It is a hard question, of course, because this movement is the opposite of escapism. People are discovering that it is more satisfying to get into the street and eat with to strangers than to use facebook. But games are more than a distraction. Games are part of how we live. They can spread the word, warm the blood, and perhaps even spread skills that people need to keep this movement going.
It seems short sighted to say that indie-game designers, already used to making great games outside of and against the monopolistic game corporations, could do nothing.
it's possible to learn people skills whit games. but what skills do you want the players to get? what do they have to learn to be succesfull in real life whit it.
compleeting a game is usely easyer then doing it in real life. because games have 1 - 2 maybe 3 ways to end. and always the same things happen in a game.
it will be realy hard to develop a (succesfull) game that can teach people skill to be succelfull in their protest in real life. and developing the game will probably take longer then the actual protest.
I claim that advertising for corporations in game is immoral because the majority of the corporations advertised in games employ sweatshop labor practices, use manufacturing methods that are damaging to the Earth, and employ aggressive lobbying to protect these practices (Pepsi Invaders, made by Coca-Cola serves as an example for all of these). And yes, the large game companies are also amenable to each of these critiques, and in many cases might also be criticized for unjust prohibition of homebrew gaming creativity and vicious attacks on fan-game designers.
I need to do more research on sweatshops, so some of my points could be flawed.
Areas that allow sweatshops tend to be areas with poor working conditions in general. If you shut down all the sweatshops in a 3rd world country, chances are all the people will find new jobs that are even dirtier, harder, and more dangerous than sewing together shoes, such as cutting timber, farming by hand, scrounging through trash looking for rare metals, and so on.
It is a shame that companies would rather rely on sweatshops to keep their prices down as a way of keeping products cheap for Americans. But, consider this, if big companies stopped using sweatshops in 3rd world countries and were forced to pay Americans a decent wage to make the same products, which would increase the prices of the products to compensate, then the people who were working in the sweatshops would be out of work. As I said earlier, their other alternatives aren't any better than sweatshops, and in many cases are worse. So, abolishing sweatshops would cause people in 3rd world countries to lose their jobs; those who can't find work would have an even harder time affording their basic needs while those who could find work would more than likely find an even crappier job that pays even less than the sweatshops.
Again, I haven't done much research on sweatshops. I suppose I should when I have better internet connection.
use manufacturing methods that are damaging to the Earth, and employ aggressive lobbying to protect these practices (Pepsi Invaders, made by Coca-Cola serves as an example for all of these). And yes, the large game companies are also amenable to each of these critiques, and in many cases might also be criticized for unjust prohibition of homebrew gaming creativity and vicious attacks on fan-game designers.
I can't really argue against these points, because these are some problems that should be tackled. I'm sure, however, that my philosophies on how to solve these problems would greatly differ from yours.
I'm thinking that the issues, although real, should be approached in a different way.
