgium (which for some reason takes the same amount of time as a trip to New York). Consequently, after the first play, the game becomes less about running the country and more about achieving Groundhog Day perfection via superior route planning. On my second play through, the only thing slowing me down was the game’s counter-intuitive gear management system that had me showing up at the Department of Education with a declaration of war instead of my new Head Start bill (doesn’t the President have people to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen?). By my third play, I stopped the war, passed my domestic agenda and enacted everything Congress threw at me before my third year was up, giving me all kinds of time to travel through Europe and start sketching some ideas for my presidential library. At the end of the game, I was rewarded with the information that I had been reelected, but someone must not have gotten the memo, because I was giving my farewell address in the next scene.
Apart from the scoring issues, Justice O’Connor doesn’t seem to hold the Executive Branch in very high regard. Whereas in the court and law firm based games, the player must deal with difficult choices based on nuanced issues of constitutional law, the President must choose between funding for homeland security and disbanding all police departments to allow the cops a vacation. I recognize this is a game designed to teach middle school civics, but I found the lack of depth in Executive Command disappointing. More content, more scenarios, and the possibility of reelection would go a long way to address these minor complaints over what is an otherwise great concept and truly fun game.
For aspiring or practicing lawyers, Do I Have a Right tests whether you have the chops to manage a civil rights law firm. Your budding Clarence Darrow starts the game by choosing a law partner and hanging out her shingle to await the first client. Thankfully, someone actually shows up with a real problem, and it’s your task to talk to the client and determine if you can help. If the prospective client has a claim and you have a lawyer with the expertise to handle the case, you can pair the two up so they can prepare the case. Once they are ready, you send them off to trial and await the result. You earn points for your firm with each win that can be spent hiring additional lawyers, upgrading the client waiting area, lawyer desks, or for buying a fancy coffee maker to allow you to move around the office faster.
Do I Have a Right
is a lot of fun to play. The player has a number of options for how to best spend money and put together the best team possible. Interviewing the clients and matching them to the right lawyer requires the player to understand the constitutional issues being raised and to act accordingly, even if that means showing the prospective client the door. Early in the game, I wondered why the player isn’t actually involved in the trials, but as the week wore on, all of my character’s time was consumed with managing the office and keeping clients happy. It quickly became all too clear there was no time to jump into every case and to keep the office from burning down. In short, the game gave me an even greater measure of respect for our legal director and the difficult balancing act she accomplishes daily.
As with all the iCivics games, the biggest limitation to Do I Have a Right is a lack of new content in successive replays. By the second play, I was familiar with all the client issues and the game became more of a travelling salesman problem than constitutional analysis. Unlike Executive Command, however, the numerical scoring system in Do I Have a Right works very well—measuring a law firm’s worth by its financial success has a certain natural feel to it. By adding more client scenarios, Do I Have a Right has the best potential of any of the iCivics games to be a crossover casual game success.
It’s the day after the election and you’ve been elected to Congress. Don’t remember how that went down? Don’t worry, because neither does Lawcraft, which starts by asking from which state and party you hail and to which house of Congress you’ve been elected. From there you must identify your core value, and then it’s off to Washington to . . . umm . . . craft some law. First you’ll need to decide what to work on, which comes in the form of constituent letters. Once you’ve picked a compelling issue, you’ll need to work with both sides of the aisle to put forth a bill with majority support that doesn’t force you to sacrifice your core values. If you can pass the bill in your house, you’ll enter into the reconciliation process to hammer out a final, veto-proof, piece of legislation.
Lawcraft
is simple, short, and entertaining, once. Ironically, where the complaint with the other games is a lack of content, Lawcraft appears to have the most content, but the game offers no reason whatsoever to replay it and explore different scenarios. The actions of your congressperson, like the president, not only have no effect on the electorate, but now they have no effect on anything. There is no score. There is no reelection. There is but one bill to be crafted in a vacuum. The game does a good job of showing how a bill becomes a law (though my Gen-X sentimentalities won't let me acknowledge anything superior to Schoolhouse Rocks
), but some mechanism to allow the player to continue the game would add significant weight to the experience.
Reviews always use the term “ambitious” as a euphemism for something that doesn’t quite work. Branches of Power is certainly ambitious then, as the game tries to place the player in control of all three branches of government simultaneously. The result, however, is a bit of a mess, but perhaps this is the point - the three branches must work independently to function as a unit. As a game, however, it makes for confusing instructions, cluttered gameplay, and an inability to accomplish much in the allotted time. During my term, however, I did end the war on drugs through responsible legalization, and the Supreme Court upheld my bill, so I considered that a victory.
Finally, any criticisms I have of the iCivics games are identified here only with the hope of making these games even better than they already are. I fully support Justice O'Connor and iCivics in their mission and innovative use of video games as education tools, and I hope many more will follow their lead. Now go play the games for yourself.
