As ordinary citizens come of age, well-versed in the idioms and genres of digital gameplay, independent games with relatively simple graphics and coding requirements are becoming an attractive vehicle for political messages. Still, we are only beginning to forge an understanding of how so-called Games for Change both serve and fall short as activist tools, as a rhetorical, communicative medium available to concerned game designers hoping to support causes such as environmentalism through a game like Climate Defense, to promote awareness of police abuse of African Americans with &Theymightnotkillyou, or to portray conditions in a French refugee camp in Heroic Makers vs. Heroic Land.

In this chapter, I will focus on evaluating two primary approaches. First, what I refer to as the activist simulation game, and then I will look at a more empathetic genre of activist game that I call the harrowing mission. Looking at key activist games developed over the last couple decades, my critique is not intended to denigrate the laudable efforts of early pioneers of the medium, but to learn even from the mistakes of game-makers whose message or critique is somehow lost to the game. In so doing, I will rehearse an academic approach to games as a persuasive rhetorical medium that has primarily focused on the benefits of procedural computing and simulation. I then turn to more philosophical sources for critiquing game procedurality, which leads me to identifying a handy trick I call the broken toy tactic.

The Toy World System

Toy trains circle through a 1:25 scale model of traditional Dutch buildings and landmarks in the miniature city of Madurodam. Miniature cargo ships float along canals and toy delivery trucks loop around a peripheral freeway. These vehicle circulations follow a reliable daily schedule ever since the tourist attraction was constructed in 1952 as a memorial to George Maduro, a young Jewish member of the Dutch Nazi resistance. On travel blogs, visitors remark on the ‘punctuality’ of the miniature city's transportation, recalling their childhood fascination with the ‘moving parts’ of Madurodam's toy vehicles. Despite the vacant artificiality of the setting, the frozen-in-place postures of Madurodam's doll-citizens, and the peculiar conglomeration of national landmarks in one Disney-like city, young and old delight in the liveliness of the toy city.