Consider a new game Packaging Man, which its creators bill as follows:

If you play the game, you'll see that it is a straightforward Pac-Man clone, with a few colors changed. An animated introduction is the only aspect of the work that attaches the theme to the gameplay. It's not even a re-skin; it's just Pac-Man with a bizarre intro.

I get a lot of emails about games various groups have made and want to promote. While I don't really enjoy the press release spam requests, many of these emails are much more directed, from individuals who have thought more deliberately about why our readers might be interested in their game. But then, so often, the games are so forgettable and meaningless, I don't know what to do with the requests. Usually I pen a short, derisive post. I don't really enjoy doing this--I'd much rather share interesting examples of the medium.

So when I received creator Dogwood Alliance's announcement I took them up on their offer to answer questions. Explain to me, I asked as nicely as I'm probably capable of, how your game, a straight port of Pac-Man with some colors changed, represents "saving forest creatures by collecting excessive packaging and recycling it?" They were kind enough to reply, citing the opening sequence and the end-of level "call to action" petition. They also pointed me to environmental blog Gristmill's mention of the game, which generally mirrors my opinion. So many missed opportunities. I may have built a reputation for taking pleasure from negative reviews of serious games, but I'd really much rather write positive ones. I just never seem to get the opportunity to do so.

Why couldn't Packaging Man actually be about the ways fast food packaging makes its way to forests such that it disrupts the environment of woodland creatures? If you read Doogwood's webpage on the topic, you'll learn that the southern U.S. forests are still the world's largest paper source, and that 25% of logging mill output goes to paper packaging products. That's a pretty amazing figure, one I bet most people don't fully grasp. Dogwood also claims that if only a few sectors used post-consumer recycled materials, "substantial" environmental benefits would ensue.

There are at least a few potentially interesting, thematically connected games one could draw from this description alone. One might be about working a southern paper mill and processing facility, which would give a more concrete sense of the types of output of logging and how woodlands might change if the packaging portion were reduced or eliminated. Another might be about more credible processes consumers can use for recycling paper materials. Yet another might deal with the economic and social tradeoffs of consumer packaged goods companies as they weigh using recycled paper in packaging products. I'm sure there are more. Making such games would be a lot harder than re-releasing Pac-Man, to be sure. But if the two pages of text on a webpage offers so much more rich and subtle information than a game, then why bother with the game?

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For some reason, it was possible to select then-White House occupants Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, or Al Gore as players in NBA Jam Tournament Edition for SNES.

The White House routinely issues cease and desist notices for using the President's likeness for marketing, but this wasn't exactly marketing, exactly. One of the features of NBA Jam TE were hidden characters from outside of sports, including Will Smith, the Beastie Boys, and Prince Charles. It's unclear to me what if any likeness reproduction rights Acclaim acquired for these characters back in the early 1990s. I'd love to know.

(Thanks to Dakota)

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San Francisco artist Chris Basmajian has created Attention Hog, A casual game about attention-driven social network culture. In Basmajian's words, "the game reflects some of the social and psychological trends present in social-networking communities. Eating its own hog feed, the game also offers extensive (almost 20) automated social network integrations, from Bebo to Xanga.

In the game, the player pilots a cute pig toward people wandering around. If they face you for enough time, a heart fills up and turns gold, earning points. Each level has a target, and failing to meet it ends the game. Power-ups that improve your attention-getting powers are offered each level. There is also bacon, something that should find its way into more games.

I feel like the "hog" metaphor is apt, and the game does partly capture the process of looking for people to look at you as rapidly and thoughtlessly as possible, which I think the author wanted to capture most. What's missing is the sense of needing to continue to tend to, or be subjected by, these so-called "relationships" constantly. It's a cute, simple account, and I'm happy to see a game that critiques today's attention culture, but I'm not sure Attention Hog reaches the level promised in the description, to address "self-promotion, social anxiety, obsessive need for peer validation, and distraction as entertainment."

(thanks to Jason, and to Chris for additional discussion)

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Our readers probably know well my interest, even obsession, with both the Atari VCS and licensed games. As Nick and I put the final touches on our forthcoming book on the Atari, I've been doing a lot of final fact confirmation online. In the process of doing so this weekend I fell upon some of the best ideas that, alas, never really were for the system, thanks to the Van Gogh-Gogh's comedy site.

The first: Interactive 8-tracks! We've discussed music-game tie ins before (1, 2), but nothing compares to the concept of a double-ender 8-track/Atari VCS game. The fake ad for Foghat's "Slow Ride" game, at top right, is unreasonably credible, and might even make a decent game. Other suggested 8-track arcade titles include Kansas's "Dust in the Wind" game and Rush's "Geddy Lee's Pancake Canoe," in which "the player is Geddy Lee, riding a pancake canoe down a syrup creek, trying to get the best time while avoiding forks and butter pats downstream."

