We’ve been talking about Lucas Pope a lot here at TheGamer over the past few weeks. I think every gaming website should mention the iconic indie auteur at least once a month, but we’ve taken that to the extreme. It’s mostly thanks to hisnew Playdate game, Mars After Midnight. My colleague Tessa Kaurthought about buying a Playdate just to play it, andI actually bit the bullet.
However, in doing so, I fell down a rabbit hole of old Lucas Pope games. I’m a huge fan ofReturn of the Obra Dinn(obviously) and Papers, Please (also obviously), but I ended up playing round after round ofThe Republia Times, a short game set in the same dystopian society as Papers, Please. It effectively tells a story through newspaper headlines alone, selling you on the world instantly and crafting an engaging narrative without characters or any real story.
Just weeks after I discovered The Republia Times, someone has remade it. Not just someone, Paolo Pedercini. If you don’t know Pedercini, he’s a prolific developer who makes highly political games and releases them for free. From 2004’s Queer Power and 2005’s McDonald’s Video Game, to more recent games like Democratic Socialism Simulator and Green New Deal Simulator (with hits like Phone Story and The Best Amendment along the way – seriously, Google them all), Pedercini has been at the forefront of political gaming.
Pedercini’s games are never shy. They shed light on terrible industry practices, are often inspired by real-world tragedies, and aren’t afraid to interrogate his own ideals.The New York Times Simulator, which Pedercini says is “basically a remake [of The Republia Times] that replaces totalitarian censorship with the ‘propaganda model’ of Western corporate media, as described inManufacturing Consent.”
If you thought referencing Chomsky was as political as this was going to get, strap yourself in. Most of the headlines in The New York Times Simulator are not made up, they’re actual headlines ripped from the paper. Some are even edited in the exact same way as the paper hasedited its headlinesin order to obfuscate stories or change the angle.
“The NYT Simulator is literally ‘ripped from the headlines’ in that it uses mostly real titles (and even actual edits) from the NYT and other mainstream media,” Pedercini explains on the social media site formerly known as Twitter. “I originally wanted to make parody headlines but I just couldn’t come up with anything more contrived…”
Histhreadgives examples of headline changes he has found, but the best way to understand the game is by playing it yourself. you’re able to see in real-time how changes of wording can affect not only the sentiment and angle of your headline, but also how it appeases the various powers that be.
This is where The New York Times Simulator expands upon The Republia Times. It shows you how using the passive voice to describe killings can impact your readership, how you’re able to spin a story in multiple different ways, and what effects these uses of language have. It’s as much a (much-needed) lesson in media studies as it is an opportunity to take control of the New York Times for ten minutes at a time. And that’s the whole point.
“Whether you play the game ‘cynically’ or try to do your best without getting fired, I’m hoping this game can train people to quickly identify common spinning and framing techniques like the infamous passive voice, weasel words, or biased euphemisms,” Pedercini explains.
Rooted in real-life conflict, The New York Times Simulator teaches a valuable lesson without ever coming across as ‘preachy’. Its gamified lesson is a perfect example of how video games can show truth to power, how complex problems with the media can be broken down and explained simply, and what games should aspire to be. Not every game needs to reflect on the latest global atrocity, but I would have vastly preferredCyberpunk 2077if it had interrogated the police’s role in Night City, or whether you still kept hold of your personhood after filling your body with cybernetics. Put simply, I want my games to say something. The New York Times Simulator says a lot.
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