Serious video game adds new fire and a face to the heated debate about U.S. immigration policies.

by Micheal Mullen on Monday, February 18, 2008

While the 2008 political debate has focused on many issues that face American society, the issue of immigration is one that truly has divided many voters. Rather than delve into lobbying a particular position, Breatkthrough, an international human rights organization released a free video game today called ICED that hopes to inform people about U.S. immigration practices that target legal permanent residents, asylum seekers, students and undocumented people.

The game's name, I Can End Deportation, is a play on the acronym for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department. It attempts to take the complex issues of deportation and make it familiar to gamers and others who want to get a different perspective on the immigration debate. Broken up into two parts, one of five characters start off in a city where they answer fact or myth questions, explore the world, find situations where they need to make moral decisions and earn civic points that help them avoid immigration officers. If they're caught, they're sent to a detention center where they may face solitary confinement, as they wait for formal proceedings to determine the game's four outcomes: deportation, indefinite detention, voluntary deportation or citizenship.

"Close to two million people have been deported and thousands more affected -- many without just cause -- due to unfair immigration policies," said Breakthrough Executive Director Mallika Dutt. "When we let the government deny due process and human rights for some people, we're putting all of our freedoms at risk."

The game itself was created as a collaborative project with Breakthrough, several community-based organizations, high school teachers and over 100 high school students in New York City. Designed by Heidi Boisvert and Natalia Rodriguez, two MFA students from Hunter College and Brooklyn College respectively.

"ICED was designed to show people in an interactive, first-hand experience what is happening today to thousands of people on a daily basis," said game designer, Heidi Boisvert. "We hope through awareness of these human rights violations, the public will take action and work toward righting this wrong."

The download for the complete game weighs in at 74 MB for Windows and a version for Mac comes in at 84 MB and takes roughly 15-45 minutes to play. Regardless of your opinion regarding the current immigration debate, ICED is worthy of discovering that immigration, while viewed as a current political issue, is always about a person first.

On Friday, GameDaily BIZ had a chance to talk to ICED designer Heidi Boisvert and Breakthrough Executive Director Mallika Dutt about the game, its goals and why you should play.

GameDaily BIZ: So I think that the first question one would ask is, while there are so few games that focus on serious topics and with Breakthrough making a social statement with the release of ICED you've acted, how do you hope gamers will react?

Heidi Boisvert: Games for Change is an emergent field, somewhat like documentaries in the '60s, which have only recently seen a rise in mainstream viewership. So, I hope, therefore, that gamers will witness the potential for infusing social and political content into their future commercial products. Games are a great vehicle for exploring complex issues, and engaging young audiences, and gamers, in a dialogue around a given subject, and for inciting a paradigm shift.

To read the full interview, click HERE.