(This post was prepared by Tanyoung Kim and Bobby Schweizer)
The iPhone has proven itself a viable platform for small game producers. Its technical capabilities serve most non-3D needs, it isn't overly complicated to develop for, and there is a plan for monetization that does not need to rely on the promises of advertising dollars. It should come as no surprise, then, that the kinds of Flash games we're all familiar with have moved onto a handheld device. This includes those that touch on hot-button issues and current events.
As one of the biggest events in the country in the couple of years, the government's bailout of the financial industry has made its way into ten iPhone games. There's Bailout Bandits, in which you play as the police capturing bankers floating down from a high rise with their golden parachutes. There's Bailout!, a spreadsheet-like financial simulation game. Bailout Ben has you piloting a helicopter, dropping money on bar charts to aid corporations in need. Bailout America is a Lemmings-style game. Bailout Bonanza is basically Activision's classic Kaboom.
Two games in particular, though, embrace a similar cartoon aesthetic whose roots can be traced back to the editorial cartoon.
Both Bailout Wars and Bailout: The Golden Parachute evoke editorial cartoons with their comically exaggerated images and use of less-than-subtle metaphor. But though they have aesthetic similarities, their mechanics could not be further apart. 'Bailout Wars' has the mechanics of typical castle defense game in which an onslaught of enemies must be kept at bay by the touch controls of flicking, throwing, and squashing. Bailout: TGP, however, puts the player in the position of a government aircraft dropping bankers from the sky onto the safety of the mattress-topped cars below.
To address the questions of aesthetics and mechanics, we have to ask how these games are related to print editorial cartoons and to what effect are they being used?
Like a political cartoon, each of the games takes place in what can be considered a single-panel. Bailout Wars has a static background and the entities move within the limited area. Bailout: TGP has a scrolling background of banal American scenery (desert, suburbs, ), but they are only used to the effect of animating the travel of the car and plane. Single-panel political cartoons have a tradition of its layout that consists of main entities, background, and textual messages. The number of main entities in the cartoons does not usually exceed two.
As a point of comparison, we have found two repositories of bailout cartoons: those assembled by Daryl Cagle of MSNBC and a forum thread on the Democratic Underground website. The images drawn in the frame are strategically selected to reflect not only the beliefs, attitudes, and values of their creators, but those of the society at large (Edwards and Winkler, 1997). By employing these vivid images, cartoonists enforce their critical and sarcastic opinions.
A handful of references comprise most of the cartoons: fat business men in suits, Uncle Sam doling out money, the "common man" overwhelmed by the bailout's cost, references to jumping from buildings (and being saved by stacks of money, golden parachutes, the general populaiton), and sinking/sunk ships. In editorial cartoons, when two entities are presented, each entity is labeled and the messages are often displayed in balloons or boxes as a conversation between them. The labeling in Bailout Wars is done in the tutorial, which explains the different banker types, while the singular banker in Bailout: TGP requires no labeling.
Bailout Wars and Bailout: TGP each rely on a number of these references. In Bailout Wars, the White House stands in for the government in general and the bailout money is stacked between the columns of the White House. Soldiers on the sides and roof of the White House defend the evil bankers who try to steal the money. Clad in expensive suits, there are five enemy types: the bankers with their smarmy grin, the VPs of Acquisition equipped with vacuums which quickly drain the bailout funds, the persistent stock broker with their briefcases at the ready, the high risk investors piloting helicopters, and the gigantic impenetrable CEO. Besides direct touch manipulation, the player can also enlist snipers, tanks, and Uncle Sam to protect the steps of the White House.
Bailout Wars successfully utilizes the symbols of political cartoons in the representation of the governmental body and exaggeratedly greedy bankers. Like Bailout: TGP, it has good production values in graphics and muic. The gameplay, consisting of frantic swiping, poking, and touching is itself is fun too. However, the goal of the game--defend the White House at all costs--does not correctly reflect the situation as we would imagine a traditional political cartoon would. Instead, it uses the medium of the game to do something the well-established editorial cartoon cannot: let the player embody a position of fantasy.
Bailout: TGP does not use the same kind of exaggerated imagery. Instead, it uses a paper cut-out aesthetic. The player controls the military-transport looking airplane at the top of the screen, while the cars with mattresses strapped to their roofs move across the bottom. The falling bankers are abstracted black-and-white figures holding briefcases over their heads. Passing clouds slow the fall of the banker, though they serve no apparent symbolic purpose.
Of course, it is not merely that these objects are included or arranged in the frame, but that they have dynamic relationships. Most pairs of the entities fall in to the following two categories: (1) companies that need bailout money and the governmental institutions, and (2) the companies taking the bailout imposing on the taxpaying population.
Bailout: TGP sends mixed messages, as can be seen in its multiple readings. Because you play as the plane, it can be assumed that you take on the role of the government looking to soften the blow of the economic collapse by placing the burden on the taxpayers. But unlike the political cartoons, there is no indication of this burden in the game.
If the player lands a banker on the roof of a passing car, the car continues as if nothing had happened. Whether or not you believe the bailout was necessary for the stability of the economy, you are probably not excited about sharing the load. The game's mechanics, then, seem to support not only the bailout but the population's role in lending a helping hand. Perhaps if upon catching a banker, the cars morphed from new to run-down, the effect would have been clearer and the editorial stance stronger.
These games work as iPhone games because they're bite-sized, have distinct visual styles that do not tax the iPhone's hardware, and can be produced relatively quickly (even if the iPhone app approval process is slow). The iPhone is a good place for these kinds of games because it reminds us of the portable newspaper. Whereas ten years ago people riding the subway were engrossed in reading the paper, today they have their heads buried in their cell phones. If people are killing time on a train playing Bejeweled, they could just as easily be playing newsgames.
References
Edwards, J. L. and Winkler, C. K., "Representative Form and the Visual Ideograph: The Iwo Jima Image in Editorial Cartoons" Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1997, vol 83; no 3, pp 289-310.
http://toucharcade.com/2009/10/09/bailout-wars-gamelofts-topical-castle-defense/
http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/economy/ig/Bailout-Cartoons/