The second: a wealth of would-be Atari film/tv licenses and adaptations. Some charmers: Free the Falklands (which allows me to tick the "political games" box for this entry), the sitcom tie-in Bosom Buddies, Kramer vs. Kramer ("played in a court rather than on one"), and a game that I might be accused of making, Hands Across America, pictured at right.

A lot of these mocked-up screens might look credible to the untrained eye, but those familiar with the Atari VCS's unique graphics system will immediately see clear traces of fakery. For example, the sprites in Hands Across America have the horizontal striping associated with the VCS's scan line-oriented graphics, while the Union Jack in Free the Falklands would be darn near impossible to create. That said, nothing in the description attributes the Falklands game to the Atari VCS specifically, and the rest of the screens much more closely match the graphical constraints of the machine than many other fakes.

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If you own an Xbox 360, it is imperative that you go buy Jonathan Blow's newly released game Braid immediately. There are lots of good reasons to do this, for example, the game is unique, beautiful, subtly meaningful, and important. But if that's not convincing, or you think it's not your style, or whatever other excuse might come to mind, I'll give you a more fundamental reason: Jon has spent the last couple years working on the game, practically alone (David Hellman composed the terrific evocative art for the game), and its important to support that sort of creativity and persistence in our medium. I'll write something more substantial about Braid soon enough. For now, you can catch up on news and reviews via the Braid blog.

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Ack. Check out the Race Against Global Poverty Game. According to its sponsors, the game is supposed give "children living in the UK the chance to learn about the developing world in a fun and stimulating way." I wonder what went wrong here. It's a graphically lush simulated board game with cute, carefully crafted horse-type creatures as tokens, but the game is just trivia, and there's no sound, and its neither fun nor stimulating, but rather insipid.

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To promote Universal Pictures' new film The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the studio created an advergame, Chariot Chase Down Game. Go ahead and play it. It's almost as good as the film, which garnered an impressive 9% on Rotten Tomatoes.

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The 1975 film Death Race 2000 inspired the 1976 arcade game Death Race, by Exidy. In the game, players tried to run over abstract figures meant to represent "gremlins" with an equally abstract car. The game sparked the first major media controversy around videogames and violence.

In three weeks, Universal will release a remake of the film. The studio surely knows about the game, so it's interesting to note that the official website offers two links: Watch the Trailer and Play the Game. The game in question is an advergame intended to promote the film, one that has little to do with the 1976 arcade cabinet. Instead, it's a top-down combat racing game, reminiscent of the 1996 title Death Rally (although not nearly as complex, nor as good). Interestingly, according to Moby Games one of the working titles of Death Rally was, in fact, Death Race.

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The Jerusalem Post has published a very negative, dismissive review of Serious Games Interactive's Global Conflicts: Palestine. Apart from noting that the paper does game reviews, at least when the topic is close to home, it's fascinating to see how a "local" player reacts to the game's "global" framing:

The review is short and I'm giving too much away, but the closing line seems to utterly miss the point of a game about this conflict or any other: "If you really want to learn about the Arab-Israeli crisis, come and spend at least a few weeks in Jerusalem." The reviewer doesn't offer much more definitive praise for ImpactGames' Peacemaker despite measuring Global Conflicts "far below" it.

Do we have here a fair evaluation of the product, or an appeal to the old standby of ineffability, whereby no game (movie, book, poem) could ever address the problem sufficiently, so none ought be attempted at all?

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Here's an interesting advergame for the home solar system manufacturer Sungevity. The game is Solar SFUN, and it takes two forms. The first is a trivia game of the usual variety. The second is a Tetris-like puzzle game, in which you try to cover a roof with solar panels.

The games are simple, but there's an interesting feature at work. By playing successfully, you can earn up to $100 off an installation of home solar panels (sorry, California residents only). Or you can transfer the value, or have Sungevity donate 1% of it to an environmental charity. Getting the full $100 discount actually takes some time -- you have to play (well!) for more than a handful of levels to reach the threshold. Things get harder as you progress, so it's not a foregone conclusion that all players will be able to reap the full reward (although you can cash in a partial reward along the way).

You might call this sort of thing coupongaming. The gameplay functions as advertising and, in the case of the trivia game, nominally as education, but it's real purpose is to inspire a purchase by means of a discount. It's a special type of the genre I've previously called promogames. I'm not sure if I've seen any prior examples of games that literally are coupons. Anyone have other examples?

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