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Government Using Computer Games To Improve Foreign Relations?
Posted by Pile
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[Entertainment] |
 Apparently having exhausted every other medium to improve its reputation among the rest of the world, the Unites States State Department is now blowing taxpayer money on projects involving the development of massive online computer games designed to promote improved foreign relations and public diplomacy.
The Public Diplomacy and Virtual Worlds project is a research project examining one aspect of new technology and public diplomacy: the role of video games, specifically Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), in public diplomacy.
Have any of these officials actually ever played online multiplayer games? How much diplomacy do you typically see in Halo, Unreal Tournament, Everquest or World of Warcraft? Maybe they should pick some other industry to infiltrate first that might prove more successful, like maybe the Nazi party or Fred Phelps church? |
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While critics contend that violent video games can turn kids into tiny terrors, some government agencies and nonprofit groups want to harness the joystick to help churn out model citizens.
To that end, competitions are under way that are designed to achieve such diverse goals as boosting America's profile overseas and drawing attention to genocide in Sudan.
The State Department teamed up with the USC Annenberg School for Communication to sponsor the Reinventing Public Diplomacy Through Games Competition, which seeks to improve America's reputation abroad.
Contestants must employ the principles of "public diplomacy" while cooking up a video-game concept from scratch or creating an original "mod" of an existing massively multiplayer online game, or MMO. The winner, who will receive a $5,000 prize, will be announced in May.
"Public diplomacy must move away from a model that has been dominated by notions of propaganda, so we are looking to virtual worlds and games as a space where people can build something productive and focus on the experience of learning, interaction and play, rather than passively absorb messages," said Douglas Thomas, an associate professor of communication at USC. |
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