Kyrgyzstan’s beleaguered president, Askar Akayev, last week accused outside backers (read: the U.S. and other Western countries) of directing and funding the revolution in the post-Soviet state. Indeed, organizations across the globe do put forth dollars, advisors -- and good ol’ fashioned propaganda -- to support revolutionary movements. And in time, breakaway movements in democracy-starved regions could be getting assistance from some unlikely revolutionaries right here in the U.S.

It may not have assisted in Kyrgyzstan’s so-called Tulip Revolution, but a gaming project underway at BreakAway Games could facilitate future democratic uprisings. A Force More Powerful ain’t your standard violent first-person shooter game. In fact, it’s designed to promote non-violent action. Commissioned by The International Center for Non-Violent Conflict (The Center), the game applies the format and approach behind military strategy games for non-violent resistance training and planning. A Force More Powerful will be distributed to activist groups pushing for democratic change and human rights in their homelands in an effort to help them plot plans for taking real-life, non-violent action to achieve their objectives.

The game spurred much rumination, and some controversy, among attendees of this year’s Serious Games Summit, a sort-of splinter event held in conjunction with the far more powerful, week-long Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The serious gamers are a growing group of game developers focused on creating games for training, education, and public policy purposes. When presented with A Force More Powerful during the summit, attendees were definitely intrigued by the concept, recalls Ian Bogost, Ph.D. and partner, game design at Persuasive Games, an electronic game development studio specializing in games created for persuasion, activism and issue advocacy. However, according to Bogost, some were “very worried” about the political implications of the game. Bogost himself wonders, “Is it possible to create a generalized representation of political overthrow? Can the computational representation of regime change overcome the geopolitical interests of the West?”

Questions, discussion and debate are precisely what A Force More Powerful is intended to prompt, asserts Ananda Gupta, designer at BreakAway Games. “If somebody sets up a scenario or represents a regime in a certain way, that format can be debated and reviewed, then played out,” he explains. Still in development, the game allows players to create societal situations based on chosen cultural, economic or governmental conditions. Players then pick from a menu of around 100 different tactics, such as protests or fundraising efforts, that can be employed to bolster a rebel movement and possibly take down authoritarian leaders.

A Force More Powerful is an extension of a brand already known by pro-democracy and human rights activists. The founding chair of The Center, Dr. Peter Ackerman, was series editor and principal content advisor of PBS-TV’s critically-acclaimed series on nonviolence, A Force More Powerful. He also co-wrote a book by the same name.

Pacifist protesters could be trying out virtual strategies through the game as soon as September, when A Force More Powerful is set to be made public. The game might be distributed in Internet cafes, or made available for download online, according to BreakAway president, Deborah Tillett. A beta version is expected to launch in early July.

Games provide the ability “to play around and fail softly,” remarks David Rejeski, director, foresight and governance project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, home of The Serious Games Initiative. “You have the ability to store your mistakes…. You can work back and understand what caused what result,” he says. Rejeski, a co-founder of The Serious Games Initiative, is a strong believer in using games to broaden awareness and understanding of public policies and issues.

The military has employed interactive games for training purposes for years, but developing games for other utilitarian purposes is a relatively new phenomenon. The Serious Games Initiative acts as a hub for the rapidly growing field of developers dedicated to creating games for everything from homeland security to healthcare. The group’s first summit held in October 2004 drew about 40 people, according to Rejeski, who says the second and most recent summit in San Francisco this March attracted 500 attendees.

A Proposal Less Complicated
The subject of Rejeski’s current gaming project may not be as compelling as democratic revolution, but it affects society immensely all the same. Funded by the Richard Lounsberry Foundation, an organization that gives grants for science, policy and education initiatives, the as yet-unnamed game focuses on the federal budget. A small team of budget game developers is only about six weeks into the development process, still deciding on basics like how many people could play at one time and whether or not they get to “play God.” Rejeski envisions Sims-style avatar lobbyists hitting up congressmen for pork, for example.

“Ideally, games take a complex issue and boil it down into something more easily grasped,” says Ben Sawyer, co-founder of technology and software development firm Digitalmill, and Rejeski’s partner in originating The Serious Games Initiative. Sawyer is quick to stress that clarifying a ponderous topic like the federal budget does not require dumbing it down, nor does it necessitate a limited scope. Instead, stresses Sawyer, the goal is for people to “walk away with big picture ideas.”

