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Video Game Designers Target Abortion Debate

By Gudrun Schultz

SAN JOSE, California, March 22, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a search for the most radical, challenging and unexpected topic available, video game designers have grabbed onto the abortion debate.

At the 2006 Games Developers Conference in San Jose this week, MTV News reported on the so-called “Serious Games,” ideas for video games that offer thought-provoking topics to engage players on a more intellectual level.

Wanting to make a game that would tackle something controversial, designer Ian Bogost picked on the issue of abortion.

“Let’s take on the most complicated, difficult problem that we could possible take on in contemporary American political discourse,” Bogost said, commenting on the initial decision. “We’ll make an abortion game.”

Bogost, who runs a design company called Persuasive Games and is an assistant professor at Georgia Tech, is working on an “abortion game” that will challenge the biases of the players and make them see opposing sides of the issue.

The game is still in the initial stages of development, and Bogost said a working prototype probably wouldn’t be available until next fall.

However, his preliminary computer sketches of the game show an incomplete understanding of arguments for protecting the unborn.

The foundational secular argument against abortion, that it is discrimination against the rights of the unborn child to kill it based on its age and size, is rarely, if ever understood by the casual observer of the abortion battle.

Neither are the arguments for the health of the mother, that look at the unmistakable links between abortion and breast cancer, and the mental, physical and psychological damage done to women through the experience of abortion.

The game would take players through a succession of mini-games on abortion-related scenarios, such as a teen motherhood storyline that would make the player balance the mother’s reputation with her friends, the baby’s health and the teen’s future earning power. Another sub-game set in a city led the gamer through the premise “What would the city look like if all forms of birth control were illegal?” A third story had the player searching a house to “find a condom.”

The one example given of a scenario defending life was a variant on the teen-motherhood game that would challenge pro-abortion players by emphasizing the value of adoption and the virtue of personal responsibility. The question of the child’s right to life was not addressed.

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