War on Evil
interactive, Fall 2006
Graduate Studio I: Bethany Johns, Matthew Monk
Tags: aggrandizement, asshattery, celebrity, cynicism, irony, mock-heroic, politics, pop culture, sass, snark
Overview
- A reminder that good and evil are subjective, and if all evil is to be purged from the world as President Bush suggests, anyone could be next.
- A dynamic, database-driven Flash game.
Process
This project began at Brown University’s John Hay library, where I spent a few days pouring through their massive occult collection – and became interested in juxtaposing antiquated apocalyptic imagery and language with current affairs.
I noted a correlation between the fear-mongering of witch-hunters and doomsday prophets from centuries past and the Bush Administration’s rhetoric promoting the War on Terror – specifically the concept of drawing a line between all that is good and evil in the world.
Form
So this is a ridiculous game to illustrate the ridiculousness of the President’s rhetoric. Festive game show music and animations draw the user into the game, just as hyperbole and patriotic fervor drew support for the war. Players “help” President Bush from his unending task to purge evil from the world by choosing between two random items selected from a database of close to 300 people, places, things and concepts.
I developed the database from the eighty or so responses I received from a survey distributed to friends, family, and various Internet discussion groups. I tried to do my best to collect data from people from a variety of political leanings and ages. The survey was mostly open-ended, but there was a lot of overlap in the responses I received – which was a good thing, because it allowed me to weight popular responses higher or lower depending on how people felt about them. (Eg., Mother Teresa ended up with a very high score, Hitler had a negative score.)
The game starts out easy: with a choice between a selection with a very high score opposed to a selection with very low score. After a few turns, the game begins to force the player to make potentially uncomfortable decisions by presenting two selections that are both weighted either very low, very high or very neutral; so that he or she has to save the lesser of two evils, condemn the lesser of two goods, or make a choice about something he or she might not have any particular feelings about one way or the other.
Of course, the difficulty of the choices is all completely dependent on the player’s personal opinion and how close it is to those that played before.
Play
Play War on Evil. (Flash 8 player required. Please turn your volume on.)
