Osama Bin Laden Fragged2: Grassroots Efforts And The Poorly Distributed

War on Americas is a small downloadable PC game that bills itself as "designed for Children to Fight the U.S. Army." A brief segment of gameplay footage can be found on YouTube, and GamePolitics recently ran a narrative on the title.

Sadly, Quest For Bush was the standout among the games I tested. The giant majority of the other propaganda-driven games that I found were detestable. Most were buggy, broken, and usually unplayable. Few were worth the time, hard work, and bandwidth it took to procure them, and most were simple rush job mods that did small to differentiate themselves in an already crowded gambling market. such example was War on Americas.

This is the lowest level, and by far, most common type of "propaganda gambling," in case you will, and it falls in line with what most grassroots efforts are. War on Americas is fundamentally what is known as a "sprite-hack." A regular commercial title is taken and modified at a rudimentary level by replacing its art assets. In the case of this game, a number of the vehicle sprites have been changed, and the title screens, mission screens, and a few GUI elements have been modified.

As a number of you may notice from the screenshot below, the original game behind War on Americas is actually Heavy Weapon, a PopCap Games title that has enjoyed relative success. The unmodified game can be played on various game portals around the world wide web, and even on the Xbox 360 by Xbox Live Arcade. In every way, the modified game is virtually identical: the only difference is that there's a few ugly white blocks flying around the levels.

 

Because the game is a mere sprite-hack, there wasn't much work done by the group who modified the title. The few substituted sprites do nothing to change the core gameplay, which involves a harmless bout of side-scrolling shooter action. Furthermore, the cartoon vibe of the original game persists even in spite of the sprite-hacking. This is largely a result of the fact that the inserted sprites do not properly use alpha transparency: in case you refer to the video, you'll see giant white blocks flying by with images of planes within them.

As far as propaganda games go, War on Americas is a game that is playable solely because the underlying game the that has been so clearly ripped off is fun. This is the lowest of the low, and it is hard to imagine how the title could be anything other than an affordable ploy for attention.
 

Rescue The Nuke Scientist
There was game that I consciously set out to find because it actually received a little bit of mainstream press, and this exposure may have hurt my chances of finding it. The game is called Rescue the Nuke Scientist, and I am still looking for it. Unlike the huge majority of these games, RTNS has actual production values; the game was designed with the intent of being a commercial-caliber title. In a positive sense, RTNS is the Metal Gear Solid two, the Halo two, the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess of terrorist games. I basically must have it.

Nevertheless, my search for the game soldiers on, even if it appears to be a futile hard work. Few of the games that I was four times able to finding are as high profile as Rescue the Nuke Scientist, & this is game that I still must play. Ought to somebody have or know where to discover a duplicate of the title, don't hesitate to let me know.

Quest for terror

This would be the game that would truly rival America's Army in terms of scale & scope, but despite all the torrents I downloaded & newsgroups I searched, I could never discover a working download for it. The game, designed by the Union of Students Islamic Association over the work of years, was put out to counteract the Western bias of war games where the enemy is perpetually non-American it's part of what the group calls an ongoing "cyber war." In the game, the player is an Iranian soldier seeking to rescue Iranian nuclear specialists who were kidnapped by U.S. forces. The game was designed in response to an American-made game called Assault on Iran that featured very the exact same situation, but in reverse.

With the exception of Rescue the Nuke Scientist, I am confident in saying that I have seen a fair sampling of the terrorist propaganda games that are currently on offer. Nevertheless, I am continuing my search for more of them, & I welcome readers to send me leads on other titles. It is fascinating as a game reviewer to play games that don't fall in either the "mainstream" or "indie" camps, & yet wind up still being entrenched in the industry's norms.

It took me a few weeks of research to actually locate the kind of game-related propaganda that are in use outside of North The united states. Such games were often discussed quietly in the world wide web forums I frequent, but the quest to actually find & play them proved brilliantly difficult. The challenge of finding genuine "propaganda" is increased by the fact that it is hard to select the true origins of any title was it made by terrorists, or is it a joke? However, the games discussed in this article have been widely confirmed as legitimate examples of violent, jihadist, anti-US propaganda.

The debate about whether video games are art has become increasingly prominent historically few years, & that debate casts a sizable shadow that looms over the topic of propaganda games in general. Insofar as games can be a simple medium for entertainment, they have already proven capable vehicles for expressing emotion, telling tales, reciting history, & everything in between key aspects of any piece of art (in my non-art-critic opinion). & like other art forms, nowhere is that emotional connection more palpable than in a piece of propaganda. Given the unmatched immersion offered by games, it is brilliantly simple to sink the user in to a situation & slowly pass along a message.

Terrorists are not the only ones who employ games for propaganda purposes. Witness, for example, America's Army, the free game designed by the U.S. Army to attract youth to serve in the military. There is no hidden agenda with this game; its intent is clear, & it's served its purpose well that the Army has continued to pour money in to it as both a pseudo-advertisement as well as a training tool. There is as well as a plethora of smaller-scale games, such as MiniClip's SpecOps: War on Terror, which can have the same effect.

But I leave it to you to debate the merits of whether or not games are effective when used as propaganda. In the mean time, I'll continue to search out these games & try them. If you are looking to do the same, I recommend you do as I did & hit Google. Admittedly, my Google search logs for the last month must look like a database of the "red flag" terms that will get me detained at the airport the next time I attempt to go to the States.