How evil am I?

After the lecture on Thursday I decided to try a bunch of the games mentioned. As Kevin pointed out many of the PETA games were not so persuasive, more 'shove ideology down your throat' with a ludic setting. September 12 was a interesting game, it had a point it made, but the game play was essentially a trick, and so not actually entertaining. The game I felt worked best as a persuasive game was sweatshop. It uses tower defense games as a basis for its gameplay, but switches to of humans instead of towers, and clothes instead of enimies. However, how you treat your ' human towers' is also an important part of the game, and where the persuasion comes into effect.

In my play through I was attempting to be the benevolent boss, hiring plenty of workers, keeping them well fed (well energized with the drinks) and avoiding hiring child labour. You know, being a nice guy in general. In fact I was happy to lose out the bonus for time, as I hardly ever sped up the conveyor. I was happy to take penalties for not having loads of cash. I still managed to get silvers till level 17 being the nicest guy EVER.

I was even when I thought I paused the game, looked away at something else, and returned to find I had let one of my workers get into the countdown to death. Unfortunately too little time remained to save them and they died right in front of me. It was not cool. I felt bad.

However when I started getting bronze scores I became less nice, often allowing workers to be out of energy for longer periods of time, have sections of unsafe work space, and when the order was running lower, I would speed it up, or allow the workers to get tired until the round ended rather than replenishing them.

I haven't quite finished the game yet (a few levels off) but I imagine my slippery slope will lead to mass genocide at some point very soon.