For a few hours on Thursday October 15th, the news was enraptured by a single story: a hot air balloon carrying a six-year-old boy had become untethered and was floating over Colorado. It had all the elements of a human interest story: a child in peril, a grief-stricken family, a catchy name. Falcon Heene, better known as "Balloon Boy" was the single subject of cable news, news websites, and the Twitter trending topic list. It was the "Baby Jessica" of 2009. Some held their breath, praying for the safe landing of the airborn kid, while others joked at the seemingly improbable situation. As it played out, those who laughed first indeed laughed last.
It is not surprisingly that two games quickly appeared related to Balloon Boy's story. But to understand the shape they have taken, it is worth recounting how the event unfolded in the media.
The story played out as such: The balloon touches down with no child inside, authorities fear the worse as the box carrying the child may have fallen off in flight, the boy comes out of his hiding place in the attic and claims he hid because he was afraid of getting in trouble. The world breathes a collective sigh of relief and frustration; yes Falcon was safe, but for all the effort the media exerted people were hoping for a more "interesting" ending. In the end, it appeared that hours were wasted merely following a floating Jiffypop pan.
But, as you know, this is where the story gets interesting! You see, this was not the family's first television appearance. As most major news sources pointed out, the Heene's had been participants on the television series Wife Swap, starring in the show's 100th episode (I did not know this show existed, much less imagine there were this many episodes). Originally cynics, such as myself, wrote off this factoid as the news media's desperate attempt at relevance, and the pathetic nature of said relevance. Little did we know that this would end up being the key to the story: the whole event may have been a publicity stunt.
The hoax was accidentally divulged by Falcon himself, too young to understand that you don't actually have to say anything of substance while on Larry King Live. TMZ spread the clip of Falcon admitting to fill-in host Wolf Blitzer that his parents said "we did this for the show." Whoops. An investigation has commenced and the story has remained in the headlines. Assuming father Richard Heene doesn't serve jail time for "contributing to the deliquency of a minor" or "wasting our precious time," the whole thing is win-win for the family.
So where does this fit in the world of newsgames? That's precisely the question at hand. Was the story actually news? Was the real news that the news was not really news? And now that the not-news is news because it was on the news, the news is interested in the news again. You see what I'm saying.
There are many possible angles: the actual event itself, the coverage of the event, the hoax, the wife-swapping... And yet, so far, the reaction of a few fast-coding programmers has been the kind of terrible side-scrolling shooter we might expect. They're tabloid games in every regard except that the headlines it draws from were in the national news.
In Balloon Boy Adventure the silver balloon follows the mouse cursor, while a mouse-click shoots vomit from the balloon at the barrage of birds who threaten to bring the ship down. The puking balloon is a reference to Falcon Heene's appearance on Good Morning America, in which the boy became ill on camera. Score is kept through the recently Canabalt re-popularized distance meter. And that is literally everything the game offers.
The other game comes courtesy of the quickly-registered domain balloonboygame.com. "How Many $$$ of Tax Payer Money Can You Waste?" asks Ballon Boy Game's tagline. The answer to said question is completely inconsequential and there's no indication of the relationship between playing and the dollar amount "score" at the top of the website. Much like the Balloon Boy Adventure, the game is a side-scrolling shooter where a kid dangling from a balloon must shoot down seagulls, fire at rainbows, and collect time-bonuses to achieve a high score. If you're asking yourself, "whaaaa???" you're not alone. Additionally, the game is broken. Fired projectiles disappear when a new instance is created, the collision detection is atrocious, and the game can't decide whether its reset mechanic is time or health based.
So what kind of game might we have imagined this story would produce? Perhaps a game about media coverage, in which you play as Richard Heene doing everything in your power to string along news reporters as long as possible. Or maybe it would be a stealth game where you play as the boy, avoiding the search teams around the house while playing with your toys. Perhaps you take the "waste the tax payer money" tagline seriously.
Yet, I am tempted to say that these two games are perfect. Don't get me wrong, they're both bad cash-ins on the story of the day. And while I cringe every time I press "Play" on these Flash games, part of me wonders if there's any other form they can take. It is as if, for all their flaws, they are precisely the output the whole media frenzy demands. They're ripped from the headlines, are low quality, their rules and goals have absolutely nothing to do with the story itself, and they demand little from their audiences.As Balloon Boy is concerned, I feel comfortable saying that we should not reach for the stars, but that 60 miles downwind suffices.
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