Rejeski’s budget game is influenced, at least in part, by popular commercial historical strategy games such as Microsoft’s Rise of Nations and Sid Meier’s Civilization, from Firaxis Games and Infogrames. Such games require foresight and self reflection, things Sawyer thinks should be employed when constructing a federal budget. “When it comes to games like [Rise of Nations and Civilization],” quips Sawyer, “You actually have somebody articulating more foresight than you do the average House member.”

Nowadays, more and more people grow up spending hundreds of hours playing computer games, so it’s only natural that the medium be used to communicate to them, suggests Michael Gesner, president and CEO of Dragonfly Game Design, and another developer working on the federal budget game. “You want people to feel like they’re a part of what they’re learning, like they’re invested in what they’re learning,” he contends. “As people accept games as media that can teach rather than media that destroys…you’re going to see more and more games that persuade.”

Gesner has experience building what might be considered the prototype for the federal budget game. Deemed MassBalance, the game was produced by Gesner in conjunction with students in the Worcester Polytechnic Institute Game Development Club (WPIGDC), in order to educate citizens about the real effects of budget tradeoffs. Gesner currently serves as an advisor for the club.

A Game More Partisan
If the WPIGDC was the brains behind MassBalance, perhaps you could call Massachusetts State Senator Richard T. Moore (D) the brawn. It was Moore who approached the club about building the game, which was developed as an academic project, free of charge to the Senator. According to Gesner, Moore picked up the tab for the game’s only cost -- the game website itself.

With a politically-entrenched backer like Moore, there’s little doubt that this game, and many others designed to educate about public policy, run the risk of incorporating partisan biases. “There are always assumptions built into the algorithms,” confirms Woodrow Wilson’s David Rejeski.

In its final form, the federal budget game might allow players to alter certain economic calculations or assumptions on which the outcome of the game will be determined, notes Digitalmill’s Sawyer. “The goal is making it non-partisan,” he adds, “but not creating a tool that partisan discussions can’t take place in.” In an effort to assess assumptions vs. actual outcomes, Sawyer hopes to compare players’ political leanings with the game results and make aggregated data available to the media. Federal government officials, including officials at the General Accounting Office, have discussed the gaming project with its developers, who anticipate completing prototypes in August at the earliest.

Persuasive Games’s Bogost, also a federal budget game crew member, has no problem creating games with an inherent political agenda. Back when the promise of a democratic presidential primary victory in Iowa still fired up the Dean brigade, Bogost developed a grassroots outreach game for the Dean campaign. The Howard Dean for Iowa Game was launched in December of 2003, drew 100,000 players in its first month, and presented an abstract representation of exactly what grassroots outreach is all about -- door-to-door canvassing, sign-waving, and all.

“The Dean game wasn’t too in-depth, but it did give people a sense of what [they were] going to Iowa to do,” opines Digitalmill’s Sawyer. “Over time,” he adds, “we will see campaigns taking gaming more seriously.”

So far, most campaign-affiliated games have been far from serious, much less informative. Many of last year’s silly, blatantly-partisan pre-election romps like The Democratic National Committee’s Kick Bush Out, or The Republican National Committee’s Kerryopoly simply helped supporters blow off steam. In the future, games could be used by campaigns to educate voters about platform issues or proposals, train canvassers -- and yes -- make opponents and their positions look funny. At this point, the sky’s the limit.

A Campaign More Pricey
BreakAway’s Tillett thinks incorporating games into campaign strategies is a smart move. “If you’re trying to get out the 18-24-year-old vote, anything involving interactivity and entertainment is the right way to go,” she says. “It makes sense to me to hit them where they live.”

Before campaigns can do that in any serious-games fashion, they’ll have to hit up donors where they live. “Funding remains the biggest challenge,” observes Persuasive Games’s Bogost, noting that commercial and military training games can cost tens of millions of dollars to produce. According to Tillet, the cost of A Force More Powerful is “up there with the cost to develop any type of game” -- around $4 million, she says.

“We’ve just hit the tip of the iceberg,” Tillet concludes. “The ability to fund and understand these opportunities is just starting.”

Kate Kaye has been covering online advertising for various trade publications for the past six years, and online political advertising for over two years. Kate is the author of ad and marketing commentary column, The Lowbrow Lowdown and punk rock-themed cookie cookbook, The Punk Rock Kitchen Presents Cookie Chaos!