Getting down to Serious Games: McDonald's Videogame

I shall use the McDonald's Videogame as a working example for the blog assignment on serious games...

The game is designed in such a manner that it seems to create an initial impression that players are presented with a lot of freedom which arises from the need in deciding on relatively trivial matters such as the number and locations of agricultural plots for cultivation of soy and pasture fields for rearing of cows to major matters such as bribing a politician, etc. These decisions or rather actions are bound to evoke some changes in the overall equilibrium that could be catogorized as short-term or long-term effects. Thus, this implies that there is not only a sense of local agency but more importantly, there is also a strong presence of global agency. More often than not, the earlier decisions made by the players would tend to return and haunt them at a later stage in the game, somewhat realizing what's meant by one reaps what one sows :p Hence, one could see that meaningful play could and does emerge from playing the McDonald's Videogame.

On the other hand in terms of sending a political message via the mechanics of the game - that is it is impossible for a fast food empire to substain growth in the long-run without succumbing to *ahhem* questionable/unethical means, I would think that the game is rather successful in this area for it becomes increasingly difficult to keep demand and supply in equilibrium, not to mention trying to keep everyone happy at all times :p

However on hindsight, the actual extent of influence by the game in effecting a change in the mindset of players is questionable. Previous studies have shown that media tend to have selective and minimal effects and in this context, a computer game such as McDonald's Videogame could be regarded as another medium to influence public opinion but the problem is could it and to what extent? Media has a tendency to reinforce what the audience already believed in rather than that of activation and convertion. Perhaps one could argue that role-playing by the player could be a key to persuasion but that would be subjective, depending on how "seriously" a player takes the game. Personally, even though I understand the message that the game is trying to portray, having it in the context of a game itself somewhat reduces the "seriousness" of it. In other words, it's not like playing the game is going change my mindset about patronising McDonald's in the future... I think these sentiments could be due to the fact that people are more accustomed to thinking games for entertainment purposes rather than serious issues? Well, for me at anyway...