12 November, 2018
In my English class, we were assigned to play games, such as September 12th, Spent, or The McDonald’s Video Game, and write about our game-play. I chose to play September 12th, because I couldn’t find the links to the other games and I thought that September 12th had an original name enough for me to search it.
The instructions for the game was clear and simple. There are civilians and terrorist roaming the area. You can shoot or not shoot. You can’t win or lose at the game. This game is not a game, but a simulation. While playing the “game”, I could distinguish between the terrorists and the civilians. When I put my mouse over the terrorist, there was a grid indicating to shoot the terrorist. I clicked and a missile was shot. The terrorist moved and the missile hit nearby building s civilians. Everyone was moving constantly and the terrorists were all ways close to another civilian or building. You had to match the timing of the missile and the terrorist. I learned that if you shoot at a terrorist, you will hit a civilian and/or building. I no longer wanted to play the game. It felt worthless to shoot the bad guy when you are going to hurt innocent people. It would be best not to fire the missile at all.
This game had a message. I interpreted it as “If you are preventing something bad to happen, you will destroy something else without noticing”. The simulation represented what was going on today. The game never ends.
It is important for games to have an argument. In this generation, we are trapped in a screen. If so many of us are doing this, why not use it to our advantage? We could teach the community without having to try so hard. If there is no argument in a game, what would be the point in playing it? There would be no plot or story.
-Felicia Tran
http://www.gamesforchange.org/game/september-12th-a-toy-world/
Toontown